Photo by Flickr user Keith Allison People in Boston have been spoiled by our sports teams this decade. The Red Sox have won 2 World Series, the Patriots have been dominant since 2001, and even the Celtics got involved in the world beating. The Patriots and the Red Sox have been so good that the phrases, “In Bill We Trust” and “In Theo We Trust” have been tossed around unironically regarding Bill Belichick and Theo Epstein of the Pats and Sox respectively.

Last Sunday, the Patriots beat the hell out of Peyton Manning and the Colts for about 50 minutes, up by 2 scores much of the game. And then with a little over 2 minutes left, they found themselves on the Colts’ 28 yard-line on 4th down up by 6 points. Football teams punt here. Always. But Belichick sent the offense out to get the 2 yards and win the game. It’s unclear if he was trying to send a message, or if he just wanted to keep the ball out of Manning’s hands. In any case, this paragraph of cliches is over, the Pats didn’t get the first down, the Colts scored and won the game.

Bill Belichick was right. I would have been OK with him punting, but I’m more than OK with him going for it, whatever the reason and the stats agree.

Statistically, the better decision would be to go for it, and by a good amount. However, these numbers are baselines for the league as a whole. You’d have to expect the Colts had a better than a 30% chance of scoring from their 34, and an accordingly higher chance to score from the Pats’ 28. But any adjustment in their likelihood of scoring from either field position increases the advantage of going for it. You can play with the numbers any way you like, but it’s pretty hard to come up with a realistic combination of numbers that make punting the better option. At best, you could make it a wash.

Here’s a coach who never punts, ever. He also doesn’t have his team return punts or kick off deep. The last time he punted was in 2007 when he was trying to be a good sport to a team he was destroying.

Phil Simms thinks that if Belichick had been able to challenge the call, he would have gotten a more favorable spot and gotten the first down.

Via a football newsletter Gareth gets (link unavailable):

Kevin Eikenberry, leader of Indianapolis-based consultant the Kevin Eikenberry Group: “Most of us in corporate leadership or executive leadership would profess that great leaders take risks, and yet, I’m guessing most of those same people who watched the game (especially in New England) feel like Belichick made a big mistake. We can’t have it both ways. The longer I think about it from a leadership perspective, the more I applaud the coach’s decision … This is a real life example of a leader standing up and making a decision, one that in this case, didn’t turn out in his favor.”

Finally, Bill Simmons who has spent the entire year telling us Manning is unbeatable at night says Belichick should have punted. Aside from the fact that Simmons stopped killing Manning after he met him at the ESPY Awards a couple years ago, punting would have given Manning the opportunity to win the game. Getting the first down would have ended the game. I think I still like Bill Simmons, but I can’t shake the feeling that what he’s doing has gotten tired. I think he’s going to move on ESPN eventually and do something new/big and that will be good for everyone. In this column, he’s annoyingly playing homer contrarian, killing Belichick for a move he would have applauded had it worked, killing Belichick for a move he would have applauded a couple years ago, even if it hadn’t.

In Bill We Trust

Before he was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, former NFL player Pat Tillman received a letter from Bill Belichick.

In the last conversation Tillman had with Bauer, he told his agent, “You won’t believe the letter I got from Bill Belichick.” In the letter, Belichick praised him for his courage, his leadership, his willingness to set an example for people in this materialistic society, and he said it was an honor to be in the same league he’d been in.

While Tillman’s death isn’t any more significant than any other soldier killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, sacrificing his pro career to enlist did set him apart from other players. Also, this isn’t the Belichick you usually hear about, huh?

Via BarstoolSports

ESPN just linked here referencing this story. Not sure why they didn’t link to that story directly. If you’ll click through, you’ll see it’s a Bill Simmons quotation. What comes around, goes around, in a good way.

Obviously.

Via Baseball Musings, we find that the Expo’s drafted 3 catchers in 1995, 2 of whom, Brian Schneider and Michael Barrett have had pretty good careers. The third plays for the Patriots and hurt his knee 8 minutes into the first game of the season.

I bet you didn’t know that/

Chiefs fans want you to know Sammy Morris blocked Bernard Pollard into Tom Brady’s knee, even if the replays don’t back this up even remotely. Whatever. But after watching the play another 75 times, it dawned on me that Sammy was more to blame than Pollard for the 2008 Patriots season going down the tubes. Sammy, why are you going low on Bernard Pollard like he’s a 345-pound defensive lineman? And if you want to go even further, if Kevin Faulk hadn’t decided to get high at a Lil’ Wayne concert, he wouldn’t have been suspended for Week 1, he would been playing that down, he would have pancaked Pollard, and my man Brady would still be playing now. Did you ever think Lil’ Wayne would be directly involved in the murder of a Patriots season? My head hurts.

This Tom Brady feature is relatively unremarkable except that it refers to Bill Belichick as “that inscrutable martinet”, which I thought was funny.

During the game tonight, a friend and I were discussing who would win if the New England Patriots played the Boston Red Sox? Hard to say.

I just saw Theo getting interviewed on the field. The interviewer said, and I’m paraphrasing, “Theo, you just watched the team win the 2nd world series on your watch. I know you don’t want to stroke yourself here, but how does it feel.” Theo said, “Haha. That comes later, huh?”
Channel 7, 1 AM. Wow.

I don’t seem to be able to finish writing anything I start these days so I thought I’d post a collection of some links I caught myself sending to other people over the past couple days.

This is from RD’s sister’s man’s blog and talks about a new device that helps you wake up better. It’s a watch-like contraption you wear to sleep and, by measuring your biometrics, the watch keeps track of your sleep cycles. This allows it to predict the best time to wake you up in the morning, usually while you’re sleeping lightest.

Bill Simmons has done it again and it’s only a matter of time before people accuse me of making him my binky. After this weekend’s donnybrook between the Red Sox and Devil Rays, ESPN reprinted this 2002 column about basebrawls. In this long column, Simmons goes into detail describing 12 reasons baseball fights are so great. Reason #9 is especially poignant in lieu of Trot Nixon’s actions this weekend, though Simmons disputes the existence of a “Crazy Guy” in this weekend’s imbroglio. I guess it’s his column so I’ll defer to him.

Imagine being able to search for files on your computer by the location you worked on them last. I know, my mind was boggled too. GPS enabled laptops are coming, and I can’t wait…

Another reason to love kottke.org this morning is the McSweeney’s RSS feed he created for the good of all mankind. If you haven’t read any of the lists at McSweeney before, you might be interested to in Actual Ways I Have Been Flirted With That, in the Future, I Wish You Would Refrain From, With Explanations as to Why, and Suggestions for Alternative Methods. and Reasons to Fear Canada..

I’d like to find out from Mel Kiper, Jr if the point of the NFL draft is to choose attractive, athletic players of if the point is to win Super Bowls. Because Kiper seems to want athletes, not champions. I can’t think of any other reason he would give the Patriots a C in this draft when they drafted 4 players that can presumably help immediately and ALSO picked up a 3rd, 4th, and 5th round pick in next year’s draft. Also, Mr. Kiper, who cares if “Matt Cassel is a big project at quarterback”, did the Patriots make an underreported draft day trade of Tom Brady for Jay Fiedler? In the same column (and although he gave the Broncos a C as well), Kiper describes the Broncos selection for Maurice Clarrett by saying he’ll “defer to coach Mike Shanahan when it comes to fitting the right players into his system”. This is obviously a reference to Shanahan’s ability to take ANY athlete and turn them into a 1200 yard running back. If Shanahan is getting that type of leeway, shouldn’t Belichick’s THREE SUPER BOWLS IN FOUR YEARS give him the same type of draft capital?
Kiper’s Patriots’ draft rating for those of you without access to ESPN Insider.
New England Patriots: C
Guard Logan Mankins was a reach in the first round but the Patriots obviously like his size and nastiness, and he will help fill the void left by Joe Andruzzi’s departure via free agency. Ellis Hobbs has good size but not enough skill to be more than a nickel back, and safety James Sanders was a teammate of Mankins at Fresno State and both were helped by the relationship between Patriots coach Bill Belichick and Fresno State coach Pat Hill. Tackle Nick Kaczur could play guard as well but came off the board a little early and Matt Cassel is a big project at quarterback.

3 other happenings of note in the last week:
I’m definitely not the most pious of Jews, but I do my best to observe Passover every year. This time around, however, the boys at Streits, threw me for a loop on my very first meal. Apparently, they sell matzah these days that’s “Not for Passover Use.” How many seemingly observant Jews have been ambushed thusly?

While walking to work the other day, bird poop splattered on the pavement mere inches from my feet. It was almost like almost getting hit by a car. Almost. You have to admit, something like that is pretty omenesque. My outlook on the morning changed and then I got to work and realized nothing was going to be different, so although I was glad to not to get hit by bird poop, I didn’t look at it as an omen anymore.

The parking lot at the train station employs the use of an honor box to charge for parking. I’m constantly forgetting to look at what parking space I’m in before I walk away from my car. In the middle of last week, this happened and I walked back to figure out for which space I had to pay. A combination of tiredness, being late for the train, and general brain dysfunction forced me to determine the wrong space for my car. (Admittedly, I didn’t walk all the way back to my car, but stopped at the beginning of the row and counted down to my spot, incorrectly). When that happens, I pay for the wrong space and come back in the evening to find an envelope on my car asking for the parking fee plus $1 service charge. I deserve it. This day was different, though, because on my way to the honor box after figuring out which space I was in, the woman who had parked next to me was also walking back to figure out her space. I smiled widely and exclaimed “You forgot also, right? I do that all the time. You’re in 723.” Random act of kindness? I feel bad about it, but she probably got an envelope, too. Oh well, it’s all in the thought, I hope.

This morning, as I was waking up, I had a ridiculous dream and I was wondering if you thought it was a problem. The New England Patriots were playing in a “Big Game” against the San Diego Chargers. I don’t know the signifigance of the opposition being the Chargers, but it was the Chargers in the way you know certain facts in your dreams. Anyway, the Patriots were at the goalline when Bill Belichick inserted himself as quarterback. He was wearing his oversized gray sweatshirt and instead of a helmet, he was wearing his headset. He called for a QB sneak and ran the ball in easily, even sticking it out a little in a somewhat taunting manner.

This is where it gets interesting. I didn’t see anyone hit him, but all of a sudden a Chargers player is running out of the endzone with the ball before he gets decked around the 50 yard line by, who else but, Rodney Harrison. At this point the dream turned from a linear story into a choppy highlight real. There was a Terrel Owens-esque scene of a Charger’s player spiking the ball on the Patriots’ midfield logo, there was a scene of Patriots players on top of Chargers players in the end zone punching the crap out of them. This was weird because the Patriots players were raising their fists and punching in unison (imagine the Rockette’s in a street brawl).

Right before I woke up and as if my dream was returning from commercial, there was a scene of the Patriots mascot being held down by Cris Colinsworth in the way that players are held down during a kick off return. The mascot gets up and punches at Cris Colinsworth missing most of him and Cris Colinsworth slaps him. I didn’t realize this at the time, but slapping the mascot wouldn’t really hurt because he had one of those giant heads. I think in the dream, though, the mascot’s head was a real giant head and not a fake giant head. This mini battle ended with the mascot decking Cris Colinsworth in the mouth and Cris Colinsworth walking way shaking his head and scowling with bloody teeth. And then I woke up. Red Sox pitchers and catchers reported on the 17th and the position players reported today. Although it is snowing outside, today is the first day of spring.