It turns out that maybe having at least some coaching experience is important after all. On Monday Night Football the Colts were locked in a one score game with the Steelers when it seemed like Jeff Saturday’s brain fell out.
Jeff Saturday botched his clock management so badly he became a meme
This was so, so, so bad.
Photo by Dylan Buell/Getty Images
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
The clock management for the final two minutes was atrocious, but the pivotal moment came when Matt Ryan scrambled on a broken play for 14 yards and went down with 0:59 left on the clock. The Colts were at the Steelers 40 yard line, facing a 3rd and 3 — and had all three timeouts in hand. It was an easy decision — but not for Saturday.
The decision not to call a time out defied belief. There was maybe some logic about not wanting to score too quickly and leaving time on the clock for the Steelers — but that’s a really weak argument given the down and distance. The Colts desperately needed to take a second and make a plan.
Instead they called a run up the middle that gained no yards, THEN Saturday decided to call a time out with 0:30 left. At this point it was too late. It was 4th and 3, the Colts failed to convert and Pittsburgh kneeled it out. After the game Saturday’s justification was really odd:
“I thought we had plenty of time, I wasn’t really concerned,” Saturday said after the game. “We still had timeouts. I wasn’t too concerned. When [Ryan] was going down, I couldn’t tell where they were gonna start him from going down, right? If he was gonna get the first down. And then we got there, I expected us to get on the ball and have another play, a little bit quicker than that. But again, this wasn’t a press for time. We just didn’t make enough plays.”
Huh? So the argument here is that 59 seconds is “plenty of time” to keep a running clock when you have to score a touchdown? And what’s with him saying he didn’t know what down and distance they’d be at after Ryan’s scramble? It was abundantly clear they were short, and even if they had the first down it wouldn’t have changed the sense of urgency required.
There were memes.
Unfortunately there was an old tweet too.
At the end of the day it was just a flub, but Saturday’s attempt to justify why he didn’t call a T.O simply makes no sense. It probably would have been better to just own it and say “I messed up,” and move on.
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