Sean McVay has done a remarkable job in his first year as the Los Angeles Rams’ head coach. He’s already won as many games as last year’s team in just six weeks, earning the Rams their first 4-2 record in 11 years.

Just about everything he’s done for the team up to this point has been near-perfect, and he’s a big reason Los Angeles is currently atop the NFC West after six games. There has been one area of concern in his coaching style, though, and that’s his clock-management skills – particularly when it comes to using timeouts.

It came back to bite the Rams last week with Jared Goff being left with no timeouts on the Rams’ final drive of the game. McVay used his first two of the second half with 10:50 left in the third and 8:59 left in the fourth before burning his last one on the Seahawks’ last possession.

The timing of his decisions to stop the clock is curious, leaving very few timeouts to use towards the end of the game. It’s not a huge deal, but the Rams would have had a far better chance of beating the Seahawks had McVay not burned his first two timeouts at almost meaningless times.

On Sunday, it wasn’t as bad, but the rookie head coach used one towards the end of the first quarter, and another after the PAT and before the ensuing kickoff – maybe the worst moment to use a timeout.

He admitted Monday that he needs to be better in that department, putting the blame on himself.

“Really, you would prefer not to use those, absolutely,” he said on a conference call. “With some of the previous ones it might have been a miscommunication – guys were confused or things like that – but all things being equal, it starts with me. I’ve got to do a better job with that and those are always things that you would prefer to save for those two-minute situations when you might need them in crunch time and you don’t want to utilize those outside of the two-minute unless another extenuating circumstance dictates that.”

Again, his frequent timeout-calling has largely been a non-issue, but as the season goes on, and as the Rams are put in tighter situations, McVay has to ensure he has at least a couple timeouts in his pocket. He can’t afford to leave his second-year quarterback in a spot where he can’t stop the clock without having to spike it or throw a sideline pass.

McVay pinned his decisions on the fact that the Rams couldn’t afford to push themselves out of field goal range with a costly penalty, which is certainly fair. Still, he admits he needs to do a better job of communicating with Goff and his players.

“It starts with me making sure that that communication is clear and everybody understands what their role is,” he added. “There have been a variety of reasons why we’ve had to take a couple of those, but that’s definitely something just from a self-scout standpoint we’ve got to a better job of and really I’ve got to do a better job of avoiding those.”