C.J. Gardner-Johnson could have milked the clock on pick-six nullified by penalty

With the Chiefs in desperation mode in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LIX, Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes threw an interception to Philadelphia's C.J. Gardner-Johnson. Gardner-Johnson returned it for a 98-yard touchdown, but Jalen Carter had jumped offside on the play, so the touchdown was nullified.

What wasn't nullified was the 21 seconds the play took off the clock. And if Gardner-Johnson had wanted to, he could have taken a lot more time off the clock than that.

Players on both teams appeared to recognize that Carter had jumped offside and it was a free play, which meant the Chiefs didn't bother trying to chase Gardner-Johnson. So if Gardner-Johnson had thought about the ramifications, he could have stood on the 1-yard line and waited until the Chiefs started chasing him, and then run around for as long as he could without getting tackled while taking more time off the clock. If all 11 Chiefs had chased him, Gardner-Johnson even could have thrown the ball over their heads to one of his teammates downfield and let them run around with the ball and take the time off the clock.

If such a crazy play had happened in a Super Bowl, it's likely that the NFL would have responded with a rule change designed to prevent teams from taking time off the clock when they commit penalties. A simple rule change would be to allow the team that did not commit the penalty to have the option of putting the elapsed time back on the clock after the play.

It didn't matter to the outcome of the game as the Eagles already had it in the bag, but it points to a potentially big clock management advantage that a team could gain when trying to run time off the clock in the fourth quarter. It's a loophole that the NFL should close before it affects the outcome of a game.