If it were 2nd and inches would you still have that same philosophy?
BTW I am not saying to not use them at all on defense. You have 4 minutes left, that gives you the option to wait and see how 2nd down plays out. If they don't get anything and it becomes 3rd and 5ish, use it then. They might pass on 3rd and 5ish and you have 2 time outs plus the 2 minute warning for the O. If they get the first down, then you basically reset the situation and hope for a better 1st down run defense before you start using your time outs. With 3 time outs, they aren't gonna barely take anything off the clock period if the defense holds up.
IMO, the WORST thing that can happen (which is what happened yesterday) is you burn your time out on first down when they got a chunk and they just end up running for the first down anyways. Getting 5 yards in 2 downs is much easier than getting 8-10. You are short on time outs and they get the guaranteed 40 seconds once or twice during the next set of downs.
The PI sucked, but they had already drained a ton of clock anyways because of the panic first timeout that they ended up converting to a new set of downs beforehand.