It was bad situational football. There's really no other way to put it. The only way that it's defensible is if you imagine that, since the Patriots had time outs, their plan was to score as fast as they could to get the ball back after stopping the Colts 3 and out. Given our defense, that would have been stupid strategy. But at least it would have been a strategy.
The answer to the question whether they needed to run a play is definitely no. There was an 8 second difference between the play clock and the 2:00 warning. I posted about it live in the gameday thread.
The only rational basis for running the play on the plus side of the 2:00 warning, other than the one above, is if they liked the defensive grouping on the field and didn't want to give the Colts a free time out to sub. But barring that, it was terrible clock management.
It never ceases to amaze me how bad teams are at clock management. They just don't understand the nuances. Perhaps the saving grace yesterday was that the Colts screwed it up even worse when they got the ball back.
But perhaps the worst clock decision of the day yesterday had to be the Steelers. Ravens had just run a play on second down and the clock was winding down to 2:00. Tomlin called a time out -- his last -- at 2:04. The announcers were actually praising the call -- get the time out in before the 2:00 warning. It is an absolutely idiotic call. If there is 2:10 or more left, perhaps, but even then it's stupid.
Why? Well you get virtually nothing out of it. If you let the clock tick down to the 2:00 warning, instead of stopping it at 2:04, you can just use your last time out after the Ravens run their next play. The only difference in that circumstance is that you have about 1:55 instead of 2:00 on the clock. Either way if they get the first down, the game is over.
So, what is the downside of what Tomlin did? Well, here's the big one -- you give the Ravens a free chance to throw a pass. There is no downside now to a pass play on third down, because the clock is going to stop either way. If, instead, you let the clock run to 2:00 and keep your time out, then you virtually force the Ravens to run, so they make you use that last time out. And, if they do pass, and it's incomplete, you have saved a time out instead of using it just for a whopping 4 seconds.
The other down side is exactly the one that played out. The Ravens ran a play. The defense was offside. It wasn't enough for a first down, but since the play ran 4 seconds off the clock and replayed the down, the Ravens got to run on third down and use up 40 seconds. Just absolutely idiotic time management.
Here's another potential downside. Suppose, on the third down play, the Steelers commit a defensive penalty that leads to an automatic first down. If you call the time out before the 2:00 warning, the game is now over. You have the 2:00 warning, and the Ravens kneel on the ball 3 times. But if you wait for the 2:00 warning, now you still have a chance. With a time out left, you can get the ball back with 30 seconds left, even with the automatic first down. Just a really terrible terrible call, that people actually think is the smart call.
Given how much parity there is in the NFL, I would think a team could justify paying a coach to do nothing other than be aware of clock situational play. It really used to be a Patriots strength, and they are still better than most of the league, but this year they have shown some poor clock decisions -- the Jets game was particularly bad.
