That was indeed a bad stretch; everyone lost their bearings for sure including the D allowing the score. And UT had timeouts also. I can’t say I’m fully following your logic there but granted the old gray matter is not what it once was; I’m not seeing it as a major faux pas on Beamer’s part. You’ve obviously thought it thru much deeper.
Well, the logic is rather simple. (Look man, even Todd Ellis was saying you let the clock run down the 2:00 warning)
So, it's 4th and 1. We go for it. We get it. It's now 1st down and you don't have to run another play before the clock gets to the 2 minute warning. You let the clock run down to 2 minutes. There's a TV timeout. The game is tied 14 - 14. You gather your players on the sideline and go through what you're going to do with your GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY.... It's 1st down and no rush..... Preferably, you run a running play up the middle for a few yards. Clock runs.... you force UT to use their timeouts there. (Or maybe they don't use their timeouts but at least you're forcing them to do something)
If they are content to let the clock run until you snap that ball on your 2nd down......fine.... same play.....run up the middle. If they stop you again, the clock is till running. We got Time Outs. We can stop the clock whenever we want if need be. Then on 3rd down, hopefully, you score with the game clock being somewhere around the 30 second mark. You take the lead, go into halftime, KNOWING that they get the ball 1st in the 2nd half.
You allow them very little time to do anything. - Instead - here's what we did:
1st down......hurried up and our MeatHead QB ran out of bounds, stopping the clock.....but it didn't matter because THAT play, the clock was going to be stopped at the 2 minute warning anyway..... I think it stopped at 1:58. Now it's 2nd down. Meathead threw an incomplete pass to a WIDE OPEN receiver less than 10 yards away. Clock stops. Now it's 3rd down.... MeatHead scrambles around and nearly takes a huge sack but throws it incomplete. Clock stops. - We kick a field goal. Go up 17-14
But then we have to kick off to them and when they got the ball back......instead of having under 30 seconds on the clock.......they had 1:44 and 2 timeouts...... and marched right down the field and scored a TD.
You just CANNOT make those kinds of mistakes against the #11 ranked team in the country. It was GROSS mismanagement of the clock.
Edited to add: and I'm still not arguing with you, just explaining the logic, down by down.