Todd Bowles’ decision not to take a timeout at the end of Sunday’s loss to the Lions was bad. His answer as to why was worse.
Baker Mayfield threw an interception that left 1:33 on the clock for the Lions with Tampa Bay holding one timeout. The Lions could not run out the clock unless the Bucs didn’t take a timeout. They didn’t.
The Lions were lucky the Bucs didn’t since Detroit failed to take the full 40 seconds off the clock between kneel downs. That prevented Dan Campbell from having to make a decision about whether to try a 49-yard field goal on fourth down with 36 seconds left or punt.
Bowles defended his strange decision after the game.
“They already had a field goal lined up and there would’ve been about 12 seconds left on the clock to end the ball game, and we weren’t going to come back from that,” Bowles told reporters postgame. “No sense in prolonging the obvious.”
There would have been more than 12 seconds since the Lions botched the clock management, but who’s counting? Apparently not the Bucs.
Bowles doubled down at his day-after news conference Monday, apparently still not realizing the Lions mismanaged the clock.
“They were in field-goal range, would have had 12 seconds calculated after using that timeout to come back from it, then we would’ve been down 11 points,” Bowles told beat reporters. “It’s kind of pointless. You kind of know when the game is over, and the game was over.”
A 49-yard field goal is not a chip-shot, and a miss would have given the Bucs the ball at their own 39-yard line with about 30 seconds left and in need of a touchdown and a 2-point conversion to force overtime. It probably wasn’t going to happen, but for Bowles to say we “fought to the end” was erroneous. The Bucs fought to the final 36 seconds.
