Clock management

[Kray007]

After this past Sunday’s game was over and the points tallIed, Greg Doyel chirped in with a column, mainly dedicated to ripping Shane Steichen for his supposed shortcomings in clock management. The crowd, he said, was booing.

I don’t think he could’ve been farther off base.

As far as I’m concerned, steichen’s clock management was little short of brilliant.

After Laquan Treadwell’s 20 yard reception, the Colts had the ball at Houston’s 45 yard line. A little more than a minute 30 left in the game, 5 yards from field goal range, and Houston had all three of its timeouts remaining.

A minute and 20 seconds later, the Colts were up by two, 10 seconds were left in the game, and the Texans had zero timeouts. What more could you ask for?

Reading the article, Doyel seemed to be miffed by Steichen’s failure to call time out after the 20 yard reception. I could see the complaint if the Colts had been down by four and needed a touchdown to win. In that situation, every second is precious, not a moment can be wasted. But the Colts only needed a few yards. They needed to bleed the clock and force the Texans to burn through timeouts.

The last thing they needed was to hand the ball back to Stroud with 35 or 40 seconds left on the clock, armed with a couple of timeouts. As we’ve seen, time after time, over the past few years, that is a recipe for disaster.