Jim Caldwell is one step ahead of Andy Reid. The Lions head coach hired someone this offseason to help him with clock management.
When the Lions brought former Maryland head coach Randy Edsall on board this past winter, they failed to announce his specific role with the team. His title -- director of football research-special projects -- didn't really clear up any confusion. But on Tuesday, the ambiguity ended. Edsall will take on many roles with the team, with one of those jobs being clock management.
"He's going to do a little bit of advanced scouting for us, taking a look at teams from a defensive standpoint to help our offense," Caldwell said, per the Lions' website. "We're going to have him work with a little bit of time management issues, clock management issues. Across the board, there's going to be quite a few things."
Edsall actually has more head coaching experience than Caldwell, spending a combined 17 years with Connecticut and Maryland.
"I don't think you can ever get too much experience," Caldwell said. "You know, when you have guys like that that have been around a long time, they've seen it from a number of different vantage points, they've had experience with a number of different things, and so why limit him to just one area?"
And Caldwell certainly has a history with mismanaging the clock in his limited time spent on the Colts' sideline. Remember the 2010 playoffs, when Caldwell inexplicably called timeout to give the Jets a chance to turn a long game-winning field goal into a chip shot?
Peyton Manning won't ever forget.
Remember Caldwell's explanation after the Colts were eliminated?
"I didn't care," Caldwell said, per Yahoo Sports. "I was going to make sure that they couldn't ... make them snap the ball. They were in field-goal range. We wanted to try to make them snap the ball as many times as they possibly could."
Yep, that's Caldwell openly admitting he wanted to give the Jets as many offensive snaps as possible in a two-point game. That's the kind of thinking Edsall should, in theory, eliminate moving forward.
Meanwhile, over in Kansas City ...
