When a coworker of mine gave me the idea for this column, he did so with the stipulation that I use the line "Bill Belichick is playing chess while every other NFL coach is playing checkers." Now I can't endorse that statement in good consciousness; it undersells the brilliance of the man who is clearly the best, most intelligent, most cunning, most daring, most fashionable coach in modern professional sports.
It may seem to be an odd week to be making this claim, considering the way the Patriots-Colts game ended Sunday night, with Belichick opting to go for it on fourth-and-two from the Pats' 28-yard line with his team up 34-28 and just over two minutes remaining in the game. The Patriots failed to convert (a controversial officiating decision in and of itself) and the Colts marched down a shortened field and scored, winning 35-34. Obviously Belichick's decision was both ballsy and controversial — but was it necessarily wrong?
According to the good old mainstream media, it was beyond a shadow of a doubt the worst coaching decision ever made. Pete Prisco of cbssports.com exclaimed, "Fourth-and-jackass. That's our name of a now-infamous play in New England Patriots history. Move over, Tuck Rule. You have company." SI.com's Peter King thought the call "smacked of I'm-smarter-than-they-are hubris." So clearly your traditional sportswriters didn't like the call.
Nate Silver, of Baseball Prospectus and Fivethirtyeight.com fame, known for his coolly statistical analysis in the face of conventional wisdom, said, on the other hand, "Bill Belichick is not dumb, provided that his goal is to help the New England Patriots win football games. Instead, much of the NFL's conventional wisdom on when to go for it on fourth down is horribly, horribly wrong." Indeed, much statistical analysis has borne this belief out. New England's defense also looked completely worn out; in Belichick's mind, giving Peyton Manning a 70-yard field wasn't that much different from giving him a 30-yard field. So maybe, just maybe, conventional wisdom is wrong in this case.
Consider also that a key factor in decision-making for most every other NFL coach is completely irrelevant to Belichick: job security. The negative publicity would rattle most other coaches and plant seeds of doubt in the minds of their owners. Belichick, on the other hand, could care less what the media thinks of him. He could probably burn down Gillette Stadium without the Kraft family firing him.
Another hole that can be poked in mainstream media's blatant disdain for the call is that they always seem to have an axe to grind with Belichick, dating back specifically to the unverified "Spygate" fiasco. Look again at those reactions to "Fourth-and-jackass." If any other coach makes that call, it's merely referred to a dumb decision, chided as a mental mistake (even if that's not particularly accurate). With Belichick, it's indicative of a horrific sort of character flaw, of a man suffering the effects of unbridled power, of a man who is so far beyond reproach that he gives no thought to the consequences of his actions. To these writers, it's simply the latest nail of arrogance in the Belichick coffin.
And you know what? From the mainstream media's point of view, it makes sense. From their standpoint, Belichick is the most boring coach in history. His media appearances are always sullen; he answers questions begrudgingly and never offers any particularly unique insight. Writers are then forced to create a story out of nothing, some angle that they can sell on a coach who always wins games and never really generates any sort of intrigue himself. And so they blow incidents like these out of proportion, defaming the greatest sports mind of our time.
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Ethan Frigon is a junior majoring in economics and international relations. He can be reached at Ethan.Frigon@tufts.edu.
