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WTF was Belechump Thinking??????
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Did he have money on the Colts? If he did, did he realize New England still beat the spread? Idiot!
A play call like that would have gotten Zorn or Mangini fired on the spot. But the Genius in the Hoodie gets the benefit of the doubt! Well, not from Rodney Harrison, and not from me!
A play call like that would have gotten Zorn or Mangini fired on the spot. But the Genius in the Hoodie gets the benefit of the doubt! Well, not from Rodney Harrison, and not from me!
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<< <i>he was clearly distracted
>>
At least THAT is a logical explanation.
and his offense to go for it. How many times would they make a 4th and two?
50%? 60%? 70%?? Maybe he just didn't want the Colts to touch the ball again?
VCL - I am mesmerized by that video - Can't stop watching it!
BTW: Cubby=Cub Fan
The Jones-Drew was strange to you???? It's this mentality that makes me want to punch something!
Let's see, he could have scored, and allowed the Jets to come back down the field and score a tying or winning TD....OR....he could take a knee and they could kick a 20-yd FG to win the game with no time on the clock.
Hmmm....let's see - an NFL kicker makes a 20-yd FG 99% of the time....the chances of the Jags stopping the Jets from moving down the field for a TD? Much less than 99%, probably closer to 50-60%. Hell, even if they stop the Jags 95% of the time, kicking the FG is the right play.
I'll take my 99% odds every day of the week and twice on Sunday. MJD's kneel down was brilliant - just like Westbrook's kneel down a couple years ago was brilliant...and just like Belichick's decision to go for 4th and 2 was brilliant. Every time you make the decision that gives your team the best chance to win, you are playing the game correctly.
<< <i>Because of their position deep in their own territory it was a horrible call. If it was at the 50 then maybe a different story. This call and the Jones Drew thing are 2 of the strangest decisions I've ever seen in football. >>
Agree with the position on the field. At the pats 28 making that call makes no sense. Also by losing that game the Pats are only 1 game up on the Dolphins.
The Jones-Drew call was a great call. The thing thats funny, the Jets were supposed to let Jones-Drew score the play before and they tackled him. Rex Ryan said we can't even get that right!
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<< <i>metsfan - read the thesis at the link below, it will open your eyes....I guarantee Belichick has read this.
Link >>
Read part of it. Economics always made my head swim. I think if more teams went on 4th and short the conversion rates would go down. Also nobody seems to know the % of times Manning guides his team to a td with 2 minutes and the clock and 70 yds to go. Without knowing all the %'s you can't really make a claer choice. You can estimate %'s, but how accurate are the estimates?
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<< <i>
<< <i>metsfan - read the thesis at the link below, it will open your eyes....I guarantee Belichick has read this.
Link >>
Read part of it. Economics always made my head swim. I think if more teams went on 4th and short the conversion rates would go down. Also nobody seems to know the % of times Manning guides his team to a td with 2 minutes and the clock and 70 yds to go. Without knowing all the %'s you can't really make a claer choice. You can estimate %'s, but how accurate are the estimates? >>
Here's what you can be sure of-- someone who has looked into the percentile probability of a particular outcome occuring almost always has a better idea of the actual percentile probability that it will occur than someone who's just guessing. The question isn't 'how accurate are these estimates', the question is 'how accurate are these estimates relative the estimates that others who have done zero research into the subject have made'.
<< <i>Do you really think the Pats chances of their less than average D stopping Manning with 2 minutes left were greater than making a 4th and 2? Really? Have you been watching football the last 10 years? >>
Give it up-- you might as well be speaking Hebrew.
What's going to need to happen in order to see this paradigm shifted is that a forward looking owner-- like a Mark Cuban type-- is going to have to hire an innovative and thick-skinned coach (someone like Mike Leach), and basically tell them 'I want you to make the RIGHT call every time, whether it's the traditional call or not. And I don't care what the press says, or how badly the fans howl, or how much huffing and puffing the opposing team's linebackers do after the game. I will not fire you on the basis of how these decisions affect the performance of the football team."
Until then, there's almost no incentive for coaches to make the right call. A coaches' goal is keep his job-- not to win football games. These two objectives have quite a bit of overlap, but in those cases where they don't overlap the coach isn't going to do what's best for the team; he's going to do what's best for him. An intelligent owner would see this misalignment of incentives, and aggressively work to correct it.
Edit to add: Here's another example of sub-optimal coaching. If you have a bad football team, and you're playing against a very good football team, in many cases you shouldn't make the play that has the highest expected value; you should make the play that gives you the best chance to win. In other words, you should make calls that increase the volatility of the expected results. If you're a 17 pt. underdog, for example, you have about an 8% chance of winning outright (I think-- I haven't checked that number in a long time), yet there are many plays you can call which will increase your average margin of defeat, but at the same time will increase your chances of winning the game.
So, when you lose there's a greater chance you will lose big. But there's also a greater chance of stealing the game. Calls like going for it on almost all fourth downs, bringing six and seven man blitzes, and throwing a ton of deep balls are examples of plays that will increase the variance in the end result at the expense of increasing your expected margin of defeat when you lose. But, in a case like this they would still be correct.
An analogy can be found in the (apocryphal) story of David and Goliath. If David and Goliath were evenly matched, David should not have put all his eggs in one figurative basket, and armed himself with only a slingshot. But since he had no chance of winning in a traditional fight a strategy that increased his chances of winning, but also increased his average margin of defeat when he lost (we can consider the average margin of defeat here as 'the amount of time that elapses before Goliath kills him'), is the right call.
When David misses with the slingshot-- and he will miss often-- he will be killed almost instantaneously. If he arms himself with a shield and a shortsword he'll hang on a bit longer, but is still almost guaranteed to lose. Since to goal isn't to 'hang around as long as possible' (or, getting back to football, to 'lose respectably'), but to actually win the contest, David correctly chose the high-variance play.
It's funny how many football coaches believe in the Bible, yet so few of them have taken to heart that book's most valuable lesson!
There was a time about 15 years ago when teams always punted on the other team's 45 yd line on 4th and 5. Now most teams go for it and aren't questioned. Back then a coach would've taken the same abuse Belichick is taking if they went for it, but now it's accepted because coaches wised up due to it statistically being the correct call. I also believe most other current top-tier coaches (Tomlin, Whisenhunt, Sean Payton) would've gone for it. Reid is probably the one good coach that wouldn't, but most that follow him agree that he's a bad in-game coach (but is great at building a team).
A stupid call is defined by something along the lines of a Steve Marriouchi call several years ago when he won the toss for first possesion in OT and elected to kick in which the opposing team marched right down the field and kicked a FG for the win. That is a stupid call.
As you can probably tell by an inordinate amount of posts by me in the last couple days....I am more fired up about the backlash against the call than anything I have seen in sports in my life. (Actually, I was probably just as fired up when Jeffrey Maier interfered with the Orioles outfielder on the Jeter HR ball in the ALCS - there just wasn't a PSA message board to vent on in those days!)
What makes it 100x worse are those numbskulls on sports radio that are too ignorant to try to understand the logic behind the call and just blast everyone that tries to educate them.
<< <i>I still cant believe how much of a hot topic this call has become, it was not a stupid call like so many are arguing- maybe risky? Im not sure it was anymore risky than giving Manning the ball with plenty of time on the clock and with a tired defense that was getting cutd through like a hot knife through butter the last part of the game.
A stupid call is defined by something along the lines of a Steve Marriouchi call several years ago when he won the toss for first possesion in OT and elected to kick in which the opposing team marched right down the field and kicked a FG for the win. That is a stupid call. >>
That was Marty Morningweg who made that call, and it was without a doubt an excellent decision.
Under average conditions (no wind, rain, etc) the team that receives the ball has just about a 50% of winning the game in overtime. When you account for the fact that by kicking the Lions could force the Bears to deal with what was about a 45 MPH headwind, and the fact that both offenses were inept, the Bears chances of winning were definitely lower than 50% when they received the kick.
What I will say is that I'm surprised that so many people are surprised. Treating 4th down pretty much like any other down has long been a part of the Parcells/Belichick approach.
<< <i>
<< <i>I still cant believe how much of a hot topic this call has become, it was not a stupid call like so many are arguing- maybe risky? Im not sure it was anymore risky than giving Manning the ball with plenty of time on the clock and with a tired defense that was getting cutd through like a hot knife through butter the last part of the game.
A stupid call is defined by something along the lines of a Steve Marriouchi call several years ago when he won the toss for first possesion in OT and elected to kick in which the opposing team marched right down the field and kicked a FG for the win. That is a stupid call. >>
That was Marty Morningweg who made that call, and it was without a doubt an excellent decision.
Under average conditions (no wind, rain, etc) the team that receives the ball has just about a 50% of winning the game in overtime. When you account for the fact that by kicking the Lions could force the Bears to deal with what was about a 45 MPH headwind, and the fact that both offenses were inept, the Bears chances of winning were definitely lower than 50% when they received the kick. >>
My bad I thought it was Marriuchi or whatever his name was.
And I entirely disagree with you about that being a good call.
Assuming the relationship between the distance from the end zone and the probability of scoring a touchdown is linear (don't know if it is, but it's probably close), then going for it on fourth down would have been correct from ANY distance outside of FG range. Whether the Pats were at their own 28, or their own 5, it still would have been the correct call.
And now that I think about it, the closer the Pats are to their own end zone, the more defensible this play would become. By going for it on their own four yard line, for instance, they would almost certainly get the ball back with plenty of time to march down the field and try a FG. By leaving Manning on the Pats' 28, there's a greater chance there won't be much time left if the Colts to score a touchdown. So, while this call may be 'close' when the Pats are on their own 28, it would be a great call at their own 5.
Just Google "4th down conversion" and you'll get a ton of mathematical takes on those types of decisions.
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Grady Little asking Pedro Martinez if he had anything left. He left him in and Boston lost (the Yanks won!), Now that's a bad call! (I'm not a fan of the Red Sox, but that decision by Little really sucked!)
Belichick, on the other hand, knew his defense had nothing left (proven BTW Indy marched in for a score, the series right before!) and had the balls to try to let Brady and the New England offense win this game! (Things didn't work out, ....sheet happens!)
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edit: I liked the call!
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<< <i>Boo - I found this article....looks like a coach has already experimented (successfully) with a no-punt strategy.....
Link >>
That is interesting-- and it's interesting that Mike Leach is the college coach they chose to interview about it. Personally, I think the jury is in on the 4th down issue (not just in the Pats-Colts case, but in general), although it's going to take a coach/management team with brass cherries to finally start optimizing offensive playcalling.
I mean, come on, do you want to make Manning go 28 yds or 70 yds??????? DUH!!!
All it did was put Manning on an ego trip and says you think your defence is SH*T.
Manning is good but not that good!!!!
Take your head out of your A$$ and punt the ball!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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