LOOK: Jameis Winston, Bucs have total meltdown in final minute vs. Rams
This is not how you run a two-minute drill
By
John Breech
•
3 min read
If a football coach at any level needs to give his team a lesson in how NOT to run a two-minute drill, that lesson should be easy to teach from now on. All he needs to do is press play on a video that shows the ending of Sunday's game between the Buccaneers and the Rams.
The Bucs were so bad in crunch time that Jameis Winston even admitted that he made at least one "dumb" play during Tampa's pivotal end-of-game sequence.
So how did the Bucs blow it in their 37-32 loss?
Let's take a quick look.
Oh, and keep in mind that there was a one-hour rain delay after the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter, so Tampa had 60 extra minutes to think about what they might do on their final drive.
The Drive
Trailing 37-32, the Buccaneers got the ball on their own 44-yard line with two timeouts left and 1:42 left in the game.
The first play went perfectly: A 16-yard pass to Vincent Jackson, who got knocked out of bounds with 1:36 left.
After that, things went downhill. On second-and-10 from the Rams' 40-yard line, Winston completed a short 6-yard pass to Adam Humphries, who was tackled in-bounds. The Bucs could've used a timeout, but they didn't.
Instead, the Bucs lost 15 seconds -- Humphries was tackled with 1:31 on the clock and Tampa didn't get their next play off until the 1:16 mark.
Now, this next play is actually where the clock nightmare begins. On second-and-4 from the Rams 34, Winston threw a short seven-yard pass to Charles Sims that took Tampa down to the Rams' 27.
Sims was tackled in-bounds with 1:10 left, and again, the Bucs refused to call a timeout. Instead, they wasted 15 more seconds because they didn't get their next play off until the 55-second mark.
If you're scoring at home: So far the Bucs have used exactly zero of their two timeouts and have wasted a total of 30 seconds.
Two plays later, the Bucs threw all logic out the window. On second-and-10 with 49 seconds left, Winston completed another pass to Sims, which went for 12 yards. The only problem is that Sims didn't get out of bounds on a play where it looked like he had a shot.
Here's how much room Sims had to get to the sideline, and keep in mind the Rams defender made no effort to keep him in-bounds.
Of course, Sims may not have been thinking about getting out of bounds because the Bucs still had TWO TIMEOUTS left. However, unbelievably, Tampa didn't use either one on this play.
The Sims play was blown dead at the 43-second mark and then the Bucs didn't get another play off until the 26-second mark, a complete waste of 17 seconds on that play and a total waste of 47 seconds on the drive.
So why didn't the Bucs use any of their two timeouts on any of the plays mentioned above?
"Yeah, there was an opportunity [to call timeout]," Tampa Bay head coach Dirk Koetter said, via the Tampa Bay Times. "I got a lot of confidence in our two-minute [drill], and I sometimes push the envelope on that, on getting to the next play. I thought we were slow getting lined up on that next one. I thought we still had time to check it down again and use it. But as it worked out, we were a little slow, so I probably should've used [the timeout] there."
Yes, you should have, Dirk.
Despite the horrible clock management, the Bucs still had a chance to win on the final play of the game.
With four seconds left, Winston dropped back to pass from the Rams' 15. Winston obviously needed to throw it into the end zone, but instead, he did this.
Yes. That is Winston getting ready to throw a pass even though he's three yards past the line of scrimmage (blue line). Winston would get tackled at the five-yard line on the play, and that was it. Game over. That was the final play.
The Bucs quarterback admitted that he probably should've thrown the ball in the end zone.
"I was just trying to bait them and get closer to the end zone," Winston said. "In that moment, I've just got to give somebody a chance in the end zone. That was just dumb on my part."
Although Winston admitted it was dumb, it wasn't as dumb as Tampa Bay's clock management. If the Bucs -- who had a timeout left WHEN THE GAME ENDED -- had used a timeout at any point earlier in the drive, they would've had at least 15 extra seconds to work with. Instead, they showed football coaches across America how not to run a two-minute drill.
