You know, this has me wondering - since I have never watched CFL football - if a CFL team wants to preserve its lead, does this mean there is no need to emphasize running the ball to drain the clock, since doing so would not burn any more time off the clock than throwing the ball (whether the pass is complete or incomplete?) Run, pass, all the same.
In the NFL, running the ball is where it’s at if you want a long drive that will consume 8-10 minutes of clock.
Something happened towards the end of the Chiefs/Ravens game that I’m not sure I’d ever seen before. Chiefs had the ball, first and ten, at their own 25, with 2:34 to play. Ravens had two timeouts left. Chiefs needed a first down to ice the game.
On first down, Pacheco rushed for 7 yards, but a flag was thrown. Baltimore had 12 men on the field. KC accepted the penalty, making the down 1st and 5. So now KC just had to make five yards to convert the crucial first down. But a Ravens defensive lineman jumped offside, so the five yard penalty would have made it first and ten again. However, he was flagged for Unnecessary Roughness, which is a 15 yard penalty, but it was again first and ten. KC did convert the first down and ran out the clock.
I don’t know if the penalty was only five yards if KC would have accepted or declined the penalty. I suspect they would have declined. For that matter, could they have declined the roughness penalty? I don’t know the answer to that.
Bracketed part added by me as my guess at the implication.
Could you explain how this this possible please, keeping it as jargon/slang free as possible for someone from the UK who doesn’t follow Amercan football?
Running can still burn more time, since you do have the 20 second play clock. But to burn time you really need to move the sticks, and a heavy focus on running is unlikely to accomplish that what with only having 2 downs before punting.
Here’s a classic example – Philadelphia Eagles running back Brian Westbrook against Dallas in 2007:
If the team with the ball is up by one point and they score a touchdown and PAT (Point After Attempt, which is a 1 point field goal kick) for an 8 point lead, it gives the other team the chance to tie it up (TD + 2 point conversion). Better to just run the clock out with your 1 point lead.
Let’s say there’s one minute left in the game and the losing team has no time outs. The winning team runs the ball and gets the first down – that means, they have four more tries to get another first down. But, they do better and they’re running right towards the endzone, which would end in a score.
Clear so far?
Now, if they score, and there’s a minute left, then they have to kick off to the other team, and the other team will have a minute to march down the field and also score. That has been done lots of times, very risky, potentially tying or winning the game.
However, if they take a knee before scoring, then they just have to kneel down a couple of times to run out the clock, guaranteed win. Since the losing team has no timeouts, and the winning team can waste 40 seconds per kneel, they will definitely use up the rest of the clock and win the game, and the losing team has no chance to do anything.
They do discuss it a bit, but it’s less critical in CFL. In CFL, we don’t have a two-minute warning, but three minutes, so there’s a longer time in which there are other ways to stop the clock. Also, our play clock is much shorter. The NFL has a 40-second play clock, so if time isn’t stopped, a team with all four downs can run out the entire clock, which you see when one team is leading, and gains possession in the last two minutes. With three downs and a shorter clock, it’s much harder to run the time out like that in CFL. So the opposing team’s timeouts can become critical in determining if they can get another last-second possession.
Another thing to be considered is the relative strength of your defense and offense.
If you have a team with a strong offense, who is very good at moving the ball and picking up first downs, but your defense isn’t great at stopping the opponent, that might change your strategy. Let’s say you have a superstar quarterback and a couple of star receivers and a couple of great running backs, but on the defensive side you have a bunch of injuries so you had to play backups and rookies. You might do everything you can to bleed off the clock and keep the ball away from your opponent because you don’t have faith that your defense can stop them.
On the other hand, let’s say it’s the opposite. You have a dominant defense that has been able to pressure the other team’s quarterback, stop the run, has tight coverage, and so on. But you are playing a backup quarterback, you don’t have the best runners, and your star receiver is dealing with a hamstring issue and doesn’t look like his usual self. You might take whatever points you can get late in the game, and then lean on your defense to make the stops and prevent them from scoring.
That’s one of the things I really enjoy about football. You have all of the athletic prowess happening on the field, but the strategy behind the scenes is just as important if not more so. It’s like watching a game of chess but the chess pieces have to chase and wrestle each other to be captured.
If you are ahead by any number of points with a small amount of time left, and the opponents don’t have enough timeouts, you can run what’s called the “victory formation” 3 times in a row and be guaranteed of winning. Guaranteed in this case means no team has ever lost under this scenario.
If you choose to score points rather than accept this “victory formation” scenario, you give control of the ball back to your opponent, though you now have a larger lead than you would have in the victory formation scenario. When you give control back to your opponent, you’re no longer guaranteed an outcome. Your victory may be overwhelmingly likely, almost certain, but it isn’t guaranteed anymore.
A soccer type situation, you’re up 1 goal, and can either have a rock solid 100% guarantee of holding the ball until time runs out, or score. If you score, they get the ball, and the guarantee is gone, but you’re up 2 with little time left.
I tried to find a scenario where someone was doing the victory formation and somehow fumbled the snap or did something else to sabotage the win. As far as I can tell, that has never happened.
The closest would be the Miracle at the Meadowlands, a 1978 game between the NY Giants and Philadelphia Eagles which occurred years before the “victory formation” was legal. (The first year that quarterbacks were allowed to simply kneel to voluntarily down themselves and end the play was 1987.) In that game, the Giants were ahead 17-12 and the Eagles had no timeouts left, with seconds left on the clock. Since QBs couldn’t kneel, normally they would instead take the ball and do a “dive and roll” maneuver, which was effectively the same thing (intentionally downing themselves) but it still exposed the QB to a potential injury. So the plan was to just hand the ball to the running back and have the running back take a short run which would burn off the remaining seconds.
If you’ve never heard of what happened, you can probably guess. The snap was fumbled, one of the Eagles players (legendary cornerback and later head coach in the NFL and college Herm Edwards) snatched it up and ran it back for a touchdown, winning the game for the Eagles.
That’s actually an example of a team losing because they chose not to do a victory formation (or the equivalent at the time, which was the QB taking the snap and giving himself up).
Also, if you want another infamous game where a team was able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory due to quirks about the clock and timeouts and such, I ran into this classic video from over 20 years ago, which involve (shock!) the Cleveland Browns.
I’ve linked to the moment when the shenanigans start, right when the game starts the final 2 minutes, when the Browns first start screwing things up badly and completely botch what should have been a guaranteed win. The video is only about 4 minutes long from that point, but it’s worth watching because you can see how some of the weird rules about the final minutes of a football game can be affected by penalties.
ETA: The NFL blocks the video from being played from an embedded link, and that screws up the timestamp, so try the link from here to watch it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBCbwQ6UQg4&t=1110s
The 2012 Buccaneers were known for charging into opposing QBs trying to do the kneel-down, in hopes of jarring the ball loose.
I forgot to add that the earliest variations of the kneel down were developed in response to the “Miracle at the Meadowlands”, though they didn’t get the official protection from the rules that was developed in 1987.
Here’s an instance of one such event:
Coughlin was upset with Schiano because Bucs linemen bulldozed the middle of the Giants offensive line and knocked over quarterback Eli Manning after the Giants had sealed their 41-34 victory with an interception. The code between players is that’s usually not a full-contact play.
I will say that it’s still common today to see the linemen on both sides clash during victory formation. While it’s essentially a formality, I think that teams don’t want to be seen as giving up, and/or they hope that maybe just once they can force a turnover somehow.
It would be pretty hard to pull off though. If a defensive player jumps before the snap, that’s a defensive penalty and just bleeds off more time as the down is replayed with the play clock ticking down again from the top of 40 seconds, with the game clock also starting again, and you might even give the offense a new set of downs depending on the circumstances (such as two off side/neutral zone infractions in a single set of downs, or another more serious penalty). And the time from the moment of the snap and the kneel is usually too fast for a defender to do anything before the ball is dead. As far as I know, this has never actually succeeded. You’d still need an offensive screwup for there to even be a chance for a turnover.
Eagles player attempting to intercept Patrick Mahomes’ spiked ball:
Okay, now that was inspired.
Note that this was spiking the ball, not a kneel down, which is very different and has the opposite effect (it is used to stop the clock). And it’s not nearly as much of a guarantee; it’s more complicated and there are rules around doing it properly, and people do screw it up. For example, if you wait too long to spike the ball you might get a penalty, or if you double pump the spike, etc.
A kneel down on the other hand is as close to a guaranteed play at there is in American football.
I’ve seen that done with blatant holding by all members of the offensive line. By grabbing, and even tackling, the rushers they buy extra time for the punter to run around before stepping out and taking the safety. They’re happy to give up the penalty yards in order to burn that extra time.
I’m telling you, late game football is the best football. That’s when the crazy stuff happens.
It’s why blowouts are boring. Unless you’re a diehard fan of one of the teams, in which case you’re either on cloud nine enjoying a smooth victory or it’s a nightmare and you probably stopped watching the game and instead it’s an excuse to get to chores that you’ve been putting off.
That loophole got closed a few seasons back, after the notorious play in question.
It struck me as a loophole, too. What’s the rule change that prevents it?
The official rule states: A team may not commit multiple fouls during the same down in an attempt to manipulate the game clock. The penalty for a violation is 15 yards. The game clock will also be reset to where it had been prior to the previous snap.