In his MMQB this week Peter King shockingly dismisses Bill Belichick’s decision to go for it on 4th down late in last night’s game as “I’m-smarter-than-they-are-hubris.” The title of his article goes so far as saying: “No Matter Which Way You Dissect It, Bill Belichick Made the Wrong Call.” What is especially amusing here, is his colleague Joe Posnanski’s analysis of the way Peter King “chose to dissect it” – quoted from Joe’s excellent article here:
“Quick Update: I was reading my colleague Peter King’s take on the Belichick call, and I think this is telling. He had this sentence in there:
Let’s place the odds of Brady getting two yards at 60, 65 percent. The odds of Manning going 72 yards to score a touchdown in less than two minutes … that’s maybe 35 percent.
So, Peter was giving the Patriots about a 60-65 percent chance of winning the game if they went for it, and about 65 percent chance of winning if they punted. So that’s about even, right? Of course, it’s not even because the Colts did not have a 100 percent chance of winning if the Patriots failed on fourth down — not even close to 100 percent chance. As we have discussed, there was a reasonable chance that the Patriots could keep them out of the end zone. And there was also a chance that the Colts would score too quickly and the Patriots would have time to score themselves.
So even though Peter compared the Belichick move to Grady Little’s Pedro Martinez follies — “I hated the call … it smacked of I’m-smarter-than-they-are hubris” — his own math suggests the Patriots’ best chance to win the game was to go for it.”
