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            In the most anticipated NFL matchup of Week 10 in the NFL, the Patriots visited the undefeated Colts for the nationally televised Sunday night game.  All eyes were on arguably the two best quarterbacks of this decade in Peyton Manning and Tom Brady.  The other eyes were on the injury-ridden Indianapolis defense which had the task of stopping New England’s always potent 2 dimensional offense.  With all these eyes being distracted by such trivial things, no one expected that the story of the most entertaining game of the year would be focused on a 4th and 2 decision on New England’s 28 yard line from Patriots coach Bill Belichick with under 2 minutes remaining in the game.  In a situation where it’s considered conventional wisdom to punt the ball and make the Colts drive the majority of the length of the field to score a touchdown to win, Belichick decided to show his confidence in his team and simply get the first down to virtually end the game.  After this attempt failed and gave the prolific Peyton Manning and Reggie Wayne a simple 29 yards to score a touchdown, Indianapolis did just that, making the unforgiving and overconfident Belichick cringe, just a little bit. 

            Now that Belichick is widely being considered the goat for maybe the first time in his championship tenure with the Patriots, new defenders of the brash, homeless hoodie wearing coach are emerging.  Deion Sanders of the NFL Network repeatedly spoke of how much he likes Belichick’s swagger in his decision, reminding everyone that if they had only spotted the ball correctly, the play was actually a first down and the game would have been over.  By Monday evening during the collegiate Cleveland Browns game on Monday Night Football, more defenders had surfaced with percentages and probabilities of what usually happens, what should have happened, what happened from 1988 till 2008 in those situations, and what happens on Sunday Night football when a left-footed kicker punts vs. a right-footed one, only to justify Belichick’s losing strategy to virtually give the game away. 

            There is only one stat and percentage that matters here.  The Colts won 35-34 to remain undefeated and Peyton Manning won Sunday Night’s game 100% of the time that Belichick decided to go for a first down when he should have punted.  Whatever happened in the previous 235 games in the NFL means nothing.  Whatever probability that the Colts had to move the ball an unknown distance down the field is pointless since the punt that would have been caught, fumbled, landed, bounced, or fair caught doesn’t exist. 

All the probability buffs need to stop defending Bill Belichick’s gutsy decision to try to wrap up the game with numbers that don’t have any validity b/c the game had to be played to determine the winner.  Should we just skip the next game and decide the score and yardage gained by each team based off of what happened the past 10 years with probabilities and percentages?  I’ve decided to call this what it was; a fearless choice to win the game without giving the other team a chance to do it themselves.  It backfired, therefore Bill Belichick made the WRONG decision on November 15th, 2009 in Indianapolis as he coached the New England Patriots.  Nothing else in the past affected it.

 

--JJJ
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