On October 11, the Washington Commanders had the ball in overtime with 55 seconds left, a kicker on the roster, and a field goal about 41 yards away that would have won the game. They tied instead.
Here’s how you do that. Washington ran Rachaad White for two yards at the 55-second mark, then the final play started with 12 seconds left. Jayden Daniels went down with eight seconds to go, the Commanders had no timeouts, and nobody got a spike off. Clock hit zero. Final: 27-27, the first tie of the NFL season, per CBS Sports. A spike or a throwaway would have saved it. Quarterbacks learn that in Pop Warner.
To his credit, coach Dan Quinn owned it, saying it was “my responsibility, nobody else’s.” Offensive coordinator David Blough said the same, and Pro Football Talk noted that nobody really explained how it happened. I’d love to hear that explanation. Somebody on that headset had one job.
It wasn’t a one-off, either. A week later, the Giants trailed the Saints 34-24 with 2:56 left and passed on an early field goal to chase a touchdown, then got a false start and a sack before kicking one anyway. Then the kickoff came up short of the end zone and got returned, which let the clock run past the two-minute warning and cost them a timeout, according to Fantasy Nerds. Their kicker called the short kick his own mistake. Back in September, Jets coach Aaron Glenn let the clock run with about a minute left in regulation against Green Bay while holding two timeouts, which cost his team a shot at a field goal, per Pro Football Network. Glenn said he had no regrets. The Jets lost in overtime.
So why does this keep happening? My best guess is fear. A coach who follows convention and loses gets a shrug. A coach who does something clever and loses gets a week of talk radio. Nobody gets fired for the boring choice, so nobody does the math on the other one. I’d also guess the final two minutes are chaos, a loud stadium and a headset full of voices, and the brain does what it did last time.
I’ll be fair, because hindsight is cheap. Any single decision usually moves the odds a little, and some of these calls are closer than they look on a replay. But the Commanders’ ending wasn’t a close call. It was a free win left on the table, and I don’t care how loud the stadium was.
If you have a replay booth full of people to overturn a catch from four angles, you can find one person to tap the coach on the shoulder and say “spike it.” Here’s my fix, and it’s only half a joke: the next time a team burns a game on the clock, the coordinator has to explain it at the postgame podium, not just the head coach. Sunshine is cheap and it works. I wrote about the league’s overly busy replay system earlier this season, and it’s the same gripe: lots of machinery, and still nobody in the room doing the simple thing.
My two cents: The NFL pays coaches millions to manage 60 minutes, and the last two are the ones that count. Learn the clock or hand somebody else the whistle.
Photo: “Football Scoreboard” by Yotejonga via Wikimedia Commons, CC0.