Had the Los Angeles Rams not come back to beat the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game, a lot of people would be pointing to Sean McVay’s unquestionably bad timeout usage. Just 20 minutes into the second half, the Rams were already out of timeouts, which could’ve proved to be costly.
He lost a challenge on Matthew Stafford’s fourth-down sneak, which came up short of the line to gain and was upheld after review. He then burned a timeout on first down when the play clock was running down, avoiding a 5-yard penalty. His final timeout was used on another failed challenge when he believed Kyle Juszczyk fumbled the ball on a third-down run, which didn’t pick up the first down anyway.
On Monday, McVay explained each challenge and accepted full responsibility for losing them. He knows his timeout management must be better, something that has troubled him throughout his five years with the Rams.
“So, the accountability lies with me,” he said. “The first one with the quarterback sneak, it was not a great decision by me. It was kind of one of those you’re hopeful, you see the side shot of it. Going back to Arizona, where we ended up challenging the one on the QB sneak, you’re kind of hopeful that if they give you the top-down shot that maybe it goes through. But that one was totally on me. And then the other one, it looked like it was kind of a bang-bang play. In the flow of the game, there was a possibility that we thought there was a fumble there. (I would) do that one a little bit differently, but ultimately those decisions are my responsibility. I’ve gotten great information all year. Those guys do a great job. In those instances yesterday, didn’t work out, but there’s nobody that’s responsible other than myself. And like we talked about kind of earlier in this conversation, you got to be able to learn from it. Fortunately, it didn’t hurt us. But it is important to be able to have those timeouts in your back pocket if you need those and being a little bit smarter with those challenges that was something I didn’t do a great job for us with yesterday.”
The Rams didn’t end up needing those timeouts, thankfully, after mounting a comeback to erase their 17-7 deficit, but McVay’s careless challenges could’ve been costly. Had the 49ers maintained their lead late in the game, they would’ve had an opportunity to run down the clock and prevent the Rams from getting the ball back.
In the Super Bowl, where the game is expected to be close once again, McVay can’t afford to burn timeouts the way he did on Sunday – especially in the second half.
