Amster and Alpe
aren't the only ones who think that was a very bad call by Carroll, or Bevell, the OC. Let me play the devil?s advocate, and suggest some reasons why it wasn?t such a terrible idea:
1) Surprise factor. Carroll is not one of those always-kick-FG-on-fourth-and-one coaches that Foxxy hates so much. He's willing to gamble, and sometimes it pays off. He went for it on fourth and long in the NFC championship against the 49ers last year, and they scored the TD that turned the game around. Or how about earlier, in this game, right before the half? The ball was on NE?s 11 with six seconds left. Rather than take the sure FG, he had Wilson pass into the EZ for a TD. You might say that had the pass failed, there still would have been time for the FG, but that's not a given. As it happens, Carroll made a very similar call before the end of the half vs. Atlanta in a divisional playoff game two years ago. Wilson got sacked, and SE got nothing. And that was absolutely critical, because they ended up losing the game by two points.
Carroll put his team in a position to win this game by making a gutsy call at the end of the first half. When you gamble, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but it's hard for me to criticize Carroll for this end of game call if you're going to look favorably on other gambles that worked.
2) Time factor, I: SE had one timeout left. If they give it to Lynch, and he doesn?t score, they have to use their last timeout. Either that, or line up and spike the ball, which wastes a down. If they give it to Lynch again, on third down, and he doesn't make it, the game's over. IOW, though they had three downs left, they could only run the ball twice; to be sure of getting to fourth down, they would have to throw the ball on either second down or third down. That being the case, isn't it better to pass on second down, when you don]t have to, getting back to that surprise factor, rather than on third down, when it's much more expected? In fact,
one writer suggests that Belichick may intentionally not have used a timeout at this point explicitly to force Carroll into a situation where passing was a better option on second down. We'll probably never know, but the fact that possibility exists underscores the fact that Carroll did not have the option of three more running plays.
3) Time factor, II: The link Alpe posted suggested the OC wanted to run down the clock as much as possible. At first, I thought, come on, your priority is to make sure you score, you don't waste plays. You worry about how much time the other team has later.
But both teams have recent playoff experiences that suggest that time is a valid concern. For SE, that same game vs. Atlanta two years ago. Lynch scored the go-ahead TD with about 30 seconds left, IOW, very similar to this game. Most people thought the game was over. But Ryan passed the Falcons down the field, and they kicked the winning FG.
For NE, there was their previous SB, when they intentionally let the Giants score a TD, so they could get the ball back with enough time to score. Had they not done that, the Giants might have run out the clock, then kicked the winning FG. As it turned out, NE couldn?t score, but they gave themselves a chance. Had NE managed to score and win the game, everyone would have been talking about how the Giants should have stayed out of the EZ and run down the clock some more.
4) Percentages. People seem to think that passing is much more likely to result in a turnover than running. The difference really is not that great. Wilson threw a pick on 1.5% of his pass attempts this year; Lynch lost a fumble about half as often, 0.7%. That means the probability of losing a fumble if they run Lynch twice is about the same as an interception if Wilson passes once. We?ve already seen that if he runs twice and doesn't make it, the game?s over. Passing once is no more likely to result in a turnover than running twice, and if it fails, you still have the ball, two more downs, and time enough to use them both if necessary.
In retrospect, we should have expected this game to be close. SE has trailed in a game by double digits I think only three times since Wilson became the starter. All six SBs NE has played in have been won by less than a TD, and four of them were decided in the final minute.
Think back to one of the first playoff games this season, and the strange chain of events that followed. Dallas beat Detroit because of some bad calls by the refs. GB then beat Dallas because of some bad calls by the refs. SE beat GB because of some bad calls by the coach. And now SE loses like this. Every one of those games could so easily have gone the other way.
Edit: I was going to complain about the ? that appear in place of apostrophes, but I see it's already been pointed out. I tried to go though this post and correct them, but most of them (curiously, not all of them) changed back as soon as I saved.