I'm not a football fan, but it seems singular to me that an amateur at the sport would react instantly to an unexpected situation, sprint down the the length of the field, and then with the deafening roar of the crowd in his ears and the lights exploding in his face and the goal line mere inches in front of him and unseen defenders nipping at his heels and visions of being the hero dancing around in his head would suddenly remember "I'm in this for the game, not the touchdown: pivot right and get them to waste six seconds." except due to heavy, heavy operant conditioning.
I must have missed the part where it says the guy was an amateur at the sport? The article describes him as "(team xyz)'s Quarterback...", so I assume he played a lot and had a lot of training? But even at school sports, we were habitually playing for time. It's just what you do if you are in the lead and the end is near.
Also, I am sorry, but catching a ball in football can hardly be an unexpected event.
Catching a ball off a deflection is pretty surprising, and you generally don't see players spontaneously considering things and deciding to run out the clock when the end zone's in front of him and defenders are behind him, especially not in a situation where you need the touchdown to win. Grinding down the clock in football is generally accomplished by play selection, with the use of a running game rather than a passing game, because incomplete passes stop the clock. The only other example of this that I know of, and a much more dramatic one, is Brian Westbrook's kneel-down on the 1 yard line -- http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-network-playbook/09000d5d80547...
It's no stretch to say that modern players are in general more familiar with winning strategic plays as a result of making thousands of decisions in a quasi-simulator. However, even without video game practice, one would expect the quarterback to already have plenty of strategic understanding.
