Clock Management or lack thereof

[#56fanatic]

Originally Posted by scowan

What good teams do, is not what you think they are going to do....... Everyone knew Portis was going to run right up the middle on 3 and 2 and what did he do........? Run right up the middle. 4th down let's punt. I love the fact that Indy was still throwing the ball all over the field last Monday night against the Pats while they were up by 14 points! Play aggressive. Don't do what everyone expects you to do! Roll out, go deep, something unexpected, not right up the middle. I mean really Gibbs, how many times, late in the game, to protect the lead, have you run the ball 3 times and punted..... let me tell you A LOT!! When will we learn. Great job Gruden on being aggresive on the 2-point conversion.... I gurrantee, Gibbs would never do that!

I know when certain people read this I might get blasted, but here goes. I would sometimes question our coaches on certain things, but not here. If we can not run the ball and get two stinking yards then we should have to punt. This comes down to "WANT". Tampa wanted to stop us more than we wanted the first down. Jansen, Thomas, and Rabach should have pushed far enough to get the first down. What happens if Brunell goes back to pass the ball and gets drilled by Rice, or Brooks and fumbles the ball. Then they get the TD anyway. Gibbs won 3 bowls by playing this way. You are up, you run the ball, eat the clock, and make somebody stop you. Different thing is, this ain't your daddys HOGS!!! No way could anybody stop us when we wanted to kill the clock then. This line has got to find away to grind out the ball. If not portis, why not Sellers, Betts, or Broughten(probably spelled wrong). This is what wins games. We were too deep in our territory to throw the ball. And one person who should be looking for a job is the punter. How many times have we needed to pin somebody deep and this guy hits an awful punt. What was that punt, like 30 35 yards. We were on our 20 or so and they got the ball on their 40! This guy shanks punts more than McNabb throws balls in the dirt, and thats alot!