On Saturday they were in a situation that I've rarely seen a Chip Kelly coached team in. Coming back and trying to manage a game. I haven't seen it mentioned much on this forum. But, I personally didn't think Chip managed the end of that game well, especially with all the timeouts in his back pocket. My dad, who is a better football mind than I am, disagrees. He felt that the hurry up was working and wearing down the defense and CK was right with sticking with it til the end. Its always easy to be a monday morning quarterback.
I understand both sides and have stayed out of the debate on other message boards. Chip basically said things were working and he had no reason to take timeouts or have Thomas throw - and risk a TO. He was happy with the effort of the team in the 4th. I think it was a good wakeup call to play lights out for the next three games. Last season, Chip was a master at coming from behind and we beat Cal in a close game. In 2009, three games were decided by 4 pts or less - all of which Chip won.
I had a long talk with an ex 3-time all american linebacker today about that (new hire at work). He thinks it a little of both. He thinks the speed of the offense was wearing USC down and giving us a boost. But, there are times when a play is too important to not call a timeout. He doesn't see where we needed to use all 3, but certainly one or maybe two of them. There was another play where we intentionally threw the ball out of bounds to stop the clock. If we had spiked it, we would have saved 4-5 seconds... I won't say it was poor game management, but it was questionable.
