What about clock management?

[NJ-STEELER]

Sure it leaves you the sidelines but they are worried about a guy being tackled in bounds with no timeouts. You want the full compliment of routes and having the timeout ensures that Ravens will have to defend against those routes and not just protect the end zone and sidelines. I think it is playing to win, you are ensuring you get points without having to make risky plays.

with over 20 seconds left on the clock if they called a timeout. they would have plenty of time to run a route in the middle of the field and go up to spike it.

[papillon]

Sure it leaves you the sidelines but they are worried about a guy being tackled in bounds with no timeouts. You want the full compliment of routes and having the timeout ensures that Ravens will have to defend against those routes and not just protect the end zone and sidelines. I think it is playing to win, you are ensuring you get points without having to make risky plays.

Yeah, but they only had 7 seconds to run the full complement of routes. Even if they could run a route in the middle of the field, it would have to score a TD otherwise all you did was make your FG shorter. I like having the extra time and using the sideline and end zone to try and get the TD w/o having a TO rather than less time (particularly only 7 seconds) and a TO. I don't recall why the Steelers only had 1 TO but that could be the issue as well, preserving TOs for the final minutes of a game or half (not as much as the end of the game but still would rather have multiple TOs) should be a priority, imo.

Pappy

[Mr.wizard]

Yeah, but they only had 7 seconds to run the full complement of routes. Even if they could run a route in the middle of the field, it would have to score a TD otherwise all you did was make your FG shorter. I like having the extra time and using the sideline and end zone to try and get the TD w/o having a TO rather than less time (particularly only 7 seconds) and a TO. I don't recall why the Steelers only had 1 TO but that could be the issue as well, preserving TOs for the final minutes of a game or half (not as much as the end of the game but still would rather have multiple TOs) should be a priority, imo.

Pappy

No they had 12 seconds you are thinking of the last play but they ran that from the 11 yard line because of the penalty that moved it there and stopped the clock. The play they ran from the 21 yard line was with 12 seconds in which thy would of called a TO if tackled short of the EZ but fortunately we had the penalty. Also like another poster pointed out, if he took a sack we would have still been able to stop the clock and get our field goal unit on the field.