The Denver Broncos made life easier on the Las Vegas Raiders when they threw an incomplete pass on third down late in Sunday’s game, and head coach Nathaniel Hackett seemed to indicate that the mistake was on Russell Wilson.
The Broncos were leading 16-13 when they got the ball with 3:05 remaining. They picked up one first down and forced the Raiders to use all of their timeouts. Denver then had third down coming out of the two-minute warning, and they called a pass play. Wilson threw an incompletion, which stopped the clock and forced the Broncos to punt with 1:53 left in regulation.
Hackett was asked about the play after the game. He said the Broncos wanted to give themselves a chance to go for the win, which is why they called a pass. However, he seemed to blame Wilson for not finding a way to keep the clock running.
“You have to keep the clock running one way or the other. Whether you take a shot down the field and you try to go up. Maybe get a P.I. (pass interference) opportunity because if you do catch it, you have a chance to win the game, and it’s great,” Hackett said, via DNVR’s Zac Stevens. “If it doesn’t, the one thing we just want to be sure that the clock is running if we can. It lets us have a chance at a shot to win the game.
Hackett said he and Wilson discussed the plan before the play was run.
“We wanted to be able to take a shot down the field,” he told reporters. “We knew what kind of coverage they were going to be in but if something happened in the pocket or anything like that, that’s one of those situations, you can take a sack or you can just run the ball.”
Wilson said he was not trying to throw the ball away. He thought he could complete a pass to wide receiver Jalen Virgil, but “the ball just kind of went away from him a little bit.”
The Raiders drove down the field on their ensuing drive and kicked a field goal to send the game to overtime. They then won the coin toss in OT and scored a touchdown on a deep pass from Derek Carr to Davante Adams (video here).
Hackett was stating the obvious about the costly play in regulation, but you can see why some people interpreted that as him throwing Wilson under the bus.
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