Sean McDermott blows another late-game situation with goal-line timeout and QB sneak

The Buffalo Bills should not have called timeout on the goal line at the end of the game.

Matt Warren is Associate Director of NFL coverage for SB Nation and previously covered the Buffalo Bills for Buffalo Rumblings for more than a decade. If it has to do with math, he has covered it, from NFL playoff standings to salary cap analysis. He does weekly community questions to stay involved with the commenters on the site.

The Buffalo Bills called timeout late in the game against the Los Angeles Rams on the goal line. It may have cost them the game and it certainly cost them a better chance at winning the game.

With just over a minute left to play, the Bills had first and goal from the 1-yard line. They called a QB sneak and it was stuffed. Maybe reflexively, they called their first timeout. With 1:02 left, TV analyst Tom Brady analyzed it correctly: that forces the Bills to try an onside kick.

The Bills scored on second down, but kicking off to the Rams with 60 seconds left and two timeouts, Buffalo was only able to stop the clock twice. On third and long, the Rams ran the ball into the middle of the field and ticked 40 seconds off the clock. There were only seven seconds left on fourth down, and the Rams punted it high to kill the final seconds.

Instead of calling the QB sneak, the Bills should have passed into the end zone until they scored a touchdown, preserving their timeouts for defense. Even getting stopped on a QB sneak and having the clock run until a they got the second-down play would have been better, though not by a ton.

It’s another example of the Bills’ coaching staff making a late-game mistake in clock management. In his first season, Sean McDermott punted the ball in overtime when the Bills would have been eliminated from playoff contention with a tie. There is the obviously infamous 13 seconds debacle back in the 2021 playoffs against the Chiefs. This season against the Texans, the Bills decided to throw from their own end zone instead of playing for overtime and lost on a last-second field goal. This is another one we can add to the list.

In the end, the Bills scoring with 60 seconds left and three timeouts would have still been a longshot. They would have needed a defensive stop and a heroic drive into field goal range with no timeouts to win it late. It would have been nice if they had the chance, though.