Most Cowboys observers will think that Jason Garrett made a mess of things late in regulation of his team’s 19-13 overtime loss to the Cardinals. Garrett opted to ice his own kicker and saw him make the first and miss the second field goal try, but possibly the more egregious decision was a lack of a timeout after the previous play.
The Cowboys had two timeouts remaining when Dez Bryant caught a miraculous 3rd-11 converting pass from Tony Romo that put Dallas at the Arizona 31 with 13 seconds remaining. They could have called one of their timeouts then, run a play – even a running play – and called their second time out, then kicked a potential game winner. Of course, there was no guarantee that they would have improved their position, but that won’t stop the criticism of Garrett. Garrett himself acknowledged that it might have been a good idea to get in one more play.
We very well could have taken a timeout there. We felt like we were in field goal range. We have yard lines that we use as guidelines before the game. We felt like we were in range at that point. Tony [Romo] had them on the line of scrimmage quickly, so we went ahead and clocked it and used that as a timeout. …
You see so many situations where you have negative plays in those situations. We felt like we were in his range to give him a chance to kick the game-winner.