Rich Bisaccia turned some heads with his admission after his Las Vegas Raiders’ 35-32 overtime win over the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday night.
The Raiders had the ball with the game tied at 32 and 1:20 left. They ran the ball with Josh Jacobs for seven yards. That put the ball at the Chargers 39 for a 3rd-and-4.
Bisaccia seemed to admit after the game that he was ready to run the ball on the following down and then just let time expire to take the tie.
“Yeah, it was a conversation,” Bisaccia said after the game when asked if they considered playing for a tie. “We were talking about it. We ran the ball there, and then he called timeout. So I think they were probably thinking the same thing. And then we had the big run. When we got the big run, it got us to what we thought was advantageous field goal position for us, we were going to take the field goal to try and win it.”
Bisaccia said they were waiting to see if the Chargers were going to call a timeout. They seemed to be willing to let the time expire — as if they were a truce from both sides — until the Chargers stopped the clock.
“We were certainly talking about it on the sideline. We wanted to see if they were going to call a timeout or not on that run. They didn’t, so we thought they were thinking the same thing. And then we popped the run in there, gave us a chance to kick the field goal to win it.”
All the Chargers had to do was not call a timeout, and then stop a token run on the following play, and they would have made the playoffs. Once they called the timeout, the Raiders’ mentality changed and they played to win the game. What a blunder by Staley.
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