TYPICAL WESLEYANIC FOOLISHNESS: List all the coaches in NFL history who could make the call to go for it from 4th and 2 on his own 28 with 2:08 on the clock, up 6, and not have his sanity and professional credentials sharply in question. Call it, ALOTT5MA -- was Bill Belichick appropriately aggressive given Manning's talents (and the timeout situation), only to have his risky move fail ... or was this one of the more heedless decisions you've ever seen since the days of Barry Switzer?
added: Football Outsiders does their weekly roundtable, ("I think Belichick was wrong to go for it, and you don't know what effect the decision to go for it had on the defense's morale, but wasn't he somewhat vindicated by the fact that the defense rolled over on the 30-yards?"), and Pro-Football-Reference does some math: "To assign some final probabilities to the situation, punting would give the Pats a roughly 60% chance to win (ignoring things like blocked punts, quick IND scores followed by NE scores, etc.). Going for it would give the Pats a 70% chance to win (60% chance to win following a successful 4th-down play, and a 1-in-4 chance of stopping the Colts the other 40% of the time). While we're using very fuzzy math here, I doubt you can come up with convincing math that says it was overwhelmingly a bad call to go for it here."
Also: the math's been automated. I'm starting to believe it was the right call.
No comments:
Post a Comment