[stupac2]

I think the arguments for saving the timeouts for your offense, though perhaps not decisive, are a lot better than anybody is acknowledging. Opening the middle of the field -- and even, possibly, the running game -- for your offense are big, big, big benefits of keeping your timeouts.

I'm not sure why people keep saying this. In college the clock stops for a first down, so you have plenty of time to get up to the line and spike it or run a play. If you have 30 seconds left, sure, that's not enough, but that's not the counterfactual we're talking about. If we use a couple TOs on defense the offense has something like 1:30 left, plenty of time to use the middle of the field even with only 1 TO. Remember, each TO used on defense saves ~35 seconds of game clock.

I do understand what Shaw was going for, though I disagree. If ND had been out of time outs then I think his strategy would've made some more sense, because a sack or some other sufficiently broken play could effectively end the game. The problem, of course, is that our DL isn't good enough to get those plays, so counting on them isn't super reliable.

That said, this reminds me of the discussion around Belichick's lack of TO in a similar position in the Super Bowl, though of course that worked out in a slightly different way. These decisions are hard and sometimes there's no clearly right answer.

But I'm still with WiM, the overall game strategy was lacking. ND was too fast and too prepared for the run to keep running it right at them. We needed to call more screens or even straight run plays. They sold out to stop the most dangerous part of our offense and it very nearly worked them, and it shouldn't have been so close.

[stupac2]

I think the arguments for saving the timeouts for your offense, though perhaps not decisive, are a lot better than anybody is acknowledging. Opening the middle of the field -- and even, possibly, the running game -- for your offense are big, big, big benefits of keeping your timeouts.

I'm not sure why people keep saying this. In college the clock stops for a first down, so you have plenty of time to get up to the line and spike it or run a play. If you have 30 seconds left, sure, that's not enough, but that's not the counterfactual we're talking about. If we use a couple TOs on defense the offense has something like 1:30 left, plenty of time to use the middle of the field even with only 1 TO. Remember, each TO used on defense saves ~35 seconds of game clock.

I do understand what Shaw was going for, though I disagree. If ND had been out of time outs then I think his strategy would've made some more sense, because a sack or some other sufficiently broken play could effectively end the game. The problem, of course, is that our DL isn't good enough to get those plays, so counting on them isn't super reliable.

That said, this reminds me of the discussion around Belichick's lack of TO in a similar position in the Super Bowl, though of course that worked out in a slightly different way. These decisions are hard and sometimes there's no clearly right answer.

But I'm still with WiM, the overall game strategy was lacking. ND was too fast and too prepared for the run to keep running it right at them. We needed to call more screens or even straight run plays. They sold out to stop the most dangerous part of our offense and it very nearly worked them, and it shouldn't have been so close.