When the Indianapolis Colts hired Jeff Saturday as the team’s interim head coach despite him having no previous college or NFL coaching experience, the team took a lot of heat for it. And during Monday night’s loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, it appeared as though that lack of experience cost the Colts as Saturday showed terrible clock management skills.
On the Colts’ final offensive possession, Jeff Saturday failed to use his timeouts and let the clock run on multiple occasions. As a result, the Colts ended the game with two unused timeouts that they could have used to save valuable seconds on the clock.
“I thought we had plenty of time, I wasn’t really concerned,” Saturday said after the game, according to Pro Football Talk. “We still had timeouts. I wasn’t too concerned.”
“I didn’t feel like time was of the essence at that moment,” Saturday said. “I thought we had a good play, I felt like we would get to it. . . . I felt good about the call before, I felt like we’d have time, we would have timeouts afterwards, we were in striking distance, so I never felt like the pressure of needing the timeout.”
The Colts lost 24-17, in part due to the terrible clock management.