I came across this very interesting article: How simple arithmetic cost the Rams a chance to win the Super Bowl.

And after reading it, I think he is… right.

There’s an important mathematical rule for using timeouts at the end of football games that almost no NFL coach seems to understand:

If you’re on defense and want to preserve clock, never call a timeout on a running clock with 2:41–2:45 left in the game.

Sean McVay violated this by calling a timeout at 2:42 late in the Super Bowl. This cost the Rams ~35 seconds, which would have given them a chance to make an unlikely miracle comeback statistically much more probable.

The article is definitely worth a read, but in short, McVay erred by using his 2nd timeout after the Patriots 1st-and-10 run with 2:47 to go.  The clock was running, and by calling timeout with 2:42 to go, he prevented the Patriots from being forced to run a play (after their next play) with 2:02 to go, which would have resulted in the play clock being stopped with about 1:58 to go after that play.

McVay ultimately cost the Rams about 30-35 seconds.  Had every play worked out the same way, the Patriots would have snapped the 2nd-and-7 play with about 2:03 remaining, the 1st-and-10 with ~1:55 remaining, the 2nd-and-6 with ~1:50 remaining (after which you call timeout #2), and the 3rd down play with ~1:45 remaining (after which you call timeout #3).  That would have let the field goal try come with about 1:40 left, rather than 1:16 left (my math results in about 25 additional seconds, rather than 35, but the point remains).

Kudos to Adam Moelis & Matthew Walla for pointing out an interesting observation that I completely missed.  A good shorthand is to think about how many seconds the 2 minute warning stoppage saves.

For the defense, the worst thing that could happen is an early-down play gets tackled with 2:40 remaining.  If the official winds the clock with 2:39 to go, and there is *no* 2-minute warning, the next play would be snapped with 1:59 left.  Since there is a 2 minute warning, it would be snapped with 2:00 to go, and the 2-minute warning saves one second.

The *best* thing that could happen is an early-down play gets tackled with 2:41 remaining.  Now if it’s 3rd down, that’s not so valuable, but if it’s 1st or 2nd down, it sure is.  If the first down play gets tackled with 2:41 remaining, and the defense does NOT call timeout, then the 3rd down play has to be run with 2:01 remaining, which means the punt would happen with about 1:56 remaining (assuming, in all cases, that the defense wins each play).  You want the 2-minute warning to save the maximum amount of time, of course.

So I agree with their shorthand: “If you’re on defense and want to preserve clock, never call a timeout on a running clock with 2:41–2:45 left in the game.”  I’d add an addendum that this doesn’t apply if it’s 3rd down, but otherwise it looks pretty good to me.  McVay called a timeout after a 1st down run with 2:42 left, a clear blunder.

What do you think?