I said arguable and I think that's fine. If Lynch scores on 1st down the Patriots have 1:01 or so with 2 TO's I think to try a come back. That's a great result for the Seahawks but having it 2nd and goal from the 1 yard line with 1:01 left and a TO is a pretty good situation, too. Run the 2nd down play with :40 seconds left or so and they've got plenty of time to do whatever they want with the remaining plays if necessary while leaving New England minimal time. The Seahawks screwed up by not being ready to run a play and wasting an extra 15 seconds or so leaving them in a situation of not being able to do whatever they wanted.

I'm in favor of scoring whenever you can when you have to score a TD especially when you've got a good defense. If I had the #32 pass defense facing Godgers then I think getting fancy and trying to kill the clock before scoring becomes more correct rather than leaving him a full minute and 2 TO's.

Lol it's not arguable at all. Check your win expectation up 3 with < 1:00 left and down 4 with 0:40 left. It's not even close.

Well since I'm in favor of scoring whenever possible when you're down by 4+ points I'm not going to argue the other side any more.

Palo,

There wasn't a little part of you that wanted Tre Mason to sit down on the one yard line against FSU . . . . . .

3 WRs vs 8 DL/LBs should be a massive advantage tho. But obviously you'll be facing serious pressure and will need to throw something quick.

Different situation. Auburn was down 3 with a kicker who went to the NFL. Yes, I wanted Mason to sit on the 1 yard line. That is a massive difference from being down 4 where a TD is necessary.

Situationally, honestly I'm not sure how big an advantage it is in this situation. Pats DBs are strong, SEA WRs are weak. You pretty much know Baldwin's not getting this with Revis out there, so Wilson's either challenging Browner or going after the rookie. Also, doubt you're throwing a fade in that situation. There's a non-zero chance Belichick baited Wilson into that read, and the DB broke on that route so decisively it was almost certainly diagnosed immediately.

Dont like the playcall at all. However, Wilson made a ****ty throw and lockette got out-muscled for the ball as well. Its a bad route too considering the coverage...he just drags toward the LOS and nobody has a shot at him. Even with the route Wilson throws it too high and wide giving Butler a shot at it.

According to ANFLS:

86% when down 4 with 40 seconds left and 2nd and 1 from the 1

90% when up 3 with 1 minute left and opponent has the ball 1st and ten from the 20

Catch em off guard with the pass by lining up in shotgun

Again, passing in that spot isn't terrible. Calling that particular pass play is terrible.

Ball can be tipped at the line, go off the receivers hands, get intercepted, etc.

If I was a Patriots fan that or a similar play is exactly the kind of play I would hope they would run.

My correct play call sequence would be 2nd down - run. Timeout. 3rd down pass - Some sort of read option or play-action. 4th - Read run/pass. Whatever you think will work. You get 3 shots then. Even losing yardage on a 2nd down run isn't terrible. Opens up passing a little.

Good stuff, thanks

ETA: League average since 1998 on rushes from the 1 is 55.2%

At the time of the throw, the receiver looked pretty open:

http://www.gfycat.com/FragrantUnimportantFallowdeer

He was open. Rustle just made a poor throw. If he throws it into the WR's body it's either incomplete, a TD, or most likely stopped at the 1/2 yard line. Instead, he led the receiver and put it in a spot where the DB could beat the WR to the spot. The WR got drilled to the ground and no part of his body ever made it into the end zone on the INT so I doubt he scores even if he catches it after watching the replay a few more times.

I said it before but I think it's really true. I'm convinced that when Rustle released that ball he thought he'd just won the Super Bowl. It was an amazing defensive play for the DB to beat the WR to the ball and Rustle didn't see him coming. The WR definitely thought he was about to score the game winning TD. He's completely unprepared for contact and gets obliterated by the DB going for the ball.

Thread is unreadable. Why are people acting surprised the D was "goal line D"? No ****.

JayTee is correct. It was not a horrible call at all. It may not have been the optimal call, but it certainly is not "the worst call ever."

You also have to realize that if the Seahawks get stuffed on 2nd down, and get stuffed again on 3rd, they run the real risk of either not getting the 4th down play off at all or not getting set correctly and having a penalty called on them - thus ending the game with a 10 second run-off.

It was a great play by the DB. Period.

Only because you ran the clock down so much in the first place.

Nobody says it was a poor play design. "The QB just made a bad throw/read" is the inherent risk of every pass play, ever.

no doubt Butler deserves a lot of credit. He gambled in a situation you should gamble and it paid off in the biggest way. He straight up levels Lockette in a bang bang play cause as Palo said, they thought it was a walk in game winner. Oops.

You're not giving Belichick enough credit. His team was completely prepared for that pick play. Of course it helped that Seattle probably telegraphed the play with their formation.

"And Christopher Price told me after the game, he talked to Jimmy Garappolo in the locker room and Garappolo told him that the scout team beat Butler with that exact play in practice. So he knew how to read it and he knew what to do."

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/aud...uper-bowl-xlix


It was complete FPS not to involve Lynch (or, as good, the threat of Lynch) in the play.

In this very thread you have people saying how terrible it was for Belicheck to NOT call timeout to stop the clock. Please discuss with those people why Seattle running the clock down was stupid and get back to us with your scientific findings.

I'm in this camp after sleeping on it.
Beast Mode was also stuffed twice on 2nd&3 when they had to settle for the FG. Hard to score via stiff-arming DBs in that spot.

It was a great play. For all the talk of NE running bad vs nyg they seem to run pretty good w/ nobody DBs in big spots. If this Butler guy is like Sterling Moore he'll go to Dallas and get cut by a team with a s***y secondary.

Seattle running the clock down as much as possible is smart, until it interferes with its ability to run the maximum amount of plays to score a touchdown. Belichick had little control over that with a minute left unless Seattle hung themselves. Which apparently they did, since they 'had to pass' there.

For the first portion, you obviously cannot compare league wide stats with a team that is ridiculously good at running the ball and have a dual threat in Lynch and Rustle.

For the second portion, I guess he's trying to say he was 'stablishing the pass, so they could run it in afterwards instead of trying to smashmouth it into New England's goal line defense. #Leveling

I was curious how much control a player had over his performance at the 1, so I used the PFR play finder to get them all. I split it up so that the first half of each player's season was compared to the second half, for what should be a relatively unbiased sample. All players:



Very little correlation, but this includes a lot of players who only had a few carries and a lot of non-running backs. So, I went down the list until I found the first non-RB, which turned out to be Brady, and just looked at those top running backs, who had between 69 carries (LDT) and 19 (a bunch of guys tied with Brady):



A little bit more correaltion, but you still need to regress everyone back pretty close to the mean. Marshawn was at 44/45% for his splits with a total of only 31 regular season attempts, so I doubt it means much at all for him to be ~10% below average. TJ Duckett GOAT short yardage back though, 10/10 in the first half of the season, 12/14 in the second half of the season.