-
Dan Graziano, senior NFL national reporter
Football is at its best when it grabs you and won’t let you go.
NFL fans spend entire Sundays riding the peaks and lulls of games. But then there are these specific moments that freeze everyone in place — when thousands of people in the stadium and millions more watching from far away all take a deep breath, lean in a little closer and say, “All right, here we go.”
One of these moments happened late Sunday afternoon in Santa Clara, California, when the Seattle Seahawks got the ball back with 2:38 left in the game, trailing the San Francisco 49ers 17-13 with one timeout left. While there was technically more than two minutes left in the game, the Seahawks were about to embark on the most breathless exercise an NFL game can offer: the two-minute drill. This is the sped-up offense that teams use in the final minutes of a half, when the goal is to score once more before time runs out. And when it comes at the end of a one-score game, it becomes the difference between winning and losing.
“The important part about two-minute is, you have a chance to win the game,” Browns quarterback Jameis Winston said during training camp this summer. “If the other team doesn’t get the ball, it’s a chance for another play. Every play matters. But every play that’s not a mistake, you’ve still got a chance.”
What are the elements of a successful two-minute drive? What does it feel like on the field, on the sideline and in the huddle? We talked to players and coaches to get a sense of how this critical part of an NFL game plays out. And we took one such winning drive from Week 11 — Seattle’s wild comeback — and used it as a guide.
So let’s dive into that moment. The Seahawks, needing a touchdown, get the ball back on their own 20-yard line. Per ESPN’s win probability model, they have a 19.3% chance to take the lead and win at the start of the drive.
Sizing up the situation
There were two p-words that kept coming up in conversations about these situations — poise and preparation. When a team gets to this naturally hectic part of the game, it’s important that the players and coaches feel well prepared. Teams carve out a portion of practice for two-minute work every day in training camp, and many make sure it’s part of practice two or three days per week during the regular season.
“You would have already gone in the game and you would’ve thought, ‘OK, two-minute, clock running, certain parts of the field, certain scenarios, here’s my list of what I’m going to do,'” Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken said. “So really it’s about the preparation. So when it comes up, I’m just calling that one part of the play sheet. If we do a great job in preparation, then it’s a lot like the draft. When your pick comes up, well, you’ve already done all the work for that situation, and then live with it.”
And for the first play, teams have some time. The clock is stopped, and coaches can send their quarterback out with a play that they’ve had time to consider. Some coordinators might choose a safe run play to get the drive going. Some might want to take a shot downfield and bite off a big chunk of yardage. Depending on the time and timeouts remaining, coordinators might also be thinking about something to get out of bounds, stop the clock and reset.
“There’s almost limitless different situations,” Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith said. “How much time is left? Two minutes? 1:50? Well, that’s a big difference. Do you have all three timeouts or just two? It’s just endless. You have analysts in the booth whose job it is to get in the coach’s ear and tell him what the data says about what to do. It’s like a continuing education.”
Before the two-minute warning and with timeouts in hand — like Seattle in our example — teams know they can challenge a play, too, and that the two-minute warning itself offers a free timeout. Inside two minutes, that freebie disappears and all replay challenges are initiated by the booth. So that first play is tied to all of those variables.
What isn’t known is what will happen on that first play. Will you gain or lose yards? Will the clock be running or stopped? Will receivers need time to run back to the line of scrimmage? And is the official bringing the ball to the line of scrimmage or is a player doing it? That’s why teams operate on a play-to-play basis after that first one, rather than scripting the first few.
“What you do initially is try to practice it enough to eliminate some of the chaos or anxiety,” Monken said. “Practice as many situations as you can. End of game, end of half, what do you need? Field goal wins it, field goal ties it, touchdown, touchdown/two-point conversion? Where are you on the field to start the half? Are you backed up? Well, you don’t want to just stop the clock three times in a row and then punt. So it’s like anything we do. The more you practice it, the more you basically take away the anxiety of the moment.”
Kicking off the drive right
On first-and-10 from the Seattle 20, quarterback Geno Smith takes the shotgun snap and fires the ball to receiver DK Metcalf. Metcalf catches the ball and gets out of bounds at the 31 — an 11-yard gain.
“The most important part about two-minute is your first completion,” Winston said. “That’s what coaches always talk about — get the first completion, let’s get it going and then take what they give you.”
The 49ers challenge the call, claiming Metcalf didn’t get both feet inbounds. The challenge fails, but in the meantime, the clock has stopped at 2:33, which gives both teams a chance to reset personnel.
“Most mental errors happen in two-minute,” Arthur Smith said. “That’s why it’s important to be at your best in those critical moments, when the pressure is ramped up, when fatigue is a factor. What you see is the little things. Is that receiver supposed to be at 14 [yards] and he ran it at 8 because he’s tired or whatever? Did a guy toss the ball to the ref but it didn’t get there so now it’s rolling around on the ground?”
On first-and-10 from the 31, Geno Smith finds running back Kenneth Walker III, who scoots out of bounds at the 36-yard line. Another clock stoppage. On second-and-5, Smith hits Walker again on an underneath route, but the back is immediately tackled inbounds for no gain. Niners linebacker De’Vondre Campbell takes his time crawling off Walker, and as he stands up, he holds his hands up in an “I didn’t do anything” gesture to convince the official he wasn’t intentionally holding Walker down with the clock running. (Gamesmanship!) Walker hops up with the ball and immediately looks for someone to hand it to. He knows the clock is still running (under 2:20 now) and that Seattle has limited ways to stop it.
In this case, it helps that the play ended at the line of scrimmage and in the middle of the field, very close to where it will be spotted for the next play. An official and Seattle center Olu Oluwatimi are both hurrying toward Walker to get the ball. Over the past few years, more teams have begun saving time by using the center to spot the ball. The official still has to “bless” the spot, but the team can get lined up around the ball in the meantime. Oluwatimi is on top of this.
“Olu went into Wednesday not knowing he’s starting,” Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said after the game. “That says a lot about him and his preparation. He deserves a lot of credit.”
This was Oluwatimi’s second start of his two-year career and his first this season, because Seahawks center Connor Williams surprisingly retired a few days before the game. Oluwatimi had a perfect pass block win rate in this game, but his performance in the two-minute drill was a particularly remarkable testament to his preparation. He is repeatedly in the right post-play position to spot the ball so things can keep moving as quickly and urgently as possible. Talk to any NFL center, and they’ll tell you they have a lot to do in the two-minute operation.
“Really we’re just trying to get a play out, make our protection call with our base rules and then snap the ball,” Ravens center Tyler Linderbaum said. “We might not always get the protection we want just because we’re trying to move fast, but you just got to stick with what’s called and go with the flow and hope it works.”
It is now third-and-5 from the 36 with time ticking down toward the two-minute warning. Seattle does not huddle. Smith takes the shotgun snap, fakes a handoff to Walker and then fires the ball over the middle to wideout Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who makes the catch and is tackled at the 44. He gets up with 2:03 left on the clock and immediately finds Oluwatimi to hand him the ball. It’s good effort and awareness by Smith-Njigba, but knowing how close they are to the two-minute warning, no one else on the Seahawks is in much of a hurry. The clock stops at 2:00, and things ramp up.
“Organized chaos, for sure,” Linderbaum said. “You’re moving so fast, you can tend to not be detailed with what you’re trying to do, but that’s why we practice it so much. So when you’re in a game situation, you’re just flying around trying to make plays.”
Navigating inside two minutes
It’s now first-and-10 at the Seattle 44 coming out of the two-minute warning. Smith’s first option, Smith-Njigba, slips and falls in front of cornerback Deommodore Lenoir in the middle of the field, so Smith takes a long look at Metcalf running deep down the left side. But he sees the safety drifting toward Metcalf and thinks better of it. By this point, Smith-Njigba has gotten up and begun running in the opposite direction, holding up his hands to signal that he’s open. Smith throws to Smith-Njigba, who catches the ball while falling to the ground at the San Francisco 49, where Lenoir tumbles on top of him.
There is 1:51 left on the clock when Smith-Njigba gets up and runs toward the middle of the field, where Oluwatimi is waiting to take the ball from him and spot it. There is no huddle, no change in personnel from either team, but Metcalf and Lockett have both run deep routes and have to get back to midfield from about 25 yards away. By the time the ball is snapped again, there is 1:40 left.
ESPN Research tells us having to wait for the receivers to get back is common. Teams run more vertical routes in two-minute situations while down by one score (35% of routes) than they do on average for a full game (27%).
In many respects, there’s less variety in playcalls when down 1-8 points in the final two minutes than over the rest of the game. Teams use three-receiver sets 82% of the time in these situations versus the full-game average of 61%. They use pre-snap motion on 36% of two-minute plays versus the full-game average of 57% (motion uses precious seconds). And teams almost never use play-action (3% versus 24%) because the defense isn’t going to buy it.
“In a classic two-minute, usually you want to be no-huddle and moving the ball fast,” Linderbaum said. “If you’re out of bounds, you can huddle. Any play that’s in the middle of the field, the center has to get to the line of scrimmage. Usually teams try to simplify it and turn it into code words to where a code word means a certain play that we’re going to run, and we practice them over and over again. So then it’s really just building momentum, and it starts with that first first down and continuing to move the ball forward.”
On second-and-3 from San Francisco’s 49-yard line, Smith throws it to Metcalf along the left sideline, but Metcalf stumbles out of his break and can’t get back to the ball. The pass falls incomplete. The Seahawks should have a first down inside the San Francisco 40, but instead, it’s third-and-3 from the 49.
“You can’t let a negative play affect you,” Arthur Smith said. “Yeah, you get a drop or someone runs the wrong route and the play doesn’t work, you may be pissed, but the ball’s getting ready to be snapped again. Being upset and hanging onto that last play, that can affect your playcall, or even just make you slow.”
At least the clock has stopped now. So when the Seahawks get back to the line, there is 1:36 left and they need 3 yards for a first down. Presumably everyone in the stadium knows this is four-down territory, so the Seahawks have an idea what they’d run on the next play if they do get the first down and what they’d run if they don’t.
“Things go different than you think,” Monken said. “But if you’re prepared for it, that still doesn’t guarantee you’re always going to make the right call, but you’re at least thinking, ‘All right, these are the calls I want to make in this scenario.’ Now what could change that? Sure, in-game. What are we seeing more of? Are we seeing more pressure? All that comes into play.”
Crunch time and the gotta-have-it play
On third-and-3 from the San Francisco 49 with 1:36 remaining, Geno Smith slides to his right to avoid pressure. San Francisco linebacker Fred Warner appears to be spying Smith from about 5 yards deep, and because Warner followed Smith when he skipped out to the right, Smith has just enough room to find Smith-Njigba with a dart behind Warner. Smith-Njigba is tackled at the San Francisco 34; he hops up and begins waving frantically to his teammates to hurry up.
“Typically, if you’re behind, it’s four-down territory,” Winston said. “So you’re thinking, ‘One play.’ That’s all that matters. So whatever they give you, you take that.”
There is 1:13 left on the clock when the Seahawks snap the ball on first down from the San Francisco 34. The right side of the offensive line does not hold up this time, and Leonard Floyd sacks Smith at the 37. Walker and left guard Laken Tomlinson help Smith up with 1:06 left on the clock. First-year coach Mike Macdonald has a decision to make. The clock is ticking and he still has that one timeout remaining, but he elects not to take it. The Seahawks have practiced this, and they’ve decided how long they can let the clock run before they have to use that last timeout.
“There’s always going to be little reminders, but I think the goal of the two-minute operation is to have that be so instinctive that the players have ownership of understanding all the calls,” former Seahawks and Bears offensive coordinator Shane Waldron said. “There’s plenty of times where, if we’re waiting for the exact spot on the ball, I’ll give the quarterback a couple of choices and they know which one is right because they’ve got a quicker line of sight to what’s happening than maybe I would.”
Smith and the Seahawks hustle to the line, and the ball is snapped with 50 seconds left on the clock. Alone in the backfield, Smith scans the field and doesn’t like what he sees. He briefly looks to his right in the flat and thinks about throwing it to Walker, but the linebacker Campbell is there, ready to tackle Walker inbounds. Not worth it.
“Sometimes,” Monken said, ‘it goes off script.”
This play clearly has, but Smith is not bothered. As he drifts to his right, he sees Floyd drifting with him, trying to hold the edge in case Smith decides to run to the outside. Instead, Smith cuts inside, slipping between Floyd and the right tackle Abraham Lucas and running into the open field. He slides down at the 21-yard line with 39 seconds left on the clock. And now Macdonald calls his final timeout.
“It starts with the quarterback, because his poise is going to lead to everyone being calm around him,” said Waldron, who coached Smith in Seattle before his ill-fated stint in Chicago this season that ended with a post-Week 10 firing. “I thought, for me, being in Seattle that first year with Russell Wilson there and obviously his unbelievable two-minute history and seeing how he operated was a great thing to be around. And I thought Geno really took to what Russ did and has his own style to it.”
Over the two-season span in which Waldron was Seattle’s offensive coordinator and Smith was the starting quarterback (2022-23), no team in the league had a higher win probability added in these situations — inside two minutes and trailing by one score — than the Seahawks.
Finishing off with points
Just 39 seconds remain on the clock when the Seahawks snap the ball on first down from the San Francisco 21. There’s no more margin for error. Any play ending inbounds would require significant hurry to the line for a clock-stopping spike or a hastily called next play.
“Everything you try to do in practice is trying to get real, pressure-like situations,” Arthur Smith said. “To me, that separates the great ones — the ability to treat the high-pressure situation no different than any other.”
Seattle’s options are limited, and a sack would be devastating. Six 49ers defenders crowd the line. The Niners have yet to blitz on this drive, but Geno Smith senses something is up and changes the protection, moving the tight end AJ Barner in closer to the right tackle and flipping running back Zach Charbonnet from his right side to his left. Four of the six down linemen rush, as does nickel corner Lenoir, leaving Smith-Njigba open on the left side. Smith sees him right away, and Smith-Njigba makes his fourth catch of the drive and 10th of the game for an 8-yard gain to the San Francisco 13.
The clock continues to run. The rest of the Seahawks are hustling to get into formation before Smith-Njigba is even tackled. He gets up with 30 seconds left on the clock and flips the ball to the official, but the throw is no good! He sails it over the official’s head, and the ball falls in front of where the Seahawks’ offensive linemen are getting set. Tick, tick, tick …
By the time the ball is snapped again, there are 19 seconds left on the clock. Here’s where all of that Geno Smith two-minute experience comes into play.
“Poise,” a smiling Jameis Winston said back in the summer, of the most important part of the two-minute offense. “That’s the key.”
Smith drops back and takes one look to his right, where Lockett and Smith-Njigba are both covered. But with the clock running, this is one-read-and-go. Smith takes off running up the middle. Warner has followed Charbonnet into the middle of the field, so Smith can get behind him. Metcalf and Barner, the two outside left receivers, are in the end zone but breaking toward the center of the field and taking their defenders with them. So it’s a footrace to the front corner of the end zone, and Smith wins it, running it for a touchdown with two 49ers in futile pursuit.
Risky to run it in that spot with no timeouts? Absolutely. But Smith has calculated his path.
“I felt like they were playing a quarters coverage there,” Smith said in his postgame news conference. “We had one of our vertical concepts on. I saw Fred [Warner], he relayed it to the back, they rushed forward, did a TE game. I saw the lane, stepped in there, potential to maybe throw one, they plastered and I saw the pylon and got to it.”
While Smith is running, Macdonald, watching from the sideline, is doing calculations in his head, trying to figure out how much time is left and what will happen if Smith doesn’t get to the end zone. Offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb is telling him not to worry.
“Grubb knew it before I did,” Macdonald told reporters. “He said it a couple of times. Once Geno broke through the line of scrimmage, you could sort of see that he has a chance to score.”
Smith and his teammates celebrate in the end zone with 12 seconds left. All that’s left is a kickoff and two 49ers offensive plays, the final of which is a desperate and unsuccessful multilateral play. Seattle recovers the fumble on the play and wins the game 20-17 with a brilliant two-minute performance.
“When you make a mistake in two-minute and you lose a game like that, those are tough lessons learned,” Arthur Smith said.
But when it works, it’s pretty much poetry.
There have been 18 NFL games this season in which a team that was trailing in the final two minutes won in regulation. The most recent came on Thursday, when Winston’s Browns scored with 57 seconds left to beat the Steelers. On average this century, there have been 22 such games per NFL regular season. In each of the past two years, there have been 31. And that doesn’t even count the games in which the two-minute offense doesn’t succeed.
It’s not a coincidence. The mere existence of the two-minute warning is a way of elevating drama at that point in the game. The fact that the clock stops only when a ball carrier goes out of bounds in the final two minutes of the first half or the final five minutes of the second is another, allowing extra time for the trailing team to make a comeback. This is the part of the game that’s supposed to lock you in.
“The NFL makes that the peak part of the game,” Winston said. “It’s created to be that way. Statistically, they tell you whatever huge percentage of NFL games are won inside the two-minute mark. … It’s built for that. So that’s why you have to be built for that moment.”
