“I thought we had plenty of time”

On the Colts’ final offensive drive in Monday night’s loss to the Steelers, Colts coach Jeff Saturday repeatedly let the clock run rather than call timeout, resulting in the Colts ending the game with two unused timeouts. Saturday said afterward that he didn’t see why he should have called any timeouts on the drive.

“I thought we had plenty of time, I wasn’t really concerned,” Saturday said. “We still had timeouts. I wasn’t too concerned.”

On three consecutive plays after the two-minute warning, the Colts were tackled inbounds and did not call timeout, even though they had all three timeouts. The last of those plays was a Matt Ryan 14-yard run up the middle on second-and-17, and Saturday said he didn’t call timeout because he wanted to see if the officials ruled that Ryan had run for a first down.

“When he was going down, I couldn’t tell where they were gonna start him from going down, right? If he was gonna get the first down. And then we got there, I expected us to get on the ball and have another play, a little bit quicker than that. But again, this wasn’t a press for time. We just didn’t make enough plays,” Saturday said.

Pressed by reporters about not using his timeouts, Saturday said he didn’t think the Colts needed them.

“I didn’t feel like time was of the essence at that moment,” Saturday said. “I thought we had a good play, I felt like we would get to it. . . . I felt good about the call before, I felt like we’d have time, we would have timeouts afterwards, we were in striking distance, so I never felt like the pressure of needing the timeout.”

The Colts called timeout only once in the second half, before their final offensive play, an incomplete pass on fourth-and-3. That turned the ball over to the Steelers on downs, and they kneeled down once and ended the game, without the Colts using their final two timeouts.

Jeff Saturday on not using timeouts: “I thought we had plenty of time” originally appeared on Pro…

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Author : ProFootball Talk on NBC Sports

Publish date : 2022-11-29 10:20:27

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