Jay Sawvel Defends Fourth-Quarter Decisions in Loss to Colorado
- Jeff Bugher
- Sep 24
- 4 min read
LARAMIE, Wyo. - The first thing Wyoming head coach Jay Sawvel brought up in his weekly press conference was the criticism after Saturday night’s 37–20 loss at Colorado. Jay wanted to set the record straight about the Cowboys’ approach during the final quarter. Sawvel mentioned the ESPN announcers' criticism of game management and play-calling.
“The assertion that we were trying to play to keep the game close or something that way is one of the stupidest assertions that I’ve heard in a long time,” Sawvel said. “When we started that series, the goal was we needed to get a touchdown. We needed to score.”
During a nearly seven-minute drive, Wyoming drove the ball deep into Colorado territory, aided by a crucial third-and-8 run check that turned into a 13-yard gain. Sawvel explained the thinking behind it: “On 3rd and 8th, we ran a zone play because of the blitz check and we get 10-yards and got it down to whatever the 8-yard line or whatever it was at the time. ...We went, from the 20-yard line, 13 yards to the seven. Okay, and did that. That's a really well-blocked play by Wyoming. ...Okay, if we gained one yard, it would have been like, what are they doing running the ball in this situation? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. Right?”
Wyoming eventually scored with 4:32 remaining, cutting the deficit to 10. From there, Sawvel said the plan was straightforward: play defense and manage the clock with timeouts.
“As long as, to me, it was outside of 4 1/2 minutes to go in the game and we didn’t have to burn timeouts, we were still in a good spot,” he explained. “With 4 minutes and 32 seconds to go in the game, we scored a touchdown. We were then to kick off. We had three timeouts. We had the two-minute timeout.”
No onside kick? Sawvel pointed to the math: “Onside kicks versus teams have a conversion rate of less than 10%. Surprise onside kicks have a better conversion rate. It’s not a surprise situation when you’re down 10 with 4 minutes to go. So we kicked the ball off. It was time to go play defense and get a stop.”
But Wyoming’s defense couldn’t deliver. Colorado picked up first downs on back-to-back plays, throwing off Sawvel’s timeout strategy.
“Problem was we didn’t get a stop. So when they gained 10 yards on the first play and now get a first down, you could choose to use your timeouts on the zero down, right? Which is really, okay, then they still have possession. So, okay, I reset and said, we’re going to start this process over at 3:46. We’ve got to get a stop,” he said. “They gained 12 yards and got another first down. So hindsight to that, I would have called timeout after that one anyway. It was probably a play too late of what I was going to do, but that was the direction to it.”
Sawvel made it clear that Wyoming wasn’t playing scared. “To sit there and say, OK, well, we were playing to - that’s a bunch of crap based on I don’t know what,” he said. “We had a plan going into the drive and a plan going into the series, and certainly it wasn’t to let them score. Certainly, it was to get the ball back.”
One of the biggest criticisms from commentators and fans was the lack of tempo and urgency during Wyoming's touchdown drive. Sawvel admitted it could have been quicker, but he defended the approach given the matchups and substitutions.
“I think that maybe there’s a little bit more urgency that we could get out of the huddle,” he said. “I don’t know that it would have been in our best interest to just go into like wing-it two-minute mode with the defensive ends they had and having a new left tackle in there and the whole thing that way and go into that type of space to it.”
Ultimately, the head coach said the plan was sound, even if the result was not. “Like I said, there was a marker for me in my mind. If we got the ball in the end zone, 4 1/2 to 5 minutes to go in the game with our timeouts. Let’s go play defense. Let’s go try to get this thing done. The problem was we didn’t get a stop.”
“We needed to get a stop, we didn’t get a stop. And that was the assertion to it. So right now we’ve got to go and get better. We have a lot of things that we can do to get better.”
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