November 27, 2005

Three-minute warning!

Key to final, like every game, time-management

By Lowell Ullrich,
Vancouver Province

It all starts with a simple gesture.

At nearly the same point during each half of a CFL game, the referee will trot over in the general direction of each head coach and hold up three fingers in the air.

More often than not, it signals the start of the wildest portion of the contest.

Get ready. It's the three-minute warning.

What follows is best described as organized chaos. If players on the sideline aren't yelling out their own ideas about what should take place on the field, they'll take their suggestions directly to the head coach or offensive/defensive co-ordinator, two or three at a time.

Tick. Tick. Tick. The clock is still running.

“It can get pretty crazy,” said Edmonton Eskimos quarterback Ricky Ray.

If today's Grey Cup game between the Edmonton Eskimos and Montreal Alouettes at B.C. Place Stadium (3 p.m., CBC) comes even close to form, chances are the league's best team this season will be the one that can win the battle of clock management.

It's a battle studied and refined from the start of the season.

“We have it down to a science,” Lions quarterback Dave Dickenson said. “We have it written down and given to us in training camp how much time can you burn if [the opposing defence] has no timeouts.”

CFL teams receive one timeout per half with no carryover provision. But the 20-second clock that controls the time between plays often results in teams using their timeout earlier, when a quarterback or defensive captain sees he doesn't have the proper personnel on the field.

In some cases, it explains why teams take a delay-of-game penalty rather than burn their timeout.

Quarterbacks know that in the last three minutes, the sideline is their best friend. A completed pass in which the receiver goes out of bounds stops the clock. But defences know that, too.

A plus in the CFL, say some of the league's best time managers, is the fact the clock only resumes running once all offensive players return past the line of scrimmage.

It gives trailing offences time to move up the middle of the field, Dickenson said, which often makes for fascinating theatre.

But it's murder if you have the ball and you're leading.

“The last three minutes seems like an eternity,” said Casey Printers of the Lions. “[Ex-Lions offensive co-ordinator] Steve Buratto used to always tell me three minutes is like a quarter, because you literally have three possessions. It sunk in.”

But Printers said Clock Management 101 is a season-long course. He admitted he learned the hard way when the Lions played in Montreal this year.

Printers marched the Lions to within a yard of an apparent game-winning touchdown with less than a minute left, but quickly handed off a scoring run to Antonio Warren and didn't burn enough time.

Montreal's Anthony Calvillo, perhaps the best clock manager in the league, took his offence 85 yards in the final 46 seconds and threw a touchdown pass on the final play for a 46-44 win.

“For me, it's about when you get to 1:30 left when it becomes 'what's the scenario',” Calvillo said.

“What's crazy is that [after the three-minute warning] they start the clock [before the snap]. It's the weirdest rule out there.”

“But even when there's triple-zeros on the clock you still have one play left,” Edmonton's Ray said.

Ray, like virtually all CFL quarterbacks with a U.S. college background, appreciates the need to manage the clock in a manner that is completely different than the NFL.

In that league, teams are given three timeouts in each half. Most are saved for the last two minutes after the warning is given.

With unlimited financial resources, it should come as no surprise that at least one NFL team employs an assistant who does little else but advise his coach when to take a timeout.

Ray spent last year on the sidelines with the New York Jets and marvelled as an assistant, Dick Curl, stood alongside head coach Herman Edwards.

“In the offseason we worked out how long each phase of the game takes; how long it takes for a running play,” said Ray. “We went over when and when not to spike the ball, or to take a timeout. We talked about that for hours.”

In the CFL though, quarterbacks

are more on their own. Dickenson prefers to call most of his own plays in the final 180 seconds of a game. Printers is more comfortable taking a play from offensive co-ordinator Jacques Chapdelaine.

“The whole thing about the three-minute offence is that you have to be the calmest you've been the whole game,” Printers said.

“I watch Drew Bledsoe, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning and what they'll do is dink and dunk you down the field. They never try and beat you with the big throw. The three-minute drill is all about being under control.”

That requires quarterbacks not to get rattled by clock irregularities. In a game coaches love to control as much as possible, it's amusing to note the Lions don't have anyone watching to see if the game-clock operators are doing their job.

“There seems to be a lot of clock issues [at B.C. Place]. Maybe at home they stop the clock a little faster than they do on the road,” Dickenson said.

So much can be on the line. A championship could be decided today by whether a coach or quarterback has left enough time on the clock to get their field-goal kicker in place for a game-winning placement attempt.

“That's why the last three minutes is the most exciting part of the game,” said Ray. “That's what is so good about this league.”

Tick. Tick. Tick.