The Philadelphia Eagles led Jacksonville 17-16 in London with eight seconds left. All they had to do was kick the ball out of the end zone. Instead they kicked a line drive to Ameer Abdullah, who ran it back 53 yards. One second remained. Cam Little kicked a 57-yard field goal. Jaguars 19, Eagles 17, and a long flight home.
“I didn't make the right decision, and I lost us that game,” coach Nick Sirianni said. Andrew Beaton, in Tuesday's Journal, counts the errors. The Eagles threw on first and second down, which stopped the clock twice. They let Jacksonville keep a timeout. Then they kicked a ball that could be returned. Oddly, the Dallas Cowboys erred the other way a couple of weeks earlier. They kicked a touchback with seven seconds left, Baltimore had a timeout, and the Ravens won on a kick.
A few hours later, Washington did worse. The Commanders had a winning field goal in reach against the Giants with about a minute left in overtime. A run used up most of it. With 12 seconds left, Daniels took one more snap and was tackled. Washington had already spent its last timeout. The clock hit zero. The game ended 27-27, and the Giants acted like they'd won. Magic Johnson, one of the team's owners, posted that a simple field goal would have won it.
The couch knew
Jason Gay, in Wednesday's column, says the sport's real job is to let fans on the couch feel sharper than the professionals, snack dust and all. His complaint is that NFL teams still can't remember “how many seconds are in a minute.” Coach and quarterback each took the blame in Washington. “Ultimately it's on me,” Daniels said. Beaton adds the stat that stings. Before this season, Stats Perform had never recorded both teams kicking field goals in the last 10 seconds of the fourth quarter, in records back to 1970. It's now happened twice in three weeks. The kickoff rules are three years old, and teams are still learning them.
Our read
This is Behavioral, and the lesson is decision-making under a clock. Both teams had the talent, the money and a radio in the quarterback's helmet. What they didn't have was a rehearsed answer for the last 12 seconds. Under a clock, people reach for the play they know, and the play they know isn't always the one the moment needs. Our Oct. 7 piece on Harvard's rehearsed Hail Mary made the happy version of this point. These two games are the sad version. The endgame is where good plans get lost, and the fix is to decide the endgame before you're in it.
Your plan has a clock too, and it runs out in December. Required minimum distributions have a year-end deadline. The Medicare enrollment window closes in early December. Roth conversions and charitable gifts have to clear by year-end to count. This week, write down the two or three deadlines that apply to you, and put a date on the calendar a few weeks ahead of each one. That's your timeout. You don't look for the umbrella at the first drop, and you don't look up the rule with 12 seconds on the clock. If you're not sure which deadlines are yours, that's a quick call to make now.