Before I address the actual focus of this article: The Patriots-Colts matchup was the best game of the year. Better than the Favre Hail Mary against the Niners. Better than that Saints comeback against the Dolphins. Everybody who’s ‘sick of the hype’ should shut the hell up, grab a beer, and enjoy what consistently turns into the most exciting sixty minutes of the regular season (and repeat every year until Peyton Manning is making a living off commercials and bad color commentary).
Onto subjects more pressing: By now, everybody in the country has heard about Bill Belichick’s choice to go for it on 4th down. Generations to follow will remember it as, ostensibly, the worst choice of his long and distinguished career (well, maybe). But, over the cacophony of emotional reactions from Pats fans everywhere - Irish sports bars erupting in derisive obscenities, agonized elitists throwing their champagne glasses and pocket watches at the television, sunshine patriots waking from their premature slumber to hear their radio’s ill tidings – history and perhaps Gregg Easterbrook will vindicate me in saying:
He made a good call.
-----
The Historian’s Fallacy (also explained eloquently and somewhat hilariously by the folks over at Cracked), in short, amounts to retrospective decision-making, or more appropriately, Monday morning quarterbacking. The pundits arbitrarily criticizing him for going for it, the same ones that criticize other coaches for not having gone for it when it mattered, are guilty of the Historian’s Fallacy par excellence.
Of course Belichick shouldn’t have gone for it if he knew Faulk would bobble the ball or if he knew they’d be six inches short. Of course he’d punt it away if he somehow accessed a parallel dimension and knew it would have made the definitive difference. But he didn’t; he made the call based on assessing the probability of success against the consequences of failure, and as I’ll show below, he made the rationally sound (even if ultimately ‘incorrect’) decision.
So let’s look at the comparative benefits of the decision, and the drawbacks, doing our best only to use what was theoretically accessible to him at the time.
-If it works, the game is over. Short, sweet, and to the point. If the Pats complete a two-yard slant to a dependable veteran playing the best game of his life, they can roll through the two minute warning, take a knee, and go home with an untouchable lead in the East and a bead on the Colts’ home field advantage. Seriously, two yards. As ESPN’s front-page NFL blogs note, the Patriots have converted on over 63 percent of fourth-and-short opportunities since Brady took over. That’s a phenomenal rate; combined with the fact that Brady and the offense have been rolling all game long, you have to estimate that the rate is, if anything, higher.
-It’s the gutsiest call of the decade. This isn’t an emotional impetus to choose the more ‘heroic’ option – it has some pragmatic benefits. First, let’s assume the play fails. Belichick takes all the heat, while Brady and the defense catch a breather away from the spotlight. As the week unfolds, we’ll see his ‘genius’ label questioned (probably alright for his humility, I guess); ultimately everybody decides he’s somewhere between an inscrutable mastermind and just another human being, and most fans still trust him with the headset. In other words, nothing new happens, and no old questions get answered. Meanwhile, the defense avoids a humiliating barrage of criticism and crushing media pressure, but still get the benefits of Belichick thoroughly working them over to prepare for Drew Brees and the Saints. Second, let’s assume the play succeeds: Belichick earns his reputation for incredibly ballsy and intelligent coaching, adds another footnote to his legend, and nobody in New England second-guesses him again (ever). The defense doesn't get blamed but still needs retooling, so Bill gets to figure out adjustments without harrying questions at every turn. Worth the call on its own? Perhaps not. But certainly tempting when combined with a mathematically favorable choice.
-We were screwed on defense regardless of field position. Peyton Manning just completed an 80-yard drive in six plays and less than two minutes without using a timeout (maybe you remember it – it landed the Patriots in this situation in the first place). He ended up scoring, taking his damn time about it, almost without effort. There’s no feasible way a group of tired, hopelessly cowed defensive backs stops Manning, even if you add 40 yards to the field. Is there really greater than a two-out-of-three chance that the Patriots catch a break in the form of a loose fumble, a dead-duck interception or (exceptionally) bad clock management by Manning? I don’t think so.
-----
There are, of course, potential drawbacks to the decision, which I’ll address point-by-point. I like to think of them being read by Jay Mariotti or Phil Simms (especially Simms – fuck Phil Simms), but you’re free to visualize whoever you want.
The assertion that Belichick showed he had ‘no faith in his defense’ seems to be the most common argument. First – and most obviously – if we assume that that the degree of faith he shows in his squad makes a significant difference, there’s no reason his fourth-down call shouldn’t have fired up his offense enough (or, at the very least, there’s no reason he shouldn’t have believed it would). Every ounce of ‘trust’ he invests in one side trades off with the other. If ‘faith’ is worth forty yards of defense, it’s worth six inches of offense. Second, as mentioned above, we have to assume they deserved that trust before it becomes a sound decision to bet the game on them.
“This breaks every rule of coaching” – ESPN, 2:25 AM
This remark upsets me a bit. Breaking the rules of coaching is not inherently good or bad – yes, those rules (guidelines, if you prefer) are there for a reason, but coaches are alternately praised or jeered for ignoring them only according to their success in doing so, rather than their method or their justification. Plus, convention does not mean success (otherwise, coaches would be rewarded for having no distinguishing features); Belichick is Belichick, he breaks the rules (as Jets fans remind us, sometimes even the actual ones), and he’ll be in the Hall of Fame for it.
“It was a knee-jerk emotional decision that cost them the game.” –ESPN, 2:30 AM
While it would be somewhat cool to imagine Bill Belichick replaced by Harrison Ford, shouting at Offensive Coordinator C-3PO to ‘never tell me the odds’, I view the idea that a seasoned, indubitably successful coach with a history of coldly rational decisions (most of which leave him at odds with fans, and the media, but never his players) suddenly suffered a complete panic attack and gave in to sentimentality with a degree of healthy skepticism. Are we really investing credibility in the idea that Belichick, a man so distant that we collectively question the existence of his soul, decided he wanted a Hollywood ending for the kids? The only reason he even got to that point was clock management – namely, that he mixed up the game clock with his personal countdown timer for the cyborg invasion. Okay, I’ll stop. But this point is ridiculous.
By the way, the idea that Belichick entirely ‘cost them the game’ is out of whack for other reasons. A Lawrence Maroney fumble and a Brady interception, both third-quarter turnovers in the end zone, also killed their chance to put the game out of reach. Peyton Manning playing at the level of Bo Jackson starring in his own video game for most of the fourth quarter probably contributed. Above all, a defense that gave up 35 points to a predictable team with no rushing game is inexcusable.
I don’t want to be accused of denying the opposition their strongest arguments (I’m anything but even-handed, but purely from a self-interested perspective, I don’t like seeing my argumentative credibility compromised). Plus, I’m wicked tired, so I’ll stop here. If you’ve got anything I didn’t address, anything you think I should have looked at, or if you just think I’m wrong and want to re-word Phil Simms’ objections, feel free to post or e-mail me (I’ve always wanted to do a mailbag).
--kd
(ps – Peyton Manning gets my ballot for MVP. Granted, it won’t help him in the postseason when he throws three picks and gets booed at home in the inevitable AFC showdown in January…but that was an incredible performance when it mattered most. Ugh. )
No comments:
Post a Comment