From Mike Reiss of ESPNBoston.com:
FOXBOROUGH -- The morning after a heartbreaking loss to the Colts, coach Bill Belichick revisited his risky decision to go for it on fourth down while also detailing the Patriots' uncharacteristic struggles in burning valuable timeouts.
APBill Belichick
Belichick repeated what he said Sunday night, saying that he felt the decision to go for it on fourth-and-2 from the Patriots' 28-yard line, with 2:08 remaining, gave the team the best chance to win.
Would he do it again?
"You only get one chance," Belichick said, avoiding the question.
The explosive Colts offense was surely a factor in the decision, as they had covered 79 yards on six plays, in 1:49, on their previous drive. Earlier in the fourth quarter, they had another 79-yard touchdown drive, in just 2:04. Belichick lauded the Colts' Reggie Wayne, who scored the game-winning touchdown, the best receiver we cover every year."
As for the Patriots' late-game breakdown, Belichick explained the struggles with wasting timeouts, which for a team that prides itself on acing those situations were uncharacteristic mistakes.
I'm not going to say he made the "right" call, but am of the opinion that people are overreacting on how logical or reasonable it was. Pure unemotional calculus says it was at least equal to punting, and being that the O was hotter than the D it made sense. The logic - whether you agree or not, and I'm on the fence - is that if the Colts get the ball they will score. A sad thing to say about your own D, but they were gassed and didn't look very good. Conversely it says a lot about confidence in the O. I believe the logic goes like this:
You convert you win.
You don't, Colts score with short field and you get the ball back with x minute: seconds left.
You punt, Colts score with long field and run out the clock.
A foreseen but "in-betweener" branch is that you don't and Colts run down the clock on the short field. This is what happened, and the worst players' decision was to tackle Addai on the 1 or 2 yard line.
It borders on a no-brainer. You win games with your Hall of Famers on the field. You lose games when the other team's Hall of Famers are on the field. Unless they were planning on putting in Tom Brady at LB and Randy Moss at CB, going for it was obvious. They'd been converting 3rd and short all night long, and on defense, the floodgates had opened.
Nov 16, 2009
05:03 PM
I'm not going to say he made the "right" call, but am of the opinion that people are overreacting on how logical or reasonable it was. Pure unemotional calculus says it was at least equal to punting, and being that the O was hotter than the D it made sense. The logic - whether you agree or not, and I'm on the fence - is that if the Colts get the ball they will score. A sad thing to say about your own D, but they were gassed and didn't look very good. Conversely it says a lot about confidence in the O. I believe the logic goes like this:
You convert you win.
You don't, Colts score with short field and you get the ball back with x minute: seconds left.
You punt, Colts score with long field and run out the clock.
A foreseen but "in-betweener" branch is that you don't and Colts run down the clock on the short field. This is what happened, and the worst players' decision was to tackle Addai on the 1 or 2 yard line.