primetime
Pro Bowl Player
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2005
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Were you also surprised that they went for it on 4th and 5 from the thirty-five? To me, that seems like an easy decision for a field goal attempt. Similar to a bizarre fourth (and I think 11) in SB42, the team opted to go for it rather than attempting a 50+ yard field goal. I'm not sure why these decisions are different in the Super Bowl, but in the regular season I imagine they attempt the field goal. I realize they don't want to give the opponent a short field, but the best way to do that is to take your best odds of success (field goal, 75%) over converting a fourth down play which is fairly difficult and likely somewhere around 50%.
The interesting thing is that both were in practically identical situations, separated by the Eagles' 3-and-out after the missed FG. It was 9-3 in both cases, more than 10 minutes left in the second quarter. I agree, it's completely unclear to me why you'd kick it in the first instance and go for it in the other. You might make an argument that the second drive went for three plays and therefore they wanted to give the defense some time to catch its breath, but that's a little too five-dimensional chess for my liking and doesn't make a ton of sense in the 2nd quarter in any case.
A more likely scenario, though it involves some projection, is that McDaniels and Belichick were angry like all of us were that their little trick throw to Brady didn't work and wanted to erase that. Or that after Gostkowski missed that field goal, they were worried that he was in his head. Or some combination of both.