Brandon Staley needed a timeout and he acquired it, adopted by the longest timeout within the NFL: the offseason. The gifted Los Angeles Chargers head coach made it clear early within the week that if the chaos situation emerged through which his workforce and the Las Vegas Raiders may assure each golf equipment a visit to the postseason with a tie — by the use of an Indianapolis Colts loss and a Pittsburgh Steelers win in Week 18 — he wouldn’t permit his workforce to take a knee for 4 quarters. 

However as destiny would have it, the Sunday evening struggle sped towards a tie anyway, and that is when Staley’s conviction to his phrases was really examined. After the Raiders took a three-point lead on a Daniel Carlson subject objective, the Chargers matched serve, forcing Las Vegas to both rating or just run the clock down and wreck the evening for the Steelers (who can be eradicated if the sport ended with a tie). 

Six performs later, on third-and-4 and with the Raiders standing on the Chargers 40-yard line, 4 seconds left on the play clock and 39 seconds left in regulation, Staley referred to as a timeout. 

However, why?

“We wanted to get in the proper grouping,” Staley informed media, by way of the workforce’s web site. “We felt like they had been going to run the ball, so we needed to get our greatest 11 personnel run protection in, make that substitution so we may get a play the place we might deepen the sector objective.” 

An affordable rationalization, apart from the actual fact the Raiders had been willfully permitting the clock to burn, which results in the presumption head coach Wealthy Bisaccia had come to the choice he would let the tie occur. Staley wasn’t shopping for it, nonetheless, and stood agency on his perception that Las Vegas was making an attempt to win the sport and, as such, he was making an attempt to cease it.

“I do not assume it modified their mindset,” he mentioned. “They had been going to run the ball on the play earlier than, and so they ran the ball on the very subsequent play. We needed to ensure we acquired our run protection in there. We clearly did not execute nicely sufficient, however we needed to get our premium one-back run protection in there and that is what we did. 

“My mindset was to make the sector objective so long as potential.”

On the subsequent play, operating again Josh Jacobs ignored the protection that adopted Staley’s timeout and knocked off one other 10 yards to make it a 47-yard try for Carlson, who break up the uprights and gave the Raiders what they had been about to get anyway — a postseason look — whereas sending Staley and the Chargers dwelling for the winter.

And now the latter could have months to attempt to determine if the Raiders had been truly going to do them a favor, till Staley probably made them change their thoughts.