The penultimate Sunday Night Football game of the 2024-25 NFL season saw the Washington Commanders clinch a playoff spot after a 30-24 overtime win over the Atlanta Falcons.
After the Falcons tied the game at 24 with just over a minute to play, Washington went three-and-out, allowing Atlanta to get the ball back with 40 seconds to play.
Atlanta quarterback Michael Penix Jr found Darnell Mooney for 25 yards on his first attempt to get the Falcons near midfield. As the time ticked down, head coach Raheem Morris decided against calling one of his two remaining timeouts, allowing 17 seconds to run off the clock.
After a pair of incompletions, a pass interference penalty put the Falcons in position to attempt a 56-yard field goal, which kicker Riley Patterson missed short by multiple yards.
The team didn’t touch the ball in overtime, as Washington won the coin toss, drove down the field, and scored the touchdown.
Following the loss, Morris admitted that he should have called a timeout and tried to get into a more manageable range for Patterson’s field goal attempt.
“In hindsight, it could have been a good decision or a better decision to take that timeout, but I wanted to have the opportunity to move up there. You always second-guess those things, you can always second-guess those motives. You can always go back and look at it and see if you can get it snapped a little bit quicker,” Morris said.
While the reasoning is sound if they had only one timeout and they wanted to save it for the field goal attempt, Atlanta had two timeouts remaining.
A win would have kept Atlanta tied with the Tampa Bay Buccanneers in the NFC South. The Falcons held the tiebreaker over Tampa and controlled their own playoff fate had they won, as they would have just needed to win next week. Since Atlanta lost, it now needs to win next week and have Tampa Bay lose.
Social media was very critical of Morris’ decision making and reasoning.
Raheem Morris managing timeouts pic.twitter.com/vrLfDqAA6r
— Three Year Letterman (@3YearLetterman) December 30, 2024
Raheem Morris not calling a timeout with :30 left one of the most boneheaded decisions you will see
— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) December 30, 2024
matt eberflus watching raheem morris pic.twitter.com/eJYvKbeyei
— Annie Agar (@AnnieAgar) December 30, 2024
This was one of the worst coaching performance Raheem Morris has ever had and that’s counting the Tampa Bay years
— Tre’Shon (@tre3shon) December 30, 2024
