I am an unhappy Pats fan after watching another Super Bowl where the Giants "out-toughed" them - they made all the biggest plays and deserved the victory.

It looked like an incomplete pass to a receiver who's running a different play than is in the QB's head. Miscommunications can happen. And the officials weren't certain - it took them a while to decide to throw a flag.

Damn safety cost me a couple of winning quarters in my squares pool. Those officials - I hates them.

And maybe force them to kick a field goal. And go all out to block the field goal. If they miss you win the ball game. Kickers do miss chip shot field goals, particularly in that situation.

you might get a bad snap or a fumble. think Joe Pisarcik

It sure seems like delaying scoring to run time off the clock is playing not to lose.

Bad snap. Fumble. Missed handoff. Accidentially letting time run out. Poor hold. Shanked field goal. Blocked field goal. All the bad things which can happen.

Up against that is the chance that the other team will march down the field in less than a minute and get a touchdown, because a field goal will not be enough. I like my chances with the second option.

You don't see it that often in football. But in basketball, hockey, soccer, if there's a clock involved, and you have the lead, it's smart to run out the clock.

So that is why I say that both teams seemed to be playing not to lose rather than trying hard to get as many points as possible.

and maybe unjustifiably optimistic.

But, if you KNOW that you'll get the field goal ...

Based on history:

Chance of missing field goal 2%

Chance of Brady driving and scoring: A hell of a lot higher.

You are playing the game to win the game, not for any other reason.

Both coaches made the correct decison, though Giants didn't execute it. Won anyhow, of course.

all field goals? In my mind you cannot just use the overall chance of missing a field goal. It is the Super Bowl and the game is on the line. That is no ordinary field goal. Plus you have to get to that point and missed snaps, fumbles and other stuff, while rare, can happen, and may be more likely to happen in that situation. And I still think that New England now has an unhappy defensive line because they were told to lay down and let the Giants score.

Chance of missing that field goal includes fumbled snaps and the like. Percentages are no worse for super bowls than ordinary kicks during the season. Domed stadium also.
Patriots defensive line wants to win the game, period. Best chance by far was allowing them to score.
Even better chance would have been to allow them to score on previous play, but headset difficulties prevented Bellichek from getting that in.

He scored with 1:04 left. Had he gone down anywhere between the 6 yard line and the endzone, the probability of a field goal succeeding are in the high 90s percentiles. Its as close to certain as you can get, but not its not 100%. If they did this however, NE would have had to use a time-out, its last time-out. Then the Giants could have run the clock down to to 25 seconds, then kicked the high probability field goal, taking another 3-5 seconds off the clock. This would have given the Patriots the ball back with about 20 seconds and no time-outs to move the ball 50 yards into a low-probability field goal range or 65 yards into high probability field goal range. The probability of successfully moving the ball that far, in that short an amount time, is very low. You add in the probability of a missed field goal or a fumble or something else happening to the Giants, and its still a very low chance to win.

On the other hand, letting the other team score with 1:04 left and giving your team the ball with 1 time-out and over 1 minute of time, has a much higher probability. The probability of going 80 yards to score a TD is simply a better number. Its really just about the probabilities and playing the greatest chance to win.

job. This is demoralizing, particularly if the strategy ends up not working. That defensive line is going to be thinking "What if" until next season.


Also I think the strategy makes even less sense for the Giants in that situation. Again, what are you saying about your defense if you can't trust them to keep the other team from going the length of the field with 1 minute to play and only 1 time out?

if he scores, you still have your 57 seconds. But if he channels Roger Craig, you just kneel down for the win.

I watched some of the game right before halftime and some of the last quarter. When I watched it, it seemed the refs were favoring the Patriots. I think they were supposed to win but ran out of time. The book, The Fix is In is an interesting book if you like sports, maybe it would throw some light on what happened. The author has a website too: www.thefixisin.net

Who knows what would've happened on the next play *(fumble, missed FG). If you can take the lead, take it.

Plus, the TD forced the Pats to score a TD to win it.

I was happy Bradshaw scored.

If there was a bit more time, I might say "hey, take a knee" or "don't score", but I think with 50 seconds and just one timeout by the Pats left, I would've told my guy to score.

He's a douche