Bill Belichick On End Of 1st Half Clock Mismanagement: ‘I Thought We Could Get Up There’
It’s a cliche, but one of the reasons the Patriots are now all headed home instead of for New Orleans is because they continuously shot themselves in the foot Sunday night against the Ravens. Empty trip to the red zone. Turnovers. And of course, horrendous clock management at the end of the first half, something that Bill Belichick tried to explain last night after the game. From Comcast Sports Net New England:
With just under 30 seconds remaining, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady scrambled from the pocket and gained three yards before sliding at the Baltimore seven-yard line. With 20 seconds left, and one timeout, the Patriots had two options: 1) Call timeout, throw a pass into the end zone and hope for a touchdown catch or an incompletion, which would stop the clock and allow the Patriots to attempt a chip-shot field goal to end the half, or 2) spike the ball at the line of scrimmage, stopping the clock, and then still have time to run one quick play for a touchdown; if that didn’t work, the Patriots could call time out and finish the half with a field-goal attempt. Going off of coach Bill Belichick’s explanation after the game, the Patriots tried for Option No. 2 but couldn’t get to the line in time to “clock” the ball (read: spike it) in time. Belichick said there was no thought of going with Option No. 1, calling an immediate timeout after Brady’s run. “I thought we could get up there, or we wanted to try to get up there and clock it and have time to run a play and have the timeout to kick the field goal,” Belichick said. “So no [there was no thought put into calling an immediate timeout], not really. I guess if we had known that it would take as long as it did to get the ball finally clocked [we would have called a timeout], but then we didn’t get a great look on the play.” Eventually, the clock ticked all the way down to four seconds and Brady was forced to call timeout just so the team had enough time to kick a field goal. “Tom actually called timeout at the same time I did,” Belichick said, “so we just didn’t have it.”
