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Mike Vrabel gave Bill Belichick a taste of his own medicine late in the fourth quarter of the game between the Tennessee Titans and New England Patriots. After the game, Belichick spoke about the same time-shaving loophole used against him by the Titans.
“We’ve talked about this before. It’s the same thing we’ve talked about before. There’s no change,” Belichick said.
Back in Week 7, Belichick used a time-shaving tactic for the Patriots against the New York Jets that took advantage of the rules. The tactic involves purposely taking multiple penalties to keep the clock running. When he used the strategy in October, Belichick commented on his choice to use it.
Article Continues Below“It was just the way the rules are set up. We were able to run quite a bit of time off the clock without really having to do anything. That’s probably a loophole that will be closed and probably should be closed but right now it’s open,” Belichick said in October.
The rule is only able to be done outside of the final five minutes due to penalties stopping the clock within the last five minutes. On Saturday night, the Titans took a delay of game penalty with 6:35 remaining in the game to begin chewing the clock, leaving less time for the Patriots to mount a comeback.
Tennessee would proceed to take a false start penalty after that to trim the clock all the way down to 4:50 before punting the ball. A third penalty by the Titans would have given them an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and stopped the clock.
The Patriots were able to successfully utilize the method to waste as much clock as possible. But when they used the strategy, it's doubtful that New England knew it would be used against them in a playoff game in January.
