Nine of the Green Bay Packers’ 14 games this year have been decided by one possession. That’s not abnormal in the NFL, where the margins between victory and defeat are razor-thin.
Clock management becomes a point of emphasis in those buckle-up moments, as does the usage of timeouts. The Packers put on a disaster-class in those areas in their loss to the Denver Broncos, and it certainly wasn’t the first time this has happened.
Fans are still haunted by the clock-management choices made in the overtime tie against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 4. To be respectful of those still experiencing nightmares from that final sequence, we won’t delve into the exact details again.
Sunday was just as painful at times.
Head coach Matt LaFleur and the Packers have an irritating tendency to use timeouts like they regenerate once one is burned. In the second quarter against Denver, LaFleur and quarterback Jordan Love exhausted not one but two timeouts on the same drive.
There wasn’t chaos going on around them; they weren’t trying to rush players on and off the field. The offense simply wasn’t getting in and out of the huddle in time, and they had to call timeouts because the group wasn’t set in time — twice on the same drive.
“They’re taking too much time to get the play calls in on the road,” Tony Romo said on the CBS broadcast. “That’s tough.”
Many fans online pointed out that the Packers might just need one or both of those timeouts later in the half. As fate would have it, the Packers had one more possession, which resulted in a field goal to end the first half. That’s not a bad thing, right?
In a game where touchdowns really mattered compared to field goals, the only reason that drive resulted in three was that Green Bay ran out of time. Love intentionally let a few seconds drip off the clock before sailing a pass out of the back of the end zone on a second down, before Brandon McManus trotted onto the field on third down for the field-goal attempt.
Instead of having more time and timeouts at their disposal working inside the red zone, the Packers had to settle for three, all because they wasted two timeouts earlier on.
The clock management on that final drive of the first half was equally bizarre. Green Bay was scooting along after completions of 19 and 16 yards by Love to start the drive. A roughing the passer penalty tacked on 15 more. All of a sudden, the Packers were at the Denver 36-yard line with 1:30 to go in the half.
On the next two plays, the Packers went tight end screen to Luke Musgrave for three yards, followed by an inside zone run out of shotgun for one yard. Love was moving and grooving, yet in the snap of a finger, that momentum came to a screeching halt, and Green Bay started melting the clock instead of showing urgency.
Love took the snap on the second-down run that went for one yard with exactly one minute to go in the half. Green Bay got right back to the line but didn’t take the third-down snap until there were 22 seconds left! Love completed a pass to Romeo Doubs for a first down, and the Packers used their last timeout with 17 seconds to go.
The damage was already done. Green Bay had sunk its chances at getting a touchdown with the timeout usage earlier in the half, coupled with the befuddling decision to let the clock leak way too much on that final drive.
“Did not love that call and did not love that run,” Romo said on the broadcast.
It wasn’t better in the second half.
Green Bay used a timeout when the Broncos had the ball on a fourth-and-one late in the third quarter. Karl Brooks was late jogging onto the field, and the Packers took a timeout. Later, LaFleur challenged what was a clear-as-day catch by Courtland Sutton on a 26-yard connection with Bo Nix.
Have you ever seen a play live and questioned whether there was a bobble or whether the receiver got both feet down in time? Then you might see a replay and realize it was clean, and your initial thought was incorrect.
This wasn’t even one of those. It looked like a clean process all the way through by Sutton, both live and on replay. As a result, another timeout was washed away for the Packers. In a one-score game late where Green Bay was trailing and could’ve used a full array of timeouts, they had just one.
In the first half, the Packers didn’t use timeouts on plays where they were deciding whether to go for a fourth down. They weren’t used out of necessity because they didn’t like a look they were giving or the defense was giving. They called for timeout because the offense wasn’t getting to the line in time after breaking the huddle. It’s not acceptable.
Baffling, puzzling, head-scratching. All words you can use to describe how the Packers used their timeouts, when they used them, and the clock management throughout the game.