The Pittsburgh Steelers may not have scored any points on their final drive Sunday, but Mike Tomlin did preserve a timeout. Would they have scored had he used the timeout? Perhaps not—or rather, probably not. But former Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger is second-guessing his former coach for not using it.
Trailing by three, the Steelers took over at their own 17 with 2:39 to play, Tomlin sitting on one timeout. After three successful plays to get up to the 42, everything started to unravel. Justin Fields and Zach Frazier miscommunicated on the snap, leading to a loose ball and a loss of 12 yards. Two plays later, RB Najee Harris failed to get out of bounds on an 11-yard gain on 3rd and 22.
It was at this point that Mike Tomlin elected not to use the Steelers’ final timeout, the previous play running with 1:07 remaining. They snapped the ball next with 20 seconds remaining on the play clock, 37 on the game clock. But they failed to run an effective play, turning the ball over on downs.
Roethlisberger believes Tomlin made a mistake not taking the timeout but not because of time management. “You’re in fourth down, you have one play”, he said on his Footbahlin podcast yesterday. “You need to call your timeout; you’ve got to figure out your best play. You can’t rush that play call”.
One could argue that the Steelers did rush the call, trying to preserve time, which would have been unnecessary had Tomlin used the timeout. After all, the timeout doesn’t even matter if you don’t convert on 4th and 11. You can’t bring it with you to the next game; it simply vanishes into the void if you don’t use it.
“I just wanted to hold it in my hip pocket. Sometimes working at a pace is an advantage for an offense. It doesn’t give the defense an opportunity to get specialized people in the game to ponder calls and get in perfect calls”, Tomlin said after the game when asked why he didn’t use the Steelers’ final timeout in that situation.
Roethlisberger played devil’s advocate and offered up challenges he expects Tomlin would have countered with. Calling a timeout also would have allowed the Colts to put the best defense on the field against the Steelers.
“I understand where he is coming from a little bit”, Roethlisberger said of Tomlin. “But to me, that play is too important not to call a timeout”.
As he also acknowledged, it’s easy to second-guess in hindsight, because it didn’t work out. The Steelers did get another play off reasonably quickly, and had they converted, Tomlin would look smart. Preserving the timeout also allows you to continue to use the entire field, which is not insignificant.
But, again, no timeout can help you if you run out of downs. The Steelers could have had a better chance of gaining a new set of downs had Mike Tomlin called that timeout. But, of course, Najee Harris should have gotten his butt out of bounds, too.
