After watching lots of NFL games over the past two weeks, I’ve noticed that quarterbacks almost always call a timeout (if any remain) instead of taking a 5-yard delay of game penalty. Is this the best strategy? I can see taking a timeout when the penalty would put you out of field goal range (say). But wouldn’t there be situations in which saving a timeout would be more valuable than taking the penalty?
Petek
Only rarely, I think. If you’re down by two scores with 7:00 remaining and it’s 3rd & 25 on your own 40, then you should just take the penalty, since the timeout is very likely to come in handy, while the 5 yards is very unlikely to make a difference (aside from being 5 yards of field position, that is). The vast majority of the time, however, it’s going to be better to take the sure benefit of being 5 yards closer to a first down instead of the saved timeout, which might be of little or no use at all.
Situation when teams might want to keep their timeout:
[ol]When they’re near their own goal line where the penalty would be a half-the-distance penalty rather than 5 yards
[li]When they’re trying to run out the clock[/li][li]When they’re trying to give their team more room to punt (usually near midfield)[/li][/ol]
An associated question I have: on the “intentional” delay of game penalty to give their punter more room to punt, why does the receiving team always accept this penalty?:smack:
You don’t see a lot of smart timeout use in the NFL. One of my pet peeves is when a defense is getting shredded by a hurry-up and they don’t call timeout. In the NBA, you see these “stop the bleeding” timeouts all the time. Granted, they have more timeouts to spend, but if you just got beat on 5 consecutive plays, maybe you should halt the offense’s momentum with a timeout and perhaps figure out what it is you’re doing wrong. But you’re absolutely right about taking the delay penalty. If it’s 3rd and 20 at midfield, 3rd and 25 isn’t going to kill you, and you’ll have more room to punt if your play doesn’t work out.
I also hate when an announcer says that a team just “burned” a timeout. If a timeout keeps you from running a bad play and committing a critical error, then it was a good timeout. Better to use it then rather than making a mistake, giving up a big play, and having all your timeouts at the end of the game but being too far behind for them to mean anything.
This is true. But a professional team is supposed to be able to run decent plays without the need to spend timeouts, given their potential value near the end of a half.
The Eagles are one team that’s often bad this way. Timeout mismanagement arguably cost them the game with Washington late in the season.
Sure, but they’re also supposed to be able to get that play off inside of 25 (or sometimes 40) seconds. Doesn’t always happen
Because I believe they have no choice. Delay of game is, IIRC, an automatic penalty like false start.
Any penalty can be declined, including delay of game and false start. I’ve seen delay of game declined several times, in situations where the extra yardage would be beneficial for a punt.
You can decline a delay of game penalty; I’ve seen it maybe twice in ten years of game watching. I think coaches don’t usually decline the intentional penalties because those extra five yards are a bit of a security blanket. What if your defense gets flagged twice in a row for encroachment? Unlikely, but it could potentially give the offense a first down. Worse, what if before the kick, one of your defensive lineman gets flagged for facemask or unnecessary roughness? Also, those five extra yards mean that the danger of a fake punt is greatly reduced as well as the danger of a broken play accidentally resulting in a first down for the kicking team.
Plus, it’s not like the extra space is all that great of an advantage for the punter. Usually, the team gets an intentional delay of game penalty, and the punter kicks it through the endzone.
I’ve seen exceptions. When I was an undergrad at the University of Florida during Spurrier’s tenure as the coach, I was at a game where he had his team get penalized for delay of game for this reason. The opponent declined the penalty, though, so Spurrier had his team get penalized AGAIN. This went on until the third or fourth time, when the opponents finally accepted the penalty.
Interestingly enough, I’ve seen something similar in the NFL, and I think it was while Spurrier was coaching the Redskins. He was at around the 45 and got a delay of game, Cowher (at least, I think it was) declined, Spurrier did it again (though I think it may have been an intentional false start the second time), and he declined again, and then they just punted anyway. I imagine, at least in the NFL, continually getting delay of game penalties may ultimately result in an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.