
Bill Belichick will be second-guessed forever
If you’re a football fan, heck, even if you’re NOT a football fan, you’ve probably heard more about Patriot Coach Bill Belichick’s decision to go for it on 4th down from his own 29 against the Colts Sunday night than you care to. He’s generally getting hammered for it but the argument against him is mostly first level thinking… and it also obscures what I think should have been the MUCH bigger issue coming out of that Sunday night game.
We’ll get to that in a minute, but first let’s deal with the decision to go for it. Most people seem to think it’s a simple matter of “You don’t go for it on 4th down in your own territory.” That’s the extent of the argument. Period. But it’s not nearly that simple.
I think we can all agree that the purpose of the exercise in this spot is to win the game. Right? I mean, no matter what happens from here on out the goal for the Patriots is to win the game. Let’s do some simple math then to determine the best way to go about doing that.
1) What percentage of the time do the Patriots get the first down? I’ve heard some estimate 2/3 of the time, or 67% ish. Let’s say that’s a little high, let’s go with 60%.
2) What percentage of the time the Patriots don’t get the first down do the Colts score from the Pats 29-yard-line? A ton, right? Like, let’s say 90%. I think that might be a little high… but I’m not even sure. So in other words, of the 40% of the time the Pats fail to get the first down, 10% of that time they’ll stop the Colts and still win anyway, so an additional 4% total (10% of 40%).
3) Now, let’s suppose the Patriots decide to punt, giving the Colts the ball at their own 30 (40 yard net punt) with two minutes remaining. What percentage of the time do Peyton Manning and the Colts drive for the winning TD? Well, they’ve scored two TDs already in the 4th, the Pats defense looks a big gassed and Manning is very good in this situation. So what, 40%? That seems like as low as it should go right? That means that 60% of the time, the Pats will win by punting.
So, we’ve just decided that if the Patriots go for it on 4th down they’ll win 64% of the time (60% of the time get it, 4% of the time stop Colts anyway) and if they punt they’ll win 60% of the time (the other 40% of the time the Colts drive down for the game-winning TD.)
Well, 64% > 60% yes? Again, throw your preconceived notions about when you do/don’t go for it on 4th down. The exercise here is to find the best way to win the game. It seems to me at a minimum it’s a breakeven proposition. If anything, the percentage of time the Colts score from the Pats 29 is probably a little lower than 90% and the chances they score from their own 30 is probably a touch higher than 40%, which would combine to make going for it the even better call.
EDIT: Gregg Easterbrook takes up this argument in his excellent TMQ column on ESPN.com
Now that it’s been discussed ad nauseum (and I’ve ended the discussion with my math above :p) let’s move to the more important issue that should come out of that dramatic finish:
The NFL replay system is woefully broken.
For years I’ve been saying the college system (booth replay officials who essentially review everything without coaches challenges) has it right. They buzz the referee when they want to look at something and by the time the ref gets to the sideline they typically have a decision and we’re moving forward. The NFL replay system causes massive delays in which tons of time is wasted before the referee even gets to the hood to START reviewing the play.
But what’s really awful is that in many NFL games, we actually get to a point in the game, crunch time, the most important part of the game, when the coaches CAN’T challenge because they’ve either run out of challenges or don’t have any timeouts. This is ridiculous. And this game was a prime example.
On the 4th down play (if you’re reading this, I’m assuming you’ve seen it multiple times), Tom Brady stuck his pass into the hands of Kevin Faulk at about the 30.5 yard line, a .5 yard ahead of the first down marker. Faulk immediately gets hit and juggles the ball for a brief moment before securing it and being knocked backward to about the 29 (a yard SHORT of the first down marker). The official spots the ball at the 29, saying despite his forward momentum being stopped at the 30.5, he didn’t truly secure the ball until he fell at the 29.
Well, if you watch the replay, two things become readily apparent.
- Kevin Faulk did indeed juggle the ball briefly.
- He secured it long before he fell to the ground at the 29.
I mean, this is the play of all plays in the game. If he got to the 30, it’s a first down and the Pats win, closing the gap in the race for home field in the post-season between them and the Colts to one game. If he didn’t, the Pats turn it over on downs and the Colts win, extending their record to 9-0 and essentially guaranteeing any future post-season match-up with the Pats will happen in Indy. Everything rests on this decision. So let’s review it!
Oh wait. It’s outside the 2:00 mark so it’s not an automatic review. And Bill Belichick has no timeouts left (a coaching blunder for sure) so he can’t challenge it. Oops. Oh well.
WHAAAAAAAT? How can no one have a problem with that? How can anyone say “Oh well, them’s the breaks!”
If it was the college system, they would’ve reviewed it, gotten it right and moved on. But in the NFL, nope, no review! Now honestly, having seen the angles I have, it would’ve been a crazy close call. I’m not sure if Faulk got it… in fact, I don’t think he did… but that’s irrelevant. It had to be reviewed.
It’s a system that not only gets things wrong at the end of the game, but forces coaches to make awkward decisions during earlier part of the game. Do you want to burn a challenge on a first half call that the officials badly butchered? It should be a no-brainer yes, but with this system you have to take into account the possibility that you’ll need that challenge later. That should never be a consideration when faced with a clearly bad call.
So we can argue about whether Bill Belichick got his call right or not… but I know for sure the NFL continues to get the replay idea wrong.