Sunday Night Football and the Art of Blamelossing
Filed Under Dale Cooper, Sports
Hi folks, Coop here. I’m usually a Tuesday presence on the Porch, but this week feels like a Monday kind of week. It’s because I’m all wound up from last night’s Sunday Night Football tilt between the Colts and Patriots. The Patriots controlled the entire game, wire to near-wire, and then chucked the whole thing up for grabs like Jay Cutler vs. a quality opponent. And the Colts took advantage. Oh, did they.
That brings me to today’s subject: blamelossing. Blamelossing is a term I just coined for the process of Finding Someone To Blame after a horrible loss.* Sports fans do it, executives of big companies do it, economists do it, and Republicans do it to the Democrats even when it doesn’t make a lick of sense. But sports fans are the best at it. After all, sports teams lose way more often than anybody else, and the fans’ level of investment in those losses is well beyond irrational.
But if we’re going to engage in some high quality blamelossing, we can’t afford to entirely leave our rationality behind. This morning, there are two camps on Finding Someone To Blame for that loss. Camp one – the Patriots faithful – are blaming the refs for a spurious pass interference call and (mainly) that critical fourth down spot on the Kevin Faulk catch. Camp two – sane people – are blaming Bill Belichick and the Patriots. You can take a wild guess which camp I fall into. Now I’m going to explain why, and show you the true artistry behind a blameloss.
I. The refs are to blame.
This is many a football fan’s favorite tactic after a hard loss. It’s such a warm and comfortable refuge, like a slobbery baby’s blanket and a beloved teething ring. “Nobody on the TEAM was responsible for this loss – it’s the damn ZEBRAS! The league is fixed! The refs are incompetent!” Etc. and so forth.
But let’s get past the gratuitous gloating and move on to analyzing this claim. The Patriots fans I’ve read online last night and this morning have said that basically the refs did a good job (they “let ‘em play,” in the parlance of our times) until the end of the game. At that point they awarded a 30-yard pass interference call to the Colts that advanced a critical drive, and then spotted the ball short of the first down marker on the Patriots’ fourth down attempt that would have sealed the win, had they converted.
First claim first. The pass interference call was definitely bogus (the defender was playing the ball, and Colts receiver Austin Collie – my favorite new football name alongside the other Colts rootie, Pierre Garcon – ran into the defender’s back in a possible attempt to draw the flag). And yes it gave them 31 yards at a key juncture, with the Colts trailing by two scores and only four minutes to play. But when it comes to bad calls like this, you always have to look at the circumstances. Was it likely the Patriots would have stopped the Colts there, if this call wasn’t made? Not really. Manning was ultimately 9-of-11 passing in the fourth quarter. His lone serious mistake was an interception where it appeared he expected Reggie Wayne to run one direction, and Wayne ran another. The Colts ultimately racked up some 150 yards of offense and 21 points in the quarter. And on top of all that, the pass interference call came on 1st down and 10, from the New England 44 – the Colts having already driven 35 yards on three plays. This call didn’t sustain a drive at a point when the Colts were going to have to punt or turn it over on downs. It didn’t revive a flagging offense. The Colts were moving the ball very well, and there was a high likelihood they would have scored in almost the same amount of time, regardless of that call (or no-call). So yes, it was a bad call, but ultimately… shrug.
Now for the crucial fourth down play. The Patriots had the ball after a Colts kickoff with a six point lead and just over two minutes to play. Third and two resulted in a knocked-down pass. Fourth and two, the Patriots lined up to go for it on their own 28 (why? dear lord, why?) and Brady threw complete to halfback Kevin Faulk. Initially it looked like he had it over the line, but the official marked it about half a yard short, giving Indy the ball with a short field to drive for the winning score. Replay showed that Faulk had juggled it at least once, while a defender was driving him backward over the line. Therefore it was spotted where the official thought he gained control.
Was it a questionable spot? Perhaps. In real time I think it was a good call – the other side judge hadn’t even seen the juggle and ran in a yard or two further down, where Faulk had initially gotten his hands on the ball. The official made a good adjustment to what really happened, though in the replay it looked like despite the juggle, Faulk may have had it at the first down marker almost exactly. It’s hard to say how things might have gone down if the play was reviewed. (More on that below.) I think the spot was a good read of the play, probably within half a yard of being correct – which is pretty solid considering the circumstances and complexity of the catching action. If the play had been reviewed and dissected in slow motion, it very well might have still been spotted a little short. Or they might have gained the critical yard and won the game. It’s 50/50 at best. To me there are two facets to this call: 1. Was it a decent call on the field? Yes, I think it was. Seeing the juggle and adjusting for it is everything in the so-called game of inches. 2. Would it have been overturned on review? Maybe, maybe not. Very likely it would have come down to the NFL’s rule regarding these stickiest of situations: there has to be clear, incontrovertible evidence to overturn the call on the field. Was there? There was probably not. Anyone claiming otherwise this morning has a Brady jersey on and tears in his eyes.
II. The Patriots and especially Bill Belichick are to blame.
This is where you’ll find the true blame to be handed out. First of all, it’s important to understand that football is a complicated game, and you can seldom cleanly lay all the blame for a loss at a single person’s feet. A lot of people will focus on Belichick’s head-scratching fourth-and-two call, but I think there’s more to it than that. To wit:
1. The Patriots offense – a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut that gained five zillion yards and scored 24 points in the first half – was stymied and held (or held itself) to just 10 in the second. 34 total points is enough to beat most teams; the Colts are not most teams. More crucially, the Patriots had two red zone turnovers (a pick and a fumble) in the third quarter. They should have scored at least six points on those two possessions, and probably more like 10 or 14. But even three on one mere field goal would have been enough, more than likely, if the rest of the game went down in remotely the same way. So some blame definitely has to be handed to Laurence Maroney (who fumbled) and Tom Brady (who threw the pick, aiming for Randy Moss in double coverage).
2. The Patriots defense, after doing a decent job on the Colts throughout most of the game, rolled over and died in the fourth. They gave up two long touchdown drives, and on the game-winning series they looked nothing like the Patriots who stonewalled Edge James four times from the 1 yard line some years ago. The defense gets a B- for the whole game but a D for that poor fourth quarter. Their only good play was an interception where Reggie Wayne ran to Utah and Peyton threw it to Kansas. So basically, a gimme.
3. Patriots players and coaches burned all three of their timeouts prior to the big fourth down play. So it came down to a situation where a review might have helped them, and they weren’t able to challenge because they had no timeouts. Awful. The Patriots are seldom guilty of that kind of waste, but in this situation it dearly cost them. Not only did they burn all three timeouts, but they used TWO of them on the very possession that ended in a turnover on downs. One was called before the first offensive snap for no clear reason. The other – their third and final – was called before the fourth down play, presumably so they could think it over and make sure to get the right playcall and personnel in. Four snaps used two timeouts, when they had the lead. A huge helping of blame goes to whoever called those timeouts and was thus unable to challenge the fourth down spot.
4. Finally, Bill Belichick’s fourth down call looms large over the game, and for good reason. How can a reasonable person complain about the spot of the ball being off by at most a yard, but not complain about the bizarre decision the Patriots made to go for it – on fourth and 2, from their own 28, with a six point lead and two minutes-and-change remaining? With Robert Mathis cramming himself projectile-style down Brady’s throat on play after play, and the Colts suddenly showing some life in the secondary?
After the game, Belichick said he was challenging his team to go and get the win, and that he trusted them to do it. Well bully for you, Billy, but how about challenging and trusting your DEFENSE? An 80 yard drive with no timeouts and two minutes of clock is no gimme, even for Peyton Manning, even if the Patriots defense was full of rookies and completely gassed. Peyton’s throwing mechanics were off at times last night – he had thrown a couple awful ducks, and two interceptions with no receiver in the neighborhood of the ball. The right decision was to punt, pin them at their own 20 or so, and play it straight up. Belichick essentially went all in with his crappy two pair, just hoping the guy next to him didn’t have three of a kind or better. It didn’t pan out, as such things often go. Worst, most baffling call I’ve ever seen him make. He gets most of the blame.
ULTIMATELY I think you have to see that most of the blame goes on the team and coaching staff that choked the game away, and very little if any goes on the officials who generally stayed out of the players’ way, and made (in my view at least) a single bad call the entire game – one which was at best a slight help to the eventual winners. That right there is thorough, reasonable blamelossing.
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* I could also have called it Lossblaming, and perhaps that makes more sense to you since blaming is a thing and lossing is not. Ultimately I decided that blamelossing just sounds better – key for getting your baby meme to grow up big and strong – and I like that it makes blame-for-loss into a process which we are engaging in.
Comments
7 Responses to “Sunday Night Football and the Art of Blamelossing”
Brian Burke of the NY Times NFL Blog has an interesting defense of Belichick’s decision here: http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/defending-belichicks-fourth-down-decision/?hp
Interesting without a doubt, and I love the application of probability calculation to situational football. I don’t care for some of the assumptions that are made in this kind of analysis, however. The 4th and 2 conversion is given a 60 percent success rate (for the Pats it’s actually slightly higher – 63, I think I read). But in the Colts’ stadium, with the defense hyped up and playing well, and against an opponent that knows your plays and may be able to guess what’s coming (safety Melvin Bullitt – who tackled Faulk on the play – commented after the game that they were heavily coached to go after Faulk and Welker on those players)? 60 percent is a guess, and probably a generous one. He also assigns a 53 percent probability to getting a touchdown from the 28 yard line – anyone who saw the game and has watched the Colts, ever, knows the probability from that distance was more like 80 or 90%. It was almost a given.
The decision may be closer than most people are thinking this morning, but I still like the team that challenges its defense and uses these situations to build up, rather than tear down, that unit. The Patriots D can’t be feeling good about themselves this morning – their coach wouldn’t even give them a chance to win the game. After that vote of no-confidence, it’s no surprise that they rolled over on the subsequent drive.
Even as a Pats fine, I think you’re mostly right here. Yeah, there were some questionable calls, but there are always questionable calls. It’s precisely reasons like that you need to save your time-outs. I’d be a little less willing to shrug off the importance of the interference call, though. You’re arguing at that point that Manning was going to march them down the field anyway, but later you say that there was a good chance of stopping him after the punt that didn’t happen because he was a little off most of the day. Nevertheless, there are always bad calls. Great teams need to win anyway and not blame refs.
Say what you will about Belichik — he’s a cheater, he’s a jerk, whatever — you can rely on him to make the right decisions. That’s why I’m so burned by so many bad decisions at the end of that game. I’ve seen the Pats loose to Indy enough times, but never before because they were clearly out-coached. That’s hard to take.
I’m willing to accept going for it on 4th, but here’s what I want to know: if it’s 4th and 2, why do you run a 2 and a half yard pattern? You’re consciously putting your fate in the hands of the spot.
Since we don’t live in a world of certainties there’s always a chance that something else might have worked which means that when a coach makes a decision that doesn’t work, he made the bad choice. But if that’s the extent to which we can blame Belichik for his bizarre 4th and 2 call, we haven’t said very much. “Going for it on 4th” is one of those things that everybody knows (suddenly) is the right thing, especially with short yardage, and yet most coaches don’t do it because the safe thing to do is punt and it’s way better to be safe than to be risky and lose. So I grudgingly tip my hat to BB for making that call as often as he does. It helped him considerably in earning those 24 first-half points, at one point going for it on 4th and 10. That said, that 4th and 2 call was a really really poor choice and not just because it didn’t work. There was better than a good chance that the Pats defense could have stopped the Colts after a punt. If they hadn’t been ahead at the time he made the call it would have made sense. But already leading and with a good chance to freeze the Colts deep in their own territory….man! that just wasn’t the time to get controversial. Some game critics have said that “Manning got in BB’s head” I think it was all the Rivalry chatter–and BB wanted to prove that they could do better than just beat the Colts but REALLY beat them.
As far as whether Dale contradicted himself by saying that the interference call wasn’t as important as some have made it seem, I will say this. That game was frustrating for the inconsistency it showed in the Colts offense. In so many instances the Colts either put together a doomed drive or a really good one. By the end of the 3rd I think there was one drive that started good but ended poorly and the rest were one of the other all the through. Dale’s apparent contradiction, I think is just a recognition of that. Once Peyton is locked into a good drive, he can see it all the way to the end. If it starts poorly, it’s 3 and out. At least, that’s the way I would interpret it. Since the interference call was at a moment where Peyton’s timing was on…and since he would have still had 2 or 3 chances to get the 10 yards for the down, he probably would have just kept going.
My point on the PI call wasn’t that the Colts were definitely going to score with or without it – I apologize if I made it sound that way. It’s more that by focusing on that call, fans make it sound like that was the thing that enabled the Colts to score on that drive. If it had happened on 4th and 10 rather than 1st and 10, I would agree with them. If the Colts had been frozen and unable to move the ball at that time in the game (and Big Dog is right – the Colts and Manning are very streaky and rhythm-based in their offense), then yes the penalty perhaps could be credited for jump-starting them. But neither of those things are true. The penalty gave them 30 yards on 1st and 10, in the middle of a drive where they easily got over 30 yards on their own and then easily punched it in the last 13 yards for the touchdown afterwards. Singling out that penalty as the thing that put them back in the game, or as a larger event in the scope of things than Belichick’s call (or the many other factors I mentioned) – that is just bad thinking. It was a good chunk of yardage but it wasn’t a momentum-shifting penalty. Far from it. That’s my main point there.
I don’t think this (with the above clarification) contradicts my later point at all, which is this: no matter how hot the Colts were, marching 80 yards with no timeouts against a good and well-coached defense isn’t easy for anybody. If the Pats punted there, Indianapolis is hardly assured the game-winning score. But when they failed to convert on 4th down at their own 28 – that was as closed to assured as possible, short of a lucky INT return for a touchdown or something (which the Colts nearly got, come to think of it).
Good explanation. Consider my criticism withdrawn.
There’s a good piece on the Belichick call at SI today: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/joe_posnanski/11/16/belichick/index.html
I liked this. You can argue the percentages, as I did in the first comment here, but the bottom line is that probably the 4th down call – though unconventional in the extreme – was probably at worst about even odds with punting to secure a win. Posnanski goes on to focus on other Belichick decisions as much more costly – mainly timeouts #2 and 3. In hindsight that does seem like such a huge error. Not only because it cost them their ability to challenge on the game’s most critical down, but it also meant that if they got the ball back with any time at all, they couldn’t stop the clock – a very big problem when you only need a field goal to win, and your kicker has a hell of a leg. What it ultimately looks like is that Bill put everything on that 4th down, and when it got cracked like a pair of aces up against the table luckbox’s 7-2 off, he was just done. All his chips were gone. (Yay for poker metaphors!)
I was watching this game with Big Dog and I even commented when they wasted timeout #1 (much earlier in the half) that it would sure be nifty if they did the same thing two more times in a game that might come down to the wire. That was wishful thinking on my part, I thought. Had no idea that the Patriots were capable of so boneheaded a thing. Andy Reid thought that was bad coaching, and he said so from the sideline of the Eagles’ fiftieth consecutive two-point loss.
Patriots fans have also commented that the best defensive coaching after they missed the 4th down might have been to big-blitz – utterly sell out on a play that would either result in a big loss for the Colts, a turnover perhaps, or an instant touchdown. Then the Patriots get the ball back with most of two minutes left, needing only a field goal. In other words, they give themselves a GREAT shot at victory, given that they have Brady, Moss, and Gostkowkski. I like that thinking and again, can’t help but feel that Belichick was just dazed after the 4th down failed. He was visibly rubbing his head and looked shell-shocked.
I hadn’t thought to the blitz call after the failed 4th down conversion, but I love it.
I agree that the management of time outs was poor, including that first one. I also agree with Posnanski about the odds. Football can be a little too idiosyncratic of a game to build up a really strong prior probability distribution, but if anyone in the game has accurate statistics, it’s probably New England. They’re fanatical about that kind of thing.