How To Develop A Clock Management Strategy

Clock management is an essential part of any coach’s gameplan, and all too often it is limited to simply a two minute drill at the end of the first half or game. Developing a dynamic well gameplan in terms of your clock management can make all the difference – whether you’re the favourite or the underdog. Here are a few tips courtesy of Coach John Sterner.

The first thing to remember is that on offense and special teams, you’re going to have a dynamic gameplan, depending on how the game evolves. Whereas on defense, you want to determine your clock management strategy before the game, and stick with it until the end.

When you’re trying to determine your clock management strategy, first you’ll have to determine how you believe your team will perform.

There are five categories that you could potentially be in: blowout favourite, favourite, slight favourite or underdog, underdog, and blowout underdog.

If you’re a blowout favourite, or just a favourite, you’re going to want to speed the game up, to give your team as many possessions and chances as possible to take advantage of their higher skill level. If you’re the underdog, you’re going to want to slow down the game, limiting the number of possessions between both teams and increasing the fluke factor in the game.

A great way of explaining this to your players is the example of the weighted coin. If heads represents a 20:1 favourite, and tails represents a 20:1 underdog, to whom is it more advantageous to limit the number of coin flips to 2? 200?

The answer is 2 for the underdog, and 200 for the favourite – again, because the favourite should be trying to increase the number of possessions, and the underdog should be trying to limit them.

There are a couple of other reasons to push the tempo; for example if you’re simply just a better conditioned team than your opponent. Or if you’re going up against a team that likes to try a lot of exotic blitz packages, the hurry up can force them into much more conservative playcalling, not to mention limit defensive substitutions.

There are quite a few reasons to slow down as well. If you’re playing in a hostile environment, you can slow down to take the crowd out of the game, or if you’re playing in weather conditions that are advantageous to your opponent.

As well, if you’re short on players or not just in as good shape as your opponent, limiting possessions will be to your advantage.

If you have any questions or suggestions for future articles, make sure to let me know in the comments section below!