Lost in the excitement of the Lions beating the Buccaneers to advance to the NFC Championship Game was that both teams made clock management mistakes at the end of the game.
When the Lions intercepted a pass with 1:33 left in the game, the Buccaneers still had one timeout. That meant that even if the Lions had used the full 40 seconds between kneeldowns, they couldn’t have run the clock all the way down — as long as the Bucs used their timeout.
The Lions knelt down anyway, and didn’t even take the full 40 seconds off the clock between kneeldowns. But the Bucs never used their final timeout. When Lions quarterback Jared Goff knelt down for the third and final time, 36 seconds were on the clock and the Bucs still had their timeout. It was fourth down, which meant that if the Bucs had called their timeout, the Lions likely would have attempted a 49-yard field goal.
If that field goal had missed, the Buccaneers would have had the ball at their own 39-yard line with about 30 seconds left, needing to drive 61 yards for a touchdown and then score a two-point conversion to force overtime.
Is it likely that the Lions would have missed the field goal, the Buccaneers would have scored a touchdown and two-point conversion and then won the game in overtime? No. Is it possible? Absolutely. And with the season on the line, a team should be doing everything possible to win. The Buccaneers just let the last 36 seconds run off the clock and took their timeout into the offseason.
Lions coach Dan Campbell and Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles both did good work this season to get their teams to the divisional round of the playoffs, but at the end of this game, both made key mistakes: Campbell by not running every second he could off the clock, and Bowles by not calling his final timeout.