Doug Marrone defends decision to run out clock in first half

The Jacksonville Jaguars made a few questionable coaching decisions during Sunday’s AFC Championship game. One that has attracted a lot of criticism was coach Doug Marrone’s decision to run out the clock at the end of the first half rather than go for more points.

The Jaguars got the ball off a New England touchdown with a 14-10 lead. They had the ball at their own 25 with 55 seconds left and two timeouts at their disposal. One might have figured they would at least try to make a few plays to get into field goal range at minimum, but the Jaguars instead took a knee twice and took their four-point lead to the locker room.

On Monday, Marrone attributed that decision to trying to ensure nothing bad would happen and Jacksonville would be able to take a lead into the locker room.

“I thought for what they do coverage-wise and what we had to do, and we had the lead and they had just scored,” Marrone said, via Charean Williams of ProFootballTalk. “I just didn’t want to put ourselves in a position [for something negative]. I wanted to get in leading at halftime. I didn’t think it was a great situation that we had been great at during the year. I thought the risk and reward for us at that moment in time was let’s go in and make our adjustments. Let’s get ourselves going, and let’s take this lead into halftime. That is exactly how I thought. Right or wrong.”

Marrone’s decision — as well as some of the more conservative playcalls during the second half — could be attributed to the Jaguars attempting to manage Blake Bortles as well as they can. It could be interpreted that they simply didn’t trust him to move the ball downfield within a minute without making a harmful mistake. He’s had to deal with criticism all year long, and he really wasn’t bad on Sunday. However, the Jaguars still have a decision to make if Bortles’s natural limitations so severely limit Jacksonville’s ability on offense.