Kalen DeBoer addresses criticism of clock management vs. Georgia, impact of 2-minute timeout

With 5:24 to play in Saturday’s game, Georgia cut the Alabama lead to five points. That gave the Crimson Tide the ball back – and it took five plays in two minutes for the Bulldogs’ offense to return.

The sequence led to some criticism of Kalen DeBoer’s clock management in that situation. Alabama ran it twice and Jalen Milroe threw three passes before James Burnip punted it to the UGA 33-yard line. It led to one of the craziest endings to a game in recent memory, but the lack of time taken off the clock remained a point of conversation.

When asked about the situation on Hey Coach and The Kalen DeBoer Show, DeBoer explained his decision-making process. The two-minute timeout played a role, and he said he wanted to score rather than focus on draining the clock.

“With the way the game was going, that five and a half minutes – with the two-minute warning and three timeouts – I mean, you’re having to put probably five first downs, six first downs together which means, you’ve got to score a touchdown for the most part,” DeBoer said. “To me, it was about scoring. And to me, it was about making sure we were running the right plays. We have some systematic ways – I don’t feel like we were pushing fast, but also, there were times where we wanted to get lined up to see what the defense was gonna show us.

“When we decided to run the play that we decided to call, we snapped it a little bit earlier. But we also needed to allow ourselves some time to make sure when you have an opponent in kind of a mode of attacking or – I don’t want to use ‘desperation,’ but that’s where it was kind of getting to at that point – that we aren’t caught with a really bad play in a bad situation. When there’s five and a half minutes left, how many possessions were there after that? We had the ball three times. That possession, the one we scored on and with 43 seconds left. So there were five possessions in the game that happened inside of five and a half minutes.”

Kalen DeBoer: 2-minute timeout has ‘changed things quite a bit’

The two-minute timeout is new this year and is similar to the NFL. It’s another stoppage as the game starts to wind down, and coaches across college football have had to adjust.

Kalen DeBoer said it adds another level of gamesmanship in those late-game situations. It’s essentially another timeout, and with a five-point lead, he saw it as another reason to be aggressive.

“With the two-minute warning, that’s changed things quite a bit,” DeBoer said. “A lot of time on the clock, yeah, you’re gonna try to shrink it.

“I think if you have a two-touchdown lead at that time with five and a half minutes, it’s a whole different deal than it is when you have a five-point lead because even a field goal at that point, it’s still a one-possession game.”