Colts could still have gotten the ball back with ~30 seconds to play. With Manning that isn’t an impossible win situation. Unlikely, but more than 0.
Why are you assuming the Patriots would have won if they punted?
BTW it isn’t just Belicheck knows math. He also knows that his job is safe no matter what. Most coaches don’t have that luxury.
No one’s denying the existence of the bad possible outcome. It was a risk. The question is whether it was one worth taking.
If you think it was a bad decision because you don’t think New England makes the 1st down often enough, or because the difference in field position between a punt and a failed conversion is so huge that it outweighs the possibility of winning the game right then and there, then that’s fine. It’s just a case where we disagree about the percentages involved, and we’re in a position where we can challenge each other’s assumptions and potentially come to an understanding.
Just please acknowledge that, sometimes, good gambles don’t payoff.
I don’t think *that * was a good gamble.
He thinks it was a bad decision because he can’t acknowledge the fact that conventional wisdom is not always correct.
Look at it this way, cricetus: would you rather put the ball in the hands of your best player, a guy who always finds a way to pick up 4 yards when you need 3 - or put in Peyton Manning’s, a guy who can lead his team to a touchdown in the last two minutes of a half with his eyes closed?
Why are you assuming I’m assuming that?
And sometimes bad ones do.
I think it was a bad decision. I like Manning, but for fucks sake, he’s not superman. I’d rather have him have to go 70 yards than 30, especially in a game where he’s thrown 2 ints already.
But it’s Bellicheat, so it was defacto genius.
Thanks for dissecting my psychological reasons for deciding that a bone-headed game-losing football call is a bad decision. I thought it was because “they lost” but now I understand it is my own pathalogical fear of anything that isn’t lock-step with my rigid upbringing. I’m sure the fact I though the refs made a good call betray my passionate fealty to authority figures. Go ahead, push it… only a little bit further to the Nazi meme.
“Always.” ha ha ha ha.
Do you understand what we’re saying in concept?
Let’s reduce the situation to some numbers I’m pulling out of my ass (but are not unreasonable)
If the Patriots have a 75% chance of converting the first down there and winning, or they punt and Manning has a 50% chance of scoring a touchdown if they punt, you understand that going for it is the right decision, right?
Let’s make this even more extreme. Let’s say there’s a 99% chance the Pats successfully convert this 4th and 2, and there’s a 99% chance that Manning will score if he gets his hands on the ball again. In that case you can understand why it’s correct to punt, right? Even if it turns out that the Pats are unlucky and they fail to convert because they rolled a 1-100 die and it came up 1, that doesn’t make it a bad decision.
I’m asking you if you understand this in concept because you are simply coming to different conclusions about the relative chances, or if (as it seems) you fundamentally don’t understand that people should not be punished for failing to predict the outcome of a somewhat random event?
I think the Patriots made a bigger mistake than the 4th and 2 call, but no one noticed. 2 plays later, Addai ran 13 yards and was stopped at the 1 yard line with about 1:12 to play. In that situation, the best play would have been to let Addai score because I can’t imagine the likelihood of stopping the Colts from getting 1 yard in that situation was much over 10%. If the Pats got the ball back with 1-plus minutes left, their odds of getting into field goal range and making it are certainly higher than 10%.
I know the conventional wisdom would be to let the defense try and win the game. But really, stopping Manning from getting 1 yard in four tries is pretty darn futile.
I actually agree with that too, but I’ve never seen a coach that had the balls to deliberately let the other team score, even when it was the right thing to do.
Because you are arguing that it was a bad decision because it failed. However, it is entirely possible that if the Pats punted that would have failed too. In that case, in a results based analyst, the decision would not have bad, but rather neutral as the Pats would have lost either way. So if you arguing it was a bad decision based on the fact it failed, you are implying the other choice would have worked out better, something we cannot know.
Yes. Just because your ham-handed number crunching fails to convince me, doesn’t mean I am too stupid to grasp the concept.
I think perhaps the real problem is that you’ve all decided that the Colts score no matter what. There is a vast difference between 70 yards and 30 yards. Manning had thrown two INTs already.
And there is a psychological component where you blow a fourth down conversion like that. It affected the Colts and the Pats. Everybody knew the pooch was screwed. That’s not numbers stuff, it’s psychological stuff. Coaches don’t tell their defenses “I don’t trust you to stop them from getting 70 yards. No get out there and stop them from going 25.”
Holmgren did it in the Super Bowl, IIRC.
Then why were all of your early posts along the line of “well, obviously it didn’t work, therefore it was a bad decision” type stuff?
Yeah, and punting there tells your great offense that you don’t trust them to gain 2 yards. It works both ways.
No better way to evaluate a decision than the outcome, but I would have called it a boneheaded decision anyway because of the potential for that outcome.
The real difference in opinion here is that you all seem to think the Colts score no matter what. Short field, long field. No difference. Manning is some kind of invincible god.
You’re not telling them that, then sending them out to get four.
Because I was astounded at the people who were arguing that it was a good call despite the evidence against it. It wasn’t like some flukey thing happened and the Colts happened to win. It was a realy forseeable outcome.
He doesn’t need to be an invincible god.
What he does need to be is more likely to score on his next possession than 100-(the pats chance to convert).
If the Pats convert 75% of the time, and Manning scores a TD after a punt 25.00001% of the time, then the correct choice is to punt. (for the sake of simplicity, this assumes the pats win after a conversion).
It’s actually more stacked than that, because the raw data you need is not the chance Manning will score after a punt, but the chance he will not score after a point minus the chance he’ll score after a turnover on downs.
Yes, I can see that you do not indeed understand what we’re trying to say, because the “evidence against it” in your book is “look what happened!”
It wouldn’t have been flukey at all either if the Colts had gotten the ball back with 2 minutes to play and went down and scored either. That’s a forseeable outcome… even moreso than the Pats not converting a 4th and 2.
You are not looking at the percentages of scoring from 70 yards against a motivated Pats D as any different from scoring from 30 against a shell-shocked, deflated D. That’s the problem.