Malcolm Butler sort of talks about his SB benching

[Huckleberry1]

If he is not talking
Then it is something he did that was bad enough that he wants to just explain it as a “coaches decision”
Otherwise you stand on top of a building and scream as loud as you can

He has acknowledged it was his fault. He was pissed they were going to use him in the slot because he believed it would hurt his free agent value, then he pretended to be sick for a week, then he got into a physical altercation with a coach. Tough decision by Belichick but it is what it is.

 

[JohnJH]

Whatever it is, he’s too ashamed to admit it publicly. And BB is keeping it hush-hush too. But there’s simply no way his benching was done to give the team a better chance at winning. Even if Butler was having a down season, he was better than having Rowe on an island all night. BB made a personal decision instead of a football decision, which was uncharacteristic for someone who was so emotionally detached and cerebral when it came to football operations. I’ll always love both BB and Butler, but this was a failure on both their parts and it cost them. I do wish Butler would man up and admit what he did to piss off BB, but I doubt we’ll ever know.

It always bothered me about his benching. That game had 2 defenses that were not really able to stop each other. The game came down to whichever offense makes the one key play, or, whichever defense makes one key play. Until I know otherwise, Butler having started and played through that game from the beginning may have been at least part of that one key play that the defense could have made that won us that SB. Yes, I know that an alternate argument could be rightly made. But that's where I stand on that issue. Whatever it was, it clearly wasn't something that turned into a criminal and/or civil law issue, nor was there NFL action taken against him. I subscribe to your stating that it was a personal decision rather than a football one. And, if that's the case, the rest of the Team and its Fans may have suffered because of BB's personal, rather than football decision.