A quick thought: Why in the world do NFL teams ever call timeouts early on in the game?
Maybe I’m a simpleton. Don’t understand all the intricacies of coaching and playcalling. Whatever.
Ostensibly, a timeout gets called early on when:
- Poor clock management by coach / QB
- QB reads a lopsided defense, knows his play is going to bust
- I don’t know, Subway bought commercial time and needs to sell more sandwiches
Is this really worth burning one of your only three timeouts? You wouldn’t rather, at midfield in the middle of the third quarter, take a 5-yard Delay of Game penalty or burn a play on an incomplete pass?
Again, I could be biased: as a TV viewer, I don’t get to hear what goes on in the huddle or the sidelines. The announcer never says “boy, that was a good play change that the coach implemented during the timeout.”
Watching football, it seems to me that most any game that’s even remotely close will come down to clock management in the final two minutes of the game. And the scales, consistently, are tipped by whichever team has timeouts to spare.
Saving all three until the final two minutes (or so) of the game should be a coaching staple. Your three timeouts are sacred. Why fundamentally cripple your chances to compete late in the game?
I’ve lately been reading (reading! I know, right!?) a fascinating sports/economics/statistics/psychology book, Scorecasting. I’m not going to plagiarize the authors’ ideas here, but thought I’d let you know my thinking has been even more sports-centered than usual for the past few days.
you know, i’ve wondered this recently. however, if i were in a situtation where i had marched down the field on a 40-yard drive and i had all that momentum built up, i would certainly use a timeout to avoid a delay of game on a 2nd and 4 turning into a 2nd and 9. timeouts are sacred only if the game comes down to the wire and you’re trailing by a score or two. if you an grab that TD earlier in the game by feeding a successful drive, then why wouldn’t you prefer that?
Pete,
The argument we’re both making (I think) is that the timeout is most (only?) valuable when it has the most direct link to the most valuable score. There are obviously an incalculable number of What If? scenarios…but my basic presumptions are that 1) A score is better than no score, and 2) A score later in the game is better than a score earlier in the game.
How much does your 5-yard penalty affect the team’s chances of scoring during the mid-game 40-yard drive? How much does the availability of a timeout affect a team’s ability to create a 40-yard drive in the last two minutes of the game? When has the losing team in a close game EVER run into a scenario where they wouldn’t have been aided by having an extra timeout available?
It still seems like, barring extreme circumstances, you’ll want to hold on to your timeouts for later.