Gus Bradley Needs to Improve Clock Management

Gus Bradley finally won with an iconic defense that forced turnovers and stood strong in tough situations. That’s the way he wants his team to play and it paid dividends on Sunday against the Cleveland Browns. The Jacksonville Jaguars’ defense’s play was practically of statement of love to their defense-minded head coach. I mean, how often do you limit an opposing quarterback to a below 40% completion percentage? How often do you stop deep drives for just six points (the only points they allowed to be scored)?

Not very often.

But Gus Bradley has a few faults.

One major fault is clock management.

Bradley is doubly at fault because of poor challenges and poor usage of timeouts.

This is best highlighted by the early timeouts in the second half of the game against the Browns. While there were others (an early one in the game), it is apparent that Bradley and the Jacksonville Jaguars haven’t been adequately trained on how to manage the clock well.

Timeouts are to be coveted. I understand the occasional need for a quarterback to call a timeout rather than take a five yard delay of game penalty, but it seems like the team is throwing them away to “get on the same page” even when the play ends up breaking down for the team anyway.

Tack on bad challenges and the Jaguars throw away timeouts like their candy on Halloween.

Gus Bradley, if you are reading this (which he totally should be), you need to be a bit more thoughtful on when you call a timeout. You need to focus on whether it’s really worth throwing that challenge flag. You need to train your offensive and defensive leaders to be thoughtful in timeout and clock management as well.

While this is mostly a rant about bad timeouts and bad challenges, it’s important to note that the Jaguars have had some good two minute drives. Blake Bortles and Gus Bradley have done a very good job of driving down the field with limited time.

But seriously, those timeouts! Right?