With the clock at Allegiant Stadium ticking down, there was so much on the line.
For the Raiders, it was no less than how their franchise might look a month from now, with rumors rampant on a looming run at Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh crossing over with a locker room fighting to help its interim coach, Rich Bisaccia, get a shot at keeping the job full-time. For the Chargers, it was the shot to take a high-ceiling roster to the playoffs with the highest-ceiling quarterback still on his rookie deal. And don’t forget that the career of 18th-year Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was hanging in the balance, too
Tick … tick … tick …
The NFL’s first Week 18 in 20 years started with the unlikely scenario playing out before us just barely on the table. We knew coming in it would take the Colts, 16.5-point favorites in Jacksonville, face-planting against the lowly Jaguars first. And if that happened, then, a tie between the Raiders and Chargers would deliver the two AFC West rivals to the tournament and keep those Steelers out. That required four quarters of deadlocked football to begin with.
Somehow, we got all of it, and we got the Chargers and Raiders trading field goals to start overtime and, well, the wildest of the wild scenarios was right there in front of a national television audience, in the 272nd and final game of the NFL regular season. Would Bisaccia and first-year Chargers coach Brandon Staley play for the tie?
Tick … tick … tick ….
The clock went under a minute. Staley called a timeout with 38 seconds left, and the Raiders in third-and-4. Las Vegas came out and ran on the next play, with Josh Jacobs taking it 10 yards, from the Chargers’ 39 to the 29, and well into kicker Daniel Carlson’s range. Derek Carr, standing next to the official, signaled for the timeout with two seconds left. Carlson drilled a 47-yarder thereafter.
Raiders 35, Chargers 32. Raiders in. Steelers in. Chargers out. And right afterward, NBC’s Michele Tafoya asked Derek Carr if Staley’s timeout played into Vegas’s decision to eschew the easy tie and push to get Carlson in position to win the game.
“Yeah, it definitely did. Obviously,” Carr said on the broadcast. “We knew, no matter what, we definitely didn’t want to tie. We wanted to win the football game. Obviously, you tie, you’re in, all those things. But all day, I was even texting with Aaron Rodgers this morning, my mindset was to make sure we were the only team moving on after this.”
The Raiders will be, of course. But if you dive a little deeper into this one, you’ll see that, really, the timeout wasn’t as big a deal as most made it out to be in the moment. And that as much as anything, this was probably more about the will of a team that’s been through a lot.
