Super Bowl XLIX Carroll/Belichick prolepsis

That was an amazing video clip thanks for posting. Who wasn't thinking of Butler there while he was talking, and the fact that they had practiced the exact play where he made the pic?

bormio said:

Must be a Harvard word.

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Damn, and I went to Yale!

The next time my wife says I'm being obstinate about something, I'm showing her this thread for some perspective.

mosslost said:

Everyone is soo naive and homerish on this issue.

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LOL. The outcome shows incontrovertibly that BB made exactly the right mistake at exactly the right time. How's that for homerism?

Palm Beach Pats Fan said:

Damn, and I went to Yale!

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Dartmouth here.

mosslost said:

Not calling that time out was the biggest mistake BB ever made. It was a no brainer to call the timeout, and could have cost the Patriots a shot at the Super Bowl. He did get bailed out on that one in 49. Sorry, just a football fact.

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I have to agree it was a massive mistake but certainly not his biggest. To me, it's his third biggest mistake. Clearly, selecting T Brady is his biggest, he got bailed out on that one with a bit of half decent QB play, but a huge mistake nonetheless. His second biggest mistake imo was going for two at the end of regulation in this past SB. DA only just got in, would have been better going onsides after the XP there.

Three huge mistakes which he's been bailed out on, which don't get the attention they should do.

mosslost said:

>>Belichick deciding not to call a timeout rushed the Seahawks and led to Seattle's decision to pass the ball. Seattle decided to pass the ball because w/out the timeout from Belichick they may not of had time to get 3 runs in if need be. So Carroll explained that he called the pass to make sure they could use all 3 chances to score.

This entire part was pure and utter blind luck. The fact is that BB greatly reduced the likelihood and the percentages of the Pats chances to win the game when he did not call the timeout. It is just a football fact. The odds were very high that the Seahawks would score there, and hence Brady needed time to get into field goal range, so BB made a wrong decision if the interest was to have the highest chance of being able to win the game. He just got bailed out and I am glad he did.

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If time on the clock was all that mattered than hightower should have just let him walk into the endzone once he got to the one. Then we would have had 1.21 on the clock. It was a calculated risk that paid off. You say blind luck... others feel differently. If you want to argue it was a low percentage gamble thats fine.. but when one of the greatest coaches of all time with the resume he has makes that call baised on a set of variables that we know nothing about i tend to give him the benefit of the doubt. You can feel free to be so certain that it was a blunder.. i am sure your steadfast opinion isnt keeping Bill B up at night.

NFW it was blind luck. Luck was involved, but BB does nothing blindly. He knew the odds, threw the dice and took his chances.

The point of view expressed in this thread is the biggest case of arrogance ever posted here. Thats just a football fact.

But seriously dude, its 51/49% either way... there's a case for calling the TO, there's a case for keeping the pressure. He went with his gut, and it worked out. The whole part about being so sure he was wrong, is just nuts.

I just read in Men's Health that the first sign of declining testosterone in men, strongly correlated with male menopausal penile shrinkage, is doubting Bill Belicheck's genius. Check it out, ladies.

mosslost said:

Everyone is soo naive and homerish on this issue.

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Ok, now you're just being a Richard on this topic.

Regards,
Chris

If the Pats didn't win 5 Super Bowls, Belichick and Brady would be 0-7 in Super Bowls.

Don't know about prolepsis (or even what it means, and many eons ago I scored over 800 on the verbal section of the GRE when that was still possible), but I'm pretty sure the play resulted in a Carrol prolapse.

mosslost said:

Everyone is soo naive and homerish on this issue.

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No, implying that league averages somehow signify objective correctness demonstrates a failure to grasp statistics and football in general.

It is very easy to think of times when breaking trend increases winning %. Going for more 2pters if you have a significant short yardage advantage is just one example.

More important to this discussion is sample size. For instance, the evidence that teams should go for more 4th downs is robust, but it is most useful over a full season. Narrow down to a single game and the data is much less predictive and it is virtually useless for single plays. All it can do is contribute a small, non-situational average into a larger algorithm.

Your argument is makes the same equivocation error as someone who uses season long 4th down data to complain about a single attempt.

bbobbo said:

if the "right" course of action is just to do whatever has the highest odds of success/winning, then teams might as well not have human coaches and just let computer programs decide all of the play calls, timeouts, challenges, etc.
.

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Forgive my pedantry, but this is precisely what every coach tries to do. I think you meant to say, "highest odds of success according to league averages"... and if so, I totally agree.

The idea for the play seems to be ascribed to Ernie Adams, at 5:49:

Here's a nice excerpt from The Education of a Coach (p. 39) about Ernie Adams at Andover:

That Adams was football obsessed had been obvious from the time he had arrived at Andover and had sat in the back of some of his classes - more often than not science classes - and had pleased the teacher by seeming to be the most diligent and enthusiastic note taker in the class. Sadly, it would turn out, and much to the irritation of the teacher, these were not science notes but turned out to be sketches where eleven Xs took on eleven Os. In time the teacher notified Helen Adams, Ernie's mother. She was not surprised because Ernie's housemaster, Hale Sturges, had already written her of his own concerns about the narrowness of her son's interest: "I wish he would expand his horizons. His interest in football has assumed such proportions that it seems to be closing doors on other areas of endeavour."

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The "something just didn't look right" quote is at 2:39 in the above video; the timeout discussion starts at 2:29

betterthanthealternative said:

Did you watch the documentary where he goes through his thinking at the time? How he went through the pro's and con's in real time, and saw the other sideline in disarray and decided to press the issue? How they had Seattle's goal line offense extremely well diagrammed?

The idea that any of us neophytes could even begin to make a judgment about that, from this distance, is just absurd.

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They practiced against the play the Seahawks ran on the Butler pick and then Belichick forced Carroll into running it by going 8 big with 3 corners. Belichick is the best in game coach of all time because everything is a situation and he is ready for every one of them.

mosslost said:

Not bizarre at all. They needed to call that timeout so Brady would have had enough time to get in field goal range. It was the basic and obvious fact. BB admitted he was sort of gambling. And you are lying that you were not yelling at the TV to take a timeout as everyone was. Watch every youtube of the end of the game of Pats fans watching. Praising BB over it is silly. He got lucky. Majorly

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You're right. I was yelling at my TV for him to take the timeout. But that doesn't mean I was right... As has been posted in this thread several times, BB saw something and using his knowledge and experience made a decision based on the facts at hand. He made the correct decision. For you to state that it is a FACT that he made the wrong decision is presumptuous at best or downright arrogant at worst.

Really, if the goal was to conserve time to score the tying field goal, the strategy would have been to allow Lynch to score on 1st down, then keep the timeout for the offense.

If the goal was to let them score and score the tying field goal they shouldn't have pushed Kearse out of bounds.

Only in a very rare set of conditions do you ever willingly let an opponent score. When you tell your defense to stop playing for awhile sometimes they forget to start again when you need them. Never let your players take a play off if you can help it.

Ivan said:

They practiced against the play the Seahawks ran on the Butler pick and then Belichick forced Carroll into running it by going 8 big with 3 corners. Belichick is the best in game coach of all time because everything is a situation and he is ready for every one of them.

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I hate to nitpick, but the defense reacted to the play, that's why they sent Butler out at the last minute when they saw 3 wide receiver package on the goal line. It just so happens Carroll chose the play that was most successful for them on the goal line and the Pats had picked that up and practiced it. And the Seahawks were right, it was a high percentage play. If it was anyone else other than Browner on the line against Kearse, Butler would have been rubbed and the Seahawks would have scored and probably won the Superbowl that year.

The stars aligned perfectly that day.