6 point lead. Just over 2 minutes. Ball just inside your own 30. The other team has Peyton and you were up 17 a half hour ago.

What do you do -- punt it and make them go 70-ish yards, or go for the conversion on 4th and 2 to try to end this thing right now?

ppl who fail at poles should be banned or something. disgraceful its not public.

i think it was a bad call but it's close

God dammit, I thought public was the default here?

Mea culpa.

i dont agree that they should have gone for it, but it looked like they had enough for the 1st to me

I like it, more coaches need to grow a pair.

I was very surprised that they went for it. I think it was a bad decision, but not terrible.

I like, no pain, no gain.

never mind

Interesting. I don't actually have any idea what happened, but without running any numbers my gut tells me it's a real close call. 4th and 1 you go for it every time imo. Ball at midfield you go for it every time imo. 4th and 2 at your own 30? I think I'd probably punt, but I wouldn't be surprised if when I ran the math going for it turned out to be right. Very close.

Meh, looked pretty clear on replays that he was bobbling the ball.

If the refs weren't so eager to give the Colts a great spot the decision looks great.

pfft. i do that **** all the time in madden

Advanced NFL Statistics will tell us the answer to this tomorrow, I'm pretty sure.

Agressive decision but not terrible. I doubt he does this in a playoff game.

i dont like giving Peyton the short field if you dont convert.

fish talk ITT

I agree with it totally.

That whole series and the aftermath was a horrendous botch-up and played incredibly inconsistently.

If you're scared enough of Peyton that you want to make a ballsy push on 4th to go for it, the play calling on 3rd was execrable. If you know you're going to go for it on 4th they should be rushing it twice and burning some additional clock as well. Once the Colts get to the 3 or whatever, they should have just let that guy go through and leave 1 minute or so on the clock, but we'll give the guys on the field the benefit of the doubt for not coming to this conclusion in the heat of the moment. However, Belichick then decided that the best way to win was to stop a team from marching 3-4 yards (instead of letting them score as quickly as possible and then playing for a field goal) when he was apparently insecure enough in the D to make the prospect of holding them from 60-70 yards away look less attractive than going for it on 4th and 2. Just absolutely insane and preposterous looking from a coach who usually seems to have his **** together.

EDIT: I am generally a very big fan of aggressive 4th down play calling, but I think this is pretty awful and the way it played out suggests it was very haphazardly thought through.

Dungy: "You just HAVE TO punt the ball there"

Dungy prolly wasn't a big numbers guy or he'd atleast realize it's close.

yes but I imagine it's very close. going for it is probably slightly +ev

To be honest, it's a pretty neutral decision, whichever is better, it isn't by much.

Someone is going to calculate whether or not this was correct. I have a feeling it was.

certainly not terrible. yeah, i think i agree with it, given how the pats defense was playing.

Upon reflection, the most awesome part of this is that BB would do it again without a second thought.

The mistake was made on third down, you have to have a coherent plane for fourth down and burning timeouts plus not running it is a major mistake.