Deciphering Kliff Kingsbury’s post timeout success rate
Results for Kliff Kingsbury’s PTSR
Throughout the season, there were 34 total timeouts taken while the offense was on the field. Out of those 34, I ended up 19 positive plays, 7 neutral, 8 negative, and three turnovers. So we add all of these together:
- (-8)+ (-6)= -14
- -14+19= 5
- 5/34 =0.147, move decimal and round up to get 15% post-timeout success rate (PTSR).
This number is way lower than I would have expected coming into this. I’ve been critical of Kingsbury in a lot of articles, but I didn’t think it’d be this low. There are definitely a lot of positive plays, including a few touchdowns. On the other hand, the Miami Dolphins turnover (fumble return TD) and the pick-six against the L.A. Rams are just absolutely infuriating.
Additionally, the game that would be considered the one true outlier was the matchup against New England. You may remember that was the game where two timeouts were called within minutes of each other on one drive early in the game. Not to mention the failure to score before halftime either.
Considerations
Now this isn’t a perfect system, as to my knowledge one for evaluating timeouts doesn’t exist. PTSR is something I made up to help quantify what happened last year. Also, how can you say a timeout was taken too early or late? Too many factors that are unknown to us makes this complicated to figure out.
Arizona Cardinals
Another thing I thought about after I had compiled the numbers is if I should’ve assigned some point value to the neutral column other than zero. Perhaps half a point (.5) would’ve helped a little bit. If this was true, Kingsbury’s PTSR would’ve been 24%. This also is unaffected by who actually called the timeout themselves, as its Kingsbury’s job to set the offense up correctly.
Either way, the message is clear. Kliff Kingsbury’s PTSR must improve, along with his game management skills as a whole. Not to mention that the actual execution on the field by the players must be higher too. I look forward to potentially doing this again next year hopefully with some much better results.