For just a few fleeting moments, it appeared like Tiemageddon was about to occur.
The Raiders and Chargers battled by way of probably the most chaotic last minutes of regulation to get to overtime all sq., 29–29. The stakes have been easy: the winner of this recreation superior to the playoffs, whereas the loser went residence. A tie, as unlikely as that final result appeared previous to kickoff, meant each groups superior and the Steelers have been eradicated. After either side traded area objectives to begin overtime, the prospect of a mutually-beneficial tie was inching ever nearer to fruition.
The Raiders appeared more than pleased to simply accept this outcome. Las Vegas transformed a Third-and-8 to advance the ball to the Chargers’s 39-yard line because the clock stopped for the two-minute warning. Three performs with no clock stoppages would carry the sport to an finish, and the Raiders ran twice for a web acquire of six yards whereas consuming up all the play clock on every play. Then, with beneath 40 seconds left, Chargers head coach Brandon Staley known as a timeout.
Did the timeout drastically affect the Raiders’s potential to handle the clock? Not likely, because the play clock had almost wound down when Staley known as it. However after the sport, Raiders quarterback Derek Carr stated the transfer impacted the offense’s technique.
“It positively did, clearly,” Carr stated in his post-game interview with NBC’s Michelle Tafoya. “However we knew, it doesn’t matter what, we didn’t need a tie. We needed to win the soccer recreation.”
The Chargers’s timeout may have been interpreted by the opposing sideline that they weren’t content material to easily cease attempting to win the sport. On the following play, Josh Jacobs rushed for 10 yards to the 29-yard line, organising Daniel Carlson for the game-winning 47-yard area purpose as time expired.
The fourth quarter of this recreation—which noticed 5 fourth-down conversions by the Chargers and a game-tying landing with no time left on the clock—already ensured its place as the perfect recreation of the common season. However the prospect of each groups strolling off the sector blissful was tantalizingly shut, and the Chargers clock administration within the last minute of overtime might need been the figuring out issue that price the football-viewing world the tie it craved so dearly.
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