Clock Control Dilemma: When To Push & When To Pull Back

CHAPEL HILL – The fine line between pushing hard looking to score points and pulling back and using clock isn’t as simple as it may appear on the surface.

North Carolina faced that situation in the fourth quarter of its 27-24 win at Miami last weekend, and for the Tar Heels’ sake, it worked out in their favor. But certainly not without criticism from the social media warriors, and certainly some re-evaluating by the coaches.

At issue is at what point does a team reverse its immediate mission from score, score, score, to slow, slow, slow to drain the clock?

With UNC leading the Hurricanes, 24-17, it took possession of the football at its own 17-yard-line with 12:31 remaining. Plenty of time remained, so the Tar Heels had a few mandates before worrying about absorbing time or even the score, as offensive coordinator Phil Longo explained during his weekly press conference Monday.

“The most important thing at that point, after getting it out of a bad field position situation, was to make sure we get points out of it,” he said.

The layering process, however, began with simply moving the ball some, as Longo noted. Second, was to “get a first down and build a drive.” Then he wanted to reach midfield where some potential explosive plays could have been nore possible.

But as the drive continued, the strategy slightly shifted. So, Longo steered away from riskier plays and kept things safer, knowing that at least getting into field goal range and converting would give the Tar Heels a two-score lead. Yet, the preference was to score a touchdown, so that remained a priority.

The time remaining, however, became increasingly important, and that affected Longo’s play calling. It also became part of his dialogue with UNC Coach Mack Brown.

“I kept telling Phil during the drive, ‘Slow down if you can, don’t disrupt the drive, we’ve got to score,’ and I wanted to score a touchdown,” Brown said. “If we score a touchdown and the game’s probably over…

“And you’re trying to say, ‘We’ve got to score a touchdown.’ We’d like to kill the clock, but scoring the touchdown is more important at that point than killing the clock… It was one of the best (drives) we’ve had since we’ve been here.”

Did the Tar Heels (5-1, 2-0 ACC) snap the ball too early too often?

The numbers suggest as the drive continued, the offense scaled back its approach. It ran 18 plays, including Noah Burnette’s 19-yard field goal that capped the 81-yard drive. Four snaps took place during a dead ball with the clock stopped, so that won’t be factored in here, as it doesn’t affect clock usage. The other 14, however, did.

Of those 14 snaps, UNC was clearly in its regular offensive mode for the first seven, as it averaged snapping the ball with 19.7 seconds remaining on the play clock. The last seven non-dead ball snaps took place with an average of 13.9 seconds left on the snap clock.

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“It gets tricky sometimes, because when we have momentum on a drive, sometimes it’s because of the tempo, or you want to temp a certain play because it’s an advantage for that play,” Longo said. “But as soon as coach says we need to start draining the clock, we’ll incorporate some of the things we need to do to drain.

“We’re trying to take as much time off as we could. But as that point also, our number one priority was make sure we score so we could extend this thing to two scores with where the clock was and making it much more difficult for Miami.”

Twelve of Carolina’s 17 offensive plays in the drive were runs, though Longo said that wasn’t as much him trying to slow the game as it was taking what the defense gave them. In a way, that played into the Tar Heels’ hands.

Of the four snaps that occurred with the clock stopped, one was for an injury to a Miami player, and three were because Tar Heels went out of bounds, each after pass plays. So, the Canes protecting heavily against the pass somewhat made UNC more a running team on that drive, and as a result, helped the Heels chew up more clock.

Longo was quite pleased with how the drive played out.

“For us to execute 17 plays and methodically move down the field and burn a lot of clock, which is what we really wanted there, and still score and extend it to two scores, that’s a great drive for our offense,” he said.

And it was. Carolina got the job done, but also got an extensive test on that crucial element of the game. It passed the test and learned something, too.