Thanks for the clarification, Jimmy. I agree that sometimes there is strong disagreement between the “number crunchers” and the “seat of the pantsers,” for lack of a better term. I just don’t think that’s necessarily the case here. I think everyone agrees that Belichick is a pretty cerebral guy, so he weighed various factors in making his decision. I don’t think anyone is faulting him for taking the time to think about it; I just think people disagree with his decision based on its merits (or, as it turned out, lack thereof), not because he thought about it at all. So I don’t see the tension between “Just play football, brainiac” and “Hmm, yes, brilliantly evaluated, Dr. Belichick.” I just see it at the ten trillionth iteration of second guessing.
I thought of something else I’d like to ask you or whoever: when, from your perspective, would it be appropriate to punt on 4th and 2? Never? I generally think that coaches punt too often and should go for it on 4th and short more often. But if this situation – deep in your own territory, late in the game, out of time outs, up by less than a touchdown – causes some to think, “Eh, just go for it, the stats don’t lie,” when wouldn’t you go for it on 4th and short?
(Obvious answer is “When you’re a team from Cleveland,” but please provide another answer.)
I think when folks say that it is played by real people they are simply trying to point out that the statistics are all fine and good, but there is an error component that is made up of the less tangible or idiosycratic aspects of the particular situation.
In that particular moment there was a “true” probability of making it, p, and then we have observed probabilities r in similar (not identical) situations. In the simplest form, p= r+e (although it is more likely p=f(r,e). This is of course vey simplified, but I just want to point out that those who are complaining that the stats don’t tell all aren’t necessarily being obtuse.
It’s sort of like blitzing. Some QB (I think it’s actually Eli this year) is always going to be worst in the league against the blitz. Stats don’t lie; he’s terrible against the blitz compared to rushing four. So you should blitz him every single play, right?
Well, I’m kind of a coward. I might have punted just because of that, honestly. I won’t lie; I believe from a detached perspective that the odds come down in favor of going for it, and as a result I’ll support Belichick’s decision to go for it even though it didn’t work that way, but I can’t say for sure I wouldn’t have taken the safe (from criticism) approach of booting it away in this or a similar situation.
It’s when the discussion turns to “this is a black and white issue; I can’t even see the other side’s point and it makes me angry to hear it” (which is a rough paraphrase of what Matt Hasselbeck just said on TV a minute ago) that I start to get my back up. As a few posters have said, I think there’s a way to look at this decision and come down reasonably on either side of the fence. In my estimation, though, that means by definition this thread title and the majority of the criticism of Belichick is over the top.
Yeah, I don’t know. But Belichick has basically gotten himself into a weird position in his career, in that criticism from whatever source just can’t hurt him at all. He’s arguably the most successful active head coach in the NFL. His career winning percentage is over .600, and that’s counting the 36-44 he put up at Cleveland. He has three Super Bowl rings, and he’s riding a run of nine consecutive winning seasons and on his way to an almost certain AFC East title this year. He could cut his punter tomorrow and play the rest of the season without punting at all, and he wouldn’t get fired. He has infinite job security right now, and as long as he puts up winning seasons, he will continue to have that security no matter what decisions he makes.
And I think on a personal level, he’s a total blank and just doesn’t care at all what people are saying. So he’s utterly immune to criticism.
Honestly, I do wonder what Patriots fans are thinking when they blast this guy for the decision yesterday. Agree with the decision or don’t, but you have to at least acknowledge that the decision was precisely in line with how Belichick has coached throughout his Patriots career. He does look at the numbers, and he does go with the numbers - with what the numbers say will maximize his chances of winning, conventional wisdom be damned (I am a fan, and unashamed of it; it’s fun to watch a team that does things differently).
If you are a Patriots fan, and you’re complaining about this, you’re insane. The approach to the game that led your coach to go for it on 4th and 2 Sunday night is exactly the reason you have won three Super Bowls in nine years. If Marty Schottenheimer (for example) had been coaching your team, he would have punted Sunday night (you still might have lost the game, by the way).
But he also would have punted in a like situation in Atlanta earlier this year, when Belichick also went for it, got it, and went on to win decisively (a game in which the Patriots went on fourth down three separate times, by the way, and converted all three). And he would have done things differently then Belicheck all the way down the last nine years. And the way your coach does things has gotten you three Super Bowl championships, the first perfect regular season in three decades, and a solid 10 wins every year rain, shine, or injured quarterback.
It’s not that you can’t criticize a bad decision because the coach making it has had success over the years. But when the decision in question is identical in philosophy to the dozens of other decisions with which your coach has set himself apart from other coaches, criticizing this one because it didn’t pan out seems short-sighted. Sure, it didn’t work this time. It did work in Atlanta. If he makes the same decision 20 times in his career and it works 15 out of 20, is it a bad decision the five times it doesn’t work? No. It’s a good decision every time, because a plan that gets you a win 75% of the time is worth the loss it gets you 25% of the time.
In his interviews yesterday, he couldn’t even admit having muffed the timeouts. Let’s hope he showed a little more leadership in the locker room.
Some reactions from his former players:
“As a former defender on that team, I would’ve cared less about the result of that fourth-down attempt. The decision to go for it would be enough to make my blood boil for weeks. Bill Belichick sent a message to his defense. He felt that his chances were better to go for it on his own 28-yard line than to punt it away and make Peyton Manning have to drive the majority of the field to win the game.” – Tedy Bruschi, writing for ESPNBoston.com
“You have to coach 60 minutes, and you have to trust and believe in your players, and you have to make the right decision. You cannot give Peyton Manning the opportunity on the 30-yard line to drive the ball and score a touchdown. I’ve been around Bill Belichick a long time, and he’s made a lot of great coaching decisions, but this was the worst coaching decision I have ever seen Bill Belichick make.” – Rodney Harrison, during the postgame of NBC’s “Football Night in America” telecast
This is twice now someone has pointed to the Atlanta game and claimed that going for it on 4th in his own territory directly led to a win. For the second time I call bullshit on the extremely shaky claim.
This type of retarded playcalling also contributed to him losing a Superbowl to the Giants. And just for the record, if people aren’t allowed to criticize the call “because it didn’t work”, you’re not allowed to defend the call “because similar calls have worked in the past.” Results are either relevant or their not; you can’t have it both ways.
But this is exactly the point. If you kill Belichick for this decision against the Colts, you have to kill him for making a similar decision against the Falcons. You can’t say that the Colts decision is bad because they didn’t pick up the first, and the Atlanta decision is good because they did. He made the same decision* in both cases.
You have to evaluate his decision based on the information that was available at the time he made it. The reason he made the decision is that he thought he was more likely to win, based at least partly on the fact that similar calls have often worked in the past. The fact that he didn’t win doesn’t change what the probabilities were at the time the decision was made.
*The same decision roughly speaking, obviously the game situations were not exactly identical.
OK, let’s see. When the Patriots went for it on 4th and 3 on their own 24, there were 5 minutes and 19 seconds left in the third quarter. The score was 16-10, New England. They made the conversion and then continued to drive. Stephen Gostkowski kicked a field goal on the first play of the fourth quarter to conclude this drive. So essentially, by going for it on fourth down, the Patriots extended their lead to two scores while bleeding about five and a half minutes off the clock.
So “led directly to a win?” No, I don’t think anyone is claiming that. But I’d guess that Atlanta’s chances of winning were much smaller down two scores with 14:55 to play then they would have been down one score with 20 minutes to play. So “contributed to a win in a meaningful fashion?” Absolutely. But it doesn’t even matter.
Yeah, you’re right; he’s a terrible coach, who calls retarded plays. I get that you don’t like him, but come on.Every coach will lose games; Belichik’s “retarded playcalling” has contributed to many more wins than losses - including many more wins than losses in the playoffs and Super Bowl.
Why are you being dishonest? The argument is not that the call is defensible “because similar calls have worked in the past.” The argument is that the call is defensible because it derives from a consistent strategy that has produced excellent results in the past. The argument is that it’s stupid and short-sighted to judge a long-term strategic approach to the game by the results of one individual instance in which that approach was applied.
Mariano Rivera is the best relief pitcher in baseball history. His approach to good left-handed hitters has always been consistent; he throws a cut fastball that breaks in toward the hands. Over his career, he has retired hundreds of left-handed hitters with this approach, at a rate well exceeding that of anyone else in his position. In Game Seven of the 2001 World Series, Rivera had struggled a bit in the ninth and the game was tied, with the potential winning run on third base. To the plate came a good left-handed hitter, Luis Gonzalez. Rivera threw a cut fastball that broke in toward the hands; Gonzalez was looking for it, abbreviated his swing, and lofted a hit into the outfield. So was Rivera’s strategy of throwing a cutter in on the hands a bad strategy? Was he an idiot for going with it, because it didn’t work?
No. Sometimes you use the most rational strategy in a given situation, and you get beat anyway. Over many iterations, Belichik’s approach to the game produces positive results. Seizing on the (comparatively few) examples of situations where it fails to do this smacks of analytic bias. You want him to be stupid, and so he is. All the times that his strategic approach works don’t count; the times that it fails do. Thus can one convince oneself that the best head coach of this generation engages in “retarded playcalling.”
The play that was called was awful, as was the wasting of two timeouts on that drive. The decision was not awful. At worst, it was a wash, and I’m always happy to see a coach thumbing his nose at conventional wisdom (which is so often a bunch of nonsense in professional sports).
As a very very casual football fan, could someone explain to me why the call on that 4th down (that they didn’t make the conversion) was unable to be reviewed. Watching it on the TV, it seemed more than obvious that the receiver had secured the ball well ahead of the point necessary to make the 1st down. Is nobody pissed about what on screen was shown to be a horrible call?
When judging this kind of strategy, the *specific *result doesn’t matter, but the *probable *result does, and the past success or failure of the strategy is largely how you determine what the probably result is.
Because there are fairly specific rules about challenging/reviewing plays. Outside the 2-minute warnings, the coaches have to challenge questionable plays themselves, and a failed challenge means you lose a timeout. If you have no timeouts, you can’t challenge, because you can’t pay the potential penalty.
Inside the 2-minute warning, an official can call for a review, but the ball was snapped on that play before the 2MW so it doesn’t count as being “inside” the 2MW.
And having said that, I don’t think it’s at all clear that the play would’ve been overturned. Faulk clearly didn’t catch the ball cleanly, and I don’t know that the refs would have considered it conclusive that he completed the catch before the ball was back across the 30.
Well yes and no, past information can certainly provide information into what the probable result is, but it certainly has its limitations and it is important to also understand the missing information that past results do not provide.
I watched the replays a few dozen times and while I think Faulk established possession with the ball directly over the yellow line (which as the announcers never tire of reminding us, is unofficial), I could not conclusively say so.
Certainly not enough to overturn the call on the field.