The first half of Thursday’s Baltimore Ravens-Cincinnati Bengals game ended with Baltimore wide receiver Diontae Johnson getting tackled inbounds just across midfield as a running clock expired.
The Ravens were out of timeouts and were unable to line up quickly enough to spike the ball for a stoppage.
If they could have, they would have been on the fringes of Justin Tucker field goal range and probably would have had an opportunity to run at least one more play to get a little closer.
They were out of timeouts because head coach John Harbaugh burned through two of them on the very first defensive series of the game.
The first one was burned by an ill-advised challenge of a Mike Gesicki catch that was only a three-yard completion. It moved the Bengals from the five-yard line to the two-yard line, and not only was it clearly a completed pass on replay, there was also almost no benefit if they did win it.
Then, just one play later, Harbaugh burned through another defensive timeout on the same series.
After all of that, the Bengals still ended up scoring a touchdown while Harbaugh had to play the remainder of the first half with just a single timeout.
He really needed that at the end of the half when his team was trying to score points.
Harbaugh is a good coach with an excellent track record, but he sometimes has moments where he overthinks things and outsmarts himself. It can sometimes lead to bad endings to a half (or a game) like that.
In a tough divisional matchup little mistakes like that can add up. In this case, it cost him a chance at three points.
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