Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles pushed back on critics of his decision to not use a timeout late in Sunday's loss to the Detroit Lions, saying the game was "over."
"It's not a gentleman's agreement," Bowles told reporters Monday. "They were in field goal range. We'd have had 12 seconds, calculated, after using that timeout to come back from it. Then we'd have been down 11 points, so it's kind of pointless. You kind of know when the game is over. The game was over."
The Bucs and Lions both appeared to make severe mental gaffes after Lions linebacker Derrick Barnes picked off Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield with 1:39 remaining. Detroit should have been able to drain the clock down to a negligible amount of time remaining, but instead, center Frank Ragnow snapped the Lions' final kneel down with 37 seconds left on the clock.
The Bucs chose to not call a timeout and allow the remainder of the clock to run out.
While the Lions were in field goal range, kicker Michael Badgley was looking at roughly a 49-yard kick—far from a gimme.
Detroit could also have chosen to punt the ball and pin the Buccaneers deep in their own territory, with Tampa needing to drive the length of the field in one or two plays without a timeout. Then the Bucs would have needed to convert on a two-point try to send the game to overtime.
From a purely mathematical standpoint, Bowles is right. The odds were astronomically stacked against his team, and the overwhelming likelihood is they would have bumbled through a wild trick play as time expired and the result would have been the same.
That said, it's the playoffs. It's win or go home. If there is even a 0.01 percent chance your team can pull off a miraculous comeback, then the attempt needs to be made. The Bucs were already losing; they had nothing additional to lose by calling the timeout and hoping for a miracle.
We've seen crazier things happen in NFL games.
Bowles gave up. He didn't give his offense a chance to pull a rabbit out of a hat, and that's something worthy of criticism—even if there is a 99.99 percent chance he was right about the game being over.
