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Magic Johnson couldn’t believe the way the Commanders handled the clock at the end of Sunday’s tie with the Giants.
After Jayden Daniels ran the ball with seconds left in overtime, the Commanders didn’t seem to get back to the line of scrimmage with any urgency at first, letting precious seconds tick off before scrambling to hike the ball.
Daniels and the Commanders didn’t manage to get the play off successfully as time expired, and the game ended in a 27-27 tie.
Johnson, the NBA legend who owns a stake in the Commanders, was as befuddled as the rest of the football world at what transpired in those closing seconds.
“I’m in total disbelief my Commanders had such poor clock management in today’s overtime game against the Giants,” he wrote in a post on X. “All we had to do was kick the field goal and we would have won the game!”
Johnson finished the post a facepalm emoji.
As for how it happened, Commanders coach Dan Quinn told reporters that ultimately the buck stops with him and that the mismanagement fell on him in that situation.
He deflected any blame from Daniels, who had otherwise played a strong game for Washington.
“The sequence of that does not fall on him,” Quinn told reporters. “It’s an out-of-bounds throw or a ‘clock’. That has to come from me. I don’t even have to put him in that spot. I can do that earlier and we can finish the kick earlier, we don’t need to gain more yards. That’s on me.”
Daniels told reporters that the Commanders have to “be better” in that situation.
“We all gotta be better situationally,” the quarterback said. “Starts with me. Everybody will say the same thing, but we just gotta be better at situational football.”