Without too many marquee games, the week in play calling and strategy was a light one. But with new clock rules in place, game management took center stage as another college football season kicked off.
The smart alecks in the college football writing business (not that there’s anything wrong with smart alecks, as long as they don’t take cheap shots at other people) are saying that opening day of the 2008 season won’t arrive until September 13, when all hell will break loose with a star-studded slate. This past weekend and the weekend to come are low on megawatt matchups with terrific teams tackling each other in titanic tussles. In the meantime, then, any assessment of play calling and strategy will be fairly minimal. To fill in the gaps, then, the most fertile source of football discussion in the next week or so will be the new clock rules, specifically the 40-second play clock and the restarting of the game clock on out-of-bounds runs (except for the final two minutes of each half).
A brief sampling of games from the weekend suggested that college football contests will consume less time in 2008. Three early games (in the Noon ET/9 a.m. PT broadcast window) clocked in at 3 hours and 5 minutes or slightly less. Youngstown State-Ohio State, Syracuse-Northwestern, and Virginia Tech-East Carolina all raced by, a likely indicator that those games featured a lot of running plays. Naturally, the Illinois-Missouri track meet ran long (as any 52-42 game would), but a casual survey of the day’s action indicated that the pace of a typical game will increase, reducing the aggregate number of snaps for everyone involved.
What might be the biggest single challenge for every FBS coaching staff is the need to balance rhythm and clock management over the course of a given game. One of the recent mega-trends in college football has been the increased emphasis on tempo for offensive units. Offensive coordinators are discovering that quicker transitions—from whistle to huddle to snap—can prevent defensive coordinators from inserting ideal defensive packages, with the added benefit being that more time spent at the line of scrimmage (and not in the huddle) will enable the quarterback to survey the defense and flow through his progressions with less pressure. Realizing the benefits of a faster offensive tempo isn’t that hard to do.
This subject gets complicated, however, when one considers the flow of a particular game. When a fast-tempo offense gains a sizeable lead in the fourth quarter, the reality of the 40-second play clock—and the decreased number of snaps attached to it—must enter into the thought process of both the offensive coordinator and the head coach. A perfect case in point is the Missouri-Illinois game, where the Tigers—leading by double digits for the entirety of the fourth quarter, and by just 10 points for a good chunk of it—were still seen snapping the ball with 21 seconds left on the play clock with 5:45 left in regulation. Missouri clearly thrives on its fast tempo, but after ringing up 45 points in the game’s first 54 minutes and change, the focus should have shifted to an approach more connected to clock draining. Slashing an additional 20 seconds off each play-to-play sequence would have left the Illini in a very difficult position, even if the Tigers didn’t add to their lead. Gary Pinkel and all his colleagues in the coaching fraternity need to know when scoring must give way to clock draining, and vice versa.
To further illustrate this point, consider that, in the Virginia Tech-East Carolina game, Frank Beamer and the Hokie braintrust—before the unthinkable (a special teams breakdown) occurred—presided over some dubious game management midway through the fourth quarter. In a low-scoring contest, and with quarterback Sean Glennon struggling, it was patently foolish to be passing the ball the way the Hokies did around the seven-minute mark of the fourth quarter, with a nine-point (two-possession) advantage. Admittedly, there’s only so much one can do when a blocked punt turns a probable victory into near-certain defeat. However, it’s still worth noting that had Tech used more running plays in the fourth quarter, the Hokies might have maintained their lead a little bit longer, or forced the Pirates to use all their timeouts. Under either one of those scenarios, East Carolina’s hopes of victory might have depended that much more centrally on blocking the punt. In response to the urgency of that would-be scenario, everyone on the Tech punt protection team might have been that much more focused on preventing the breakdown that devastated the defending ACC champions.
Tempo, as you can see, is a two-way street. You need to be able to speed up in order to score points and come from behind. But teams also need to be able to slow down in order to run clock and preserve leads… without losing their edge or an ability to execute basic plays.
