Jimbo Fisher downplays fatigue from new clock rules

The new clock rules in college football have presented a subtle change to how games play out, most notably in the final three to four minutes of halves as teams realize they have to kick things into gear a little sooner than usual.

But at least one coach doesn’t really see much of an impact so far.

“Not really, it hasn’t affected us,” Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher said on his weekly radio show. “Last week we had 90-something plays. You’re trying to cut plays. They had 60 plays, we had 90. We had the ball, moved the ball, they hit big plays. But I mean in the week before we only hit 62 but we hit so many big plays.”

So far the new clock rules have only served to take about a play and a half out of games if you compare the figures so far through two weeks this year with last year’s totals.

The new clock rules are just subtle enough to notice the change, without really being disruptive.

“It is a little feel of it, you can tell it,” Fisher said. “You’ve got to be careful managing the clock, for instance, just even you get to two-minute drill. Once it gets inside two it stops like the old days but used to be when you had 2:30, 2:50, that was an eternity because that was another minute with all the stoppage. Now you don’t have that till you hit two, so there’s a little difference. We haven’t really felt it yet.”

Fisher’s team is one that spends a lot of time working on two-minute drills in practice to get players used to the sort of time it takes to engineer a necessary drive.

By making the new clock rules routine, it becomes a lot easier for players to handle things in crunch time.

“We managed both two-minute situations before the half really well, and even end of game we did,” Fisher said, evaluating the first two weeks. “We got down the field and we got down the week before and missed a field goal, and this week we missed a field goal. But we’re getting in position to make points.”

The added practice emphasis is paying off. Fisher’s got more than one or two testimonials in his back pocket about how important two-minute work is.

It doesn’t take much more than describing a finish in a national championship game to get players’ attention.

“We do two-minute stuff a lot. We work two-minute, and I’m a big believer in that, always have (been),” Fisher said. “I mean I won a national championship with two-minute. There was one year at LSU, I mean we won three games in two-minute.

“And the more you work, you just get kids used to how much time two minutes really is, or how much time a minute or how much time 45 seconds. The old adage is be quick but don’t hurry. There’s more time than you think, you’ve got to be quick, but you’ve got to be under control and just getting them used to it and managing all the situations.”