POLL: What was Belichick's worst in-game decision this season?

The Dolphins game, all of it. Threw away a Lamar Hunt trophy that day.

I picked the Dolphins pre-season game execution fiasco, but some others....

- Resting a good to go Amendola for the first Denver game, leaving Brady with only Gronk, Chandler, Bolden and LaFell as his offensive weapons.....
- Sending undrafted rookie Chris Harper out to catch a punt in the snow, when Patrick Chung just caught one with ease a series prior
- Resting starters for the final games when one win seals the #1 seed and just expecting everyone who was being rested to just come out firing on all cylinders for the playoffs.
- Making an undrafted rookie in Kevin Snyder, who's been on the team for a week, active over Offensive Line depth in either Waddle or Jackson....this one to me is really underrated, especially when it became apparent that Canon was useless and there was no real sub.

Coaching was the difference this season between a second consecutive Super Bowl berth or an embarrassing loss to old man Manning in Denver....

Kicking off in overtime was the dumbest singular move there.

But the entire Dolphins game was the worst called game of BB's Patriot career if you ask me. Play-calling alone in that game alone ultimately cost this team a Super Bowl appearance.

An absolutely bizarre game-plan and lack of any apparent urgency/desire to CLINCH THE ****ING #1 SEED against a bad Dolphins team with a lame duck interim coach.

I still look back at that game and have no idea what the **** they were thinking. There was no positives to that game, there was no defense of anything that happened in that game, it was a "Uh.....I guess Belichick doesn't care about the #1 seed?".

That game was legit played like a pre-season game when everything was on the line.

Alright, I've made this post enough today I suppose. Just really had to get out of my system how ****ing pissed I am at how this team seemed to have 0 interest in clinching the #1 seed when it was right in their hands.

As ****ty as the Eagles game was, at least they appeared to be fighting and just got too cute for their own good. The Dolphins game just showed 0 indication they gave a **** about winning.

Look, BBs track record speaks for itself.... But this was not his best season. Lots of bad decisions

Injuries led to the coaching staff losing their minds for 40% of the season. That wacky thinking effected this game as well. Coin toss, decisions not to kick field goals. It was a bizarre season.

I worship Belichick but I think if you got him alone he'd be the first to admit this was not his best season.

Just as he evaluates every position in the offseason, I think he may reevaluate some of his decisions and tactics for next year.

i think the eagles game was the worst, and talking about special teams.
If u invest heavily in special teams. Slater, King and ST lose games, that suck.

But the worst decision was making this year OLINE. I think that they were missing Tree Jackson, but if he is healthy and Mason and Kline were playing before him, then we can forget about 2016. No run game, cmon.

I remember being more pissed about the conservative play to end the half against NY and Denver so I'm going with that

pheenix11 said:

I worship Belichick but I think if you got him alone he'd be the first to admit this was not his best season.

Just as he evaluates every position in the offseason, I think he may reevaluate some of his decisions and tactics for next year.

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I wonder if all the worrying about injuries and plugging new guys into the team took away some time from his process? While I don't know what his typical "process" is, the deflategate nonsense and all the injuries must have taken their toll on his focus. Belichick is a great coach, but not a God. He can't block out everything.

12-4/13-5 was remarkable with all the injuries and the loss Revis and let's give Belichick credit for that. Winning back-to-back Super Bowls is extremely hard and the obstacles this season are cases in point. More than anything, though, I think the biggest problem facing the Patriots was one of motivation versus their opponents. The Broncos just wanted it more. You could see Manning, for the first time I can remember against Brady, just seeming to have the emotional edge. You could see the fire in his eyes, whereas Brady didn't look hyped up or angry - he just looked "meh." "Meh" doesn't win trophies.

Not sure I have the aptitude to read players eyes.. but I do believe that the lack of execution by players on the field who were usually overmatched for the last 8 games finally caught up to them.

There will be 8 months of nitpicking about what BB should or should not have done, games will be replayed ad infinitum.. but if you were to examine every team and every opportunity they missed on the human factor is obvious..

To blame BB or to blame aspects of this team is somewhat folly as there is a lot of blame to share, if there is a need to play the blame game..

Flip a coin man *no pun intended*, belichick really disappointed me this season with some of his decisions. Great thread tho and great nominations.

A little outside the box because it happened in a win, but the onside kick against the Redskins was the dumbest onside kick I've ever seen. Zero good reason for it. At least during the Eagles game you can argue that they were missing offensive pieces and also it was a "long" onside kick.

Bill was super aggressive at points this year and super conservative at others. I'm not as frustrated with him as a lot of other fans. I do hate most of his challenges though.

Todd Bradley said:

- Resting a good to go Amendola for the first Denver game, leaving Brady with only Gronk, Chandler, Bolden and LaFell as his offensive weapons.....

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Amendola never was fully healthy after he injured his knee but whatever..

Todd Bradley said:

Sending undrafted rookie Chris Harper out to catch a punt in the snow, when Patrick Chung just caught one with ease a series prior

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Blame that one on the ST Coordinator not BB. After all the interviews and documentaries where all the coordinators marvel about how much BB lets them do their thing I see no reason why this should be on BB. Harper should have been instructed to call for a fair catch no matter what but even without the instruction he should have called it when he saw the Denver gunner racing unblocked for him.

Todd Bradley said:

Resting starters for the final games when one win seals the #1 seed and just expecting everyone who was being rested to just come out firing on all cylinders for the playoffs.

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Calculated risk that didn't pay off.

My problem is you are making it somehow sound like we were resting healthy players while what we were really doing is giving dinged up players more time to recover and work through their various issues.

But yes sure we could have won at least the Miami game but if e.g. Hightower reaggravates his knee injury against them and is not available in the post season and the Broncos run all over us the coaching staff will be attacked because they used dinged up starters in an almost meaningless game.

Todd Bradley said:

Making an undrafted rookie in Kevin Snyder, who's been on the team for a week, active over Offensive Line depth in either Waddle or Jackson....this one to me is really underrated, especially when it became apparent that Canon was useless and there was no real sub.

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What nerve does BB have to activate depth LB players over injured players that couldn't have played anyway. Jackson was only back for a single practice this week and Waddle has had some severe issue that kept him limited in practice for weeks now.

Before you ask why they are not IR'd both might have been fine for the SB with another 2 weeks of rest and I doubt it is easy to find good enough free agent OL player in the postseason and get them up to speed in time for them to be any help in this scenario. Also conveniently we lost a LB this week so this might be yet another reason why Snyder was active.

Todd Bradley said:

Coaching was the difference this season between a second consecutive Super Bowl berth or an embarrassing loss to old man Manning in Denver

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In hindsight the coaching staff expected too much from Jackson, Mason and Kline. In a way we kinda set our failure in motion during TC/the early part of the season when we didn't sign more quality depth at Guard when we lost Wendell for the season and Connelly retired. Then when Solder went to IR any stability that could have been given by our two tackles was also gone. We played many games with 3 rookies in the interior of the OL. That usually doesn't end well especially with day2/day3 rookies that are often not primetime ready.

So if anything I think we can criticize BB and DeGuglielmo for not recognizing the severity of OL issues and do something around the trade deadline to get more quality depth.

Concussion Protocol said:

A little outside the box because it happened in a win, but the onside kick against the Redskins was the dumbest onside kick I've ever seen. Zero good reason for it. At least during the Eagles game you can argue that they were missing offensive pieces and also it was a "long" onside kick.

Bill was super aggressive at points this year and super conservative at others. I'm not as frustrated with him as a lot of other fans. I do hate most of his challenges though.

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Another one that gets blamed on BB even though I wouldn't be surprised if it was Joe Judge's idea. There were so many issues with special teams this year that I would not be surprised if his position will be reevaluated over the offseason.

he could have made a move at the trade deadline for a tackle since solder was shelved previous to then.

Pessimistic Pete said:

Kicking off in overtime was the dumbest singular move there.

But the entire Dolphins game was the worst called game of BB's Patriot career if you ask me. Play-calling alone in that game alone ultimately cost this team a Super Bowl appearance.

An absolutely bizarre game-plan and lack of any apparent urgency/desire to CLINCH THE ****ING #1 SEED against a bad Dolphins team with a lame duck interim coach.

I still look back at that game and have no idea what the **** they were thinking. There was no positives to that game, there was no defense of anything that happened in that game, it was a "Uh.....I guess Belichick doesn't care about the #1 seed?".

That game was legit played like a pre-season game when everything was on the line.

Alright, I've made this post enough today I suppose. Just really had to get out of my system how ****ing pissed I am at how this team seemed to have 0 interest in clinching the #1 seed when it was right in their hands.

As ****ty as the Eagles game was, at least they appeared to be fighting and just got too cute for their own good. The Dolphins game just showed 0 indication they gave a **** about winning.

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I couldn't have said it better myself.

The only wild conspiracy I can think of is............"When the Pats lose in the playoffs we fans always seem to complain that the team had their worst performance during the last game of the season."

Well, the pathetic Miami game solidified the fact that it wouldn't be the last game of the season as the worst (just the last game of the regular season).

I recall BillB's motto as, always take the points...

2 FG attempts were ignored.

bump

Miami was the worst coached game I've seen by Bill.

Passing only 5 times in the first half.
Throwing deep bombs repeatedly in the second half on third down when we dont have a deep threat and dont need to make a deep play.
Resting starters
Giving up down by 10 with 2.5 min left -- We've won games down by 2 scores and 2 minutes left.

If they were going to play the game the way they did, they should've just played Jimmy the whole game, and kept Gronk off the field.