Clock Management

[Steelerlyn]

Can someone explain to me why we needed a second timeout to freeze the kicker? Hadn't he already had plenty of time to think about the kick?Washington's penalty would never have happened if we had a timeout, giving Reed the opportunity to kick and win. We just keep shooting ourselves in the foot.

[BlitzburghRockCity]

Basically we had to put everything we had into trying to stop that kick. The game was on the line and we had no idea how the rest of the game would play out so trying to make him think about it as much as possible was the best route the coaches felt, besides the fact that it was a really long kick.

[Steelerlyn]

BC knows more than I do, I am just an observer and seem to frequently ask why some things are done. A guy who has played football also looks at the entire game differently from a person who has never played.

But this seems like one of those "we've always done things this way" deals! Maybe it actually worked one time and teams thought it was a great idea forever afterwards. The overall quality of kickers in the league now..where 45 yarders are almost automatic..is a far cry from the 1960's when the level of athleticism and time spent on their craft was far less for specialty things like kicking.

[AZ_Steeler]

The timeout came in handy because the Falcons decided to let Anderson try and kick the FG instead which as we all know he missed it, so I'm not complaining about the call. Batch had plenty of time on the clock to make sure everyone was set all he had to do was wait 3-5 more seconds before he snapped the ball.

[Black@Gold Forever32]

Now looking at it the Steelers having a timeout would have been huge. I don't know why Cowher spent two time outs in icing the kicker. I'm still trying to figure out why Bill Cowher even had Ricardo Colclough returning punts at the start of the season? Bill has made some strange moves this. Cutting Chide was another one.

[BBG7]

Icing the kicker a couple times is nothing unusual for the Steelers. It works out pretty well most of the time. I do see your point but there is no way to predict what was going to happen and the spike would have worked out perfectly if they didn't call that on Nate.

[BlitzburghRockCity]

The bottom line is, icing the kicker worked and they missed the FG giving us the chance to drive down and win the game ourselves. Had we not iced him twice, who knows if he'd have missed that kick or not. Hard to say

[Black@Gold Forever32]

The bottom line is, icing the kicker worked and they missed the FG giving us the chance to drive down and win the game ourselves. Had we not iced him twice, who knows if he'd have missed that kick or not. Hard to say

Man I just like saving at least 1 timeout. Thats just my . But I should also add I don't think Jeff would have made that field goal. That would have been 50+. Jeff struggles from that range.

[SteelerFan87]

This is one of those things where it's easy to second guess the decision. But I mean, put yourself in that position. It's a must-win game, the other team is about to kick the game winning field goal. You have to do anything and everything you can to try to prevent that from happening. There was no way to anticipate that they would call a false start on Nate for "flinching" on a spike. And the fact is, it worked. Anderson missed the kick. What if Cowher hadn't called the time out, and Anderson had made the kick? Then everyone would be talking about how Cowher should have used the time out.

But the fact is, we shouldn't have even needed to ice the kicker again. We iced Koenen the first time, and then he missed. If they don't call that bullshit running into the kicker penalty on Troy, none of this is even necessary, we have that extra time out, and 5 extra yards of field position.

[Troyisabeast_43]

Bill Cowher has always been horrific in using the clock and timeouts since he started coaching for some reason. This has always been a huge huge thing with Cowher that drives me nuts with him. Is he challenges stupid calls a lot of the times,and doesnt use his timeout wisely when we need them too, or takes too long to use them. There is no excuse at all for Cowher to kneel on that ball right before the half on Sunday when Farrior got the intereception and we had 3 timeouts left with 45 seconds on the clock especially right after we marched right down the field on them. Like Ive mentioned in a lot of other posts here the last few days and weeks this season so far Bill Cowher just has not done a good job coaching or managing games for some reason. He left Colclough in there in the 4th quarter of the most important game of the year to catch a punt after he knew week after week the guy stinks and is capable of making a fumble or mistake at anytime. At least today at his press conference Cowher admitted that the team is not finishing and not making the plays late in games that they use to make last year to win games. Im glad he recognizes that at least. But so far this year Cowher in my opinion just has not done a good job at all in a lot of areas clock management being a big one.