Pats couldn’t challenge it because they were out of TOs; booth couldn’t do it because it was before the 2:00 warning. And it was a good call this time.
Uh - wow. Completion, down on contact. How they allowed that fumble, I’ll never know.
Anyone see Belicheck’s bodyguard toss that reporter?
They didn’t rule it a fumble - they said it was an interception by Jason Taylor.
Couldn’t disagree more. Belicheck made the right call, the call that maximized his team’s chance of winning; I have no doubt he’d make it again in the same spot, because he’s not blinded by conventional thinking.
Very approximately, a generic team’s chance of converting a first down on fourth and 2 from their own 28 yard line is 60%. Given that the Patriots offense is clearly better than a generic team’s, and the Colts defense is only slightly above average in terms of yardage allowed, I’d set the actual chances of conversion here at around 70%.
So 7 times out of 10 that you make this choice, you win right there (a successful conversion = a win in that position). What about the other 3 times that you make the choice, when you don’t convert (what happened last night)? Well, the other team still has to score a touchdown. Now, calculating the percentage chance that the Colts gain 28 yards and score a touchdown at the end of the game is a bit tougher. The same site above gives the Colts a 53% chance of scoring from the 28 with 2 minutes to play. This is Peyton Manning, so I’m bumping it up to 65%.
So out of that hypothetical 10 times that you run last night’s scenario, 7 times the Pats win it on the spot, and 1.05 times (35% of 3) they turn it over on downs but win anyway when the Colts fail to score. So the Pats chances of winning by going for it on 4th and 2 from that spot are 8.05 out of 10, or 80.5%.
Now suppose they punt. I’m going to assume that the chances of a punt return for a touchdown and the chances of a lost fumble by the punt returner very roughly cancel one another. Chris Hansen’s net punting average this season has been 34.8 yards (so let’s say 35 yards), so the Colts would have started their final drive at the Colt 37 (give or take).
So: by going for it on 4th and 2, you have an 80% chance of winning.
Your other choice is to give Peyton Manning two minutes and one time out to drive 63 yards, on a drive where he will be in four-down territory throughout, and in a game where, to that point, he has already passed for around 300 yards.
So I put it to you: do you really, honestly believe that the chances that Manning gets his team those 63 yards are less than 20%?
I don’t.
I figure he gets the touchdown on the final drive roughly 40% of the time, which means that by going for it on fourth and 2, Bill Belicheck very approximately doubled his chances of winning the game.
I’m sure he knew that the media, who haven’t questioned conventional wisdom in 100 years of covering sports, would take issue with his decision if it failed, but he made the smart call - the unusual call, yes, but the smart call - and while it didn’t work this time, spread out over multiple seasons this sort of approach is the reason the man has three Super Bowl rings and four appearances.
I think the call would be Delay of Game, which is what I was expecting. But I saw Big Mac pointing at the scoreboard while he was talking to the refs. All I can guess is that the scorekeeper failed to take one of the challenges off the board so it still showed one available, and the refs decided not to penalize him. Needless to say, the Fox “A Team” did not address the matter at all.
I honestly don’t know if going for it was the right decision, but I’m pretty sure it was at least close, so let me play devil’s advocate and argue in favor.
Close, but not quite. Smart people make decisions based on the likelihood that something bad will happen in relation to the likelihood that something good will happen, and in consideration of the severity of the good and bad outcomes.
In this case, every facet of the italicized part of the decision tree above tends to favor going for it.
How likely are the Pats to get the first down? Pretty likely. It’s a fantastic offense playing a depleted defense that has had trouble stopping them all game long, needing only two yards. Hardly a gimme, but this is probably a 50/50 shot or better for New England.
What is the benefit to going for it and making it? The benefit is the difference in win probability between getting the 1st down and punting it back to the Colts. The 1st down means a virtually assured victory – assuming the 4th down play eats up the 2 minute warning and that the Patriots call three runs and then punt, the Colts (with their one timeout) will get the ball back with maybe 30 seconds left, at roughly their own 30, with no timeouts. OTOH, if you punt, the Colts have two minutes and 1 timeout to move roughly 70 yards. They’ll have four shots at every new 1st down, the best no huddle offense in football, and a presumably tired defense opposing them. And, of course, they had just marched 80 yards in less time than that, using no timeouts, with relative ease. I really don’t know how likely a touchdown is in that spot, but it’s a terrifying enough prospect that forestalling the drive is a huge benefit.
What is the downside of going for it and not making it? The downside is the difference in win probability between the Colts on *your *30 or on *their *30, with two minutes to go and one timeout. How big or those 40 yards? I don’t know, but it’s not the same kind of game-changing difference that a 4th down conversion is. The Colts on *their *30 have real chance of winning the game, and the Colts on *your *30 still have a real chance of losing the game.
tl;dr version: If you punt, you might win or you might lose. If you go for it, you’ll either have a guaranteed win, or a situation where you might win or you might lose. Because only going for it involves a guaranteed win possibility, there’s a good chance that it was the right call.
Going for it in that situation is fine, and the reaction people are having to it shows why coaches very often take the conventional decision rather than the correct one.
Booth review was never in play because the play began before the 2-minute warning. The ball must be snapped after the 2MW for booth review to be allowable.
See storyteller’s post - it’s only an unconventional call because football coaches don’t understand mathematics. Belichick was, in fact, playing the percentages, especially given the relative strengths of his team.
Belichick did make major mistakes on that final drive- one was wasting two timeouts, either of which could have been used to challenge the play, and the other was running a play designed to gain two and a half yards, leaving yourself which a chance of completing the pass and still not making the first down.
I am so glad I had run out for smokes and was listening to the game on the radio during that play. I might have started a riot. In my house.
Ooh, I just realized: Gregg Easterbrook is going to have to laud Bill Belicheck tomorrow in his awful column. Maybe his head will actually explode. Good times.
This makes perfect sense only if the ‘correct’ decision is the one that loses the game, and people’s reactions are taken as independent variable from the actual consequences of the decision.
Or I guess it’s ‘fine’ if you don’t mind losing.
Don’t be so sure. For all his virtues, Easterbrook loves to beat on his villains, and is an incorrigible scold. I could see him portraying the call as an egomaniacal glory-grab.
In this situation, the Pats lose 100% of the time given the existing data for that exact game situation.
I would put forth that the Colts chances of driving 70+ yards are less than 100%.
What did you expect them to do, other than mention it? Send a sideline reporter to pester the refs? Buck and Aikman talked about how GB was out of challenges and how Triplett never went under the hood.
If going for it on 4th and short deep in your own territory are the right decision in this situation, statistically, they are the right decision EVERY time. Interesting coaching strategy.
Can’t believe anyone would defend it even after what happened. Like driving drunk, smashing into a school, and blaming the school. Because 80% of the time you drive drunk, you make it home safely.
Thanks for Storyteller and Varlos for elaborating on the benefits of going for it. Those are the sort of mental calculations I went through quickly when I evaluated (before the play occured) that I had no problem with the call.
In general, “conventional” football is way to conservative. It’s designed to protect the coach’s ass by making it seem like he made the safe decision even when he made the wrong one. Coaches regularly give up a fraction of a chance to win the game in order to deflect fan anger later if they lose. One of the great things about Bellichick is that he doesn’t give a shit about all that, and he can objectively evaluate the merits of going for it even if the fans can’t. So the move he made deviates from the norm - and deviating from the norm and then not having success definitely gets you quite a fan reaction - but it was the smart play given the circumstances.
No, this is overly simplistic. Obviously going for the first down with a lead with 2 minutes left carries certain benefits (ie running out the clock) that doing the same thing in the middle of the first quarter would not. Additionally you need to factor in how good your team is at converting a 4th and 2 type play, how good their defense is at stopping it, how likely your defense is to stop their offense going 35 yards vs 70 yards, etc. There are many variables that can change whether or not it’s the right decision.
But the variables were all favoring going for it here. The Pats have the best 4th and 2 converting offense in the league. The Colts are as capable of any team of scoring on a 70 yard drive with 2 minutes to work with. Your defense is worn down and isn’t stopping them, and that was just proved by them running a quick scoring drive a few minutes ago, and your defense has not gotten substantial rest since then. New England was likely to convert the 4th and 2 play. The Colts were likely to score if they got the ball again. The specific situation dictated attempting to retain possession of the ball.
It’s kind of stupid to call “heads” when you already know it’s tails, but far be it from me to spoil your fun. It’s not too late to bet on Eight Bells, either.
Are you serious? You’re saying that it’s a bad decision because it didn’t work? I guess Brady shouldn’t have thrown those touchdowns to Moss, since the Pats lose 100% of the time that he throws those exact passes.
And how are you supposed to know it’s tails before the coin is flipped?
Your position here is roughly equivelant to saying “it’s a rigged coin that you know will come up heads 75% of the time and tails 25% of the time. But it ended up coming up tails this time, so you’re an idiot for calling heads beforehand”
This is exactly the sort of illogical results oriented thinking I was talking about.
Come on, you must know what the problem with this is. You can’t just judge a decision based solely on what *did *happen. You have to consider what could have happened. Taking your approach leads to absurd conclusions. If a guy wakes up, walks out the door on his way to work, then immediately gets flattened by an out of control bus, then, according to your logic, he was an idiot for even getting out of bed.
The Patriots lose every time they play the Indianapolis Colts at Lucas Oil Stadium in 2009. Why did they even bother to show up?