Had the Los Angeles Rams not come back to beat the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game, a lot of people would be pointing to Sean McVay’s unquestionably bad timeout usage. Just 20 minutes into the second half, the Rams were already out of timeouts, which could’ve proved to be costly.
He lost a challenge on Matthew Stafford’s fourth-down sneak, which came up short of the line to gain and was upheld after review. He then burned a timeout on first down when the play clock was running down, avoiding a 5-yard penalty. His final timeout was used on another failed challenge when he believed Kyle Juszczyk fumbled the ball on a third-down run, which didn’t pick up the first down anyway.
