NEW ORLEANS, La. -- Saints coach Kellen Moore defended his decision not to use any timeouts in the first half of the Saints' 20-13 loss to the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday.
Both teams had all three timeouts remaining when the Cardinals began an offensive drive with 4:53 left in the second quarter. The Cardinals drove to the Saints' 5-yard line with 1:57 left and then ran the clock down to 28 seconds in the next three plays, one of which resulted in a 4-yard touchdown pass to running back James Conner to go up 17-10.
The Saints did not use any of their timeouts in that sequence and ran only one play, a 6-yard run by running back Alvin Kamara, on the next series before letting the clock run down to halftime.
Moore said the Saints' coaches talked through using their timeouts and decided against it, reasoning that the Saints would still get the ball to start the third quarter. They said the Cardinals also had all three timeouts and wanted to let things play out. Moore said if something "popped" on the Saints' first offensive play, they would call a timeout and potentially get in scoring position, but the coaches felt the offense didn't gain enough yards for that to be a true option.
"We were really close to banging a timeout there and just stuck with the opportunity that we had," Moore said. "'Hey, we'll start with the ball. We still have a little bit of time left to kind of see what happens, and if we're able to gain some yards there, we can play the timeout game and we'd have plenty of time to get ourselves in a field goal position.'"
Though the Saints did not use timeouts and ran the two-minute offense at the end of the first half, they had no choice but to do the same when down a touchdown at the end of the fourth quarter.
The Saints used all three second-half timeouts to get the ball back and drove to the 18-yard line in the final two minutes. Spencer Rattler looked like he threw an 18-yard touchdown to Juwan Johnson to tie the score in the final seconds, but Johnson couldn't hold on to the ball.
Moore, who was making his head coaching debut, was asked if he regretted not being more aggressive with his timeouts in the first half and said, "We can play the rewind game a lot. I get that aspect of it."
"We felt like we had the ball. We still had a chance before half to kind of see how that thing played out," he said." Felt like we were in a good position as a one-score game, and we had plenty of football ahead."