[andrei]

1st and goal, Lynch was stopped at 1 yard line at around 1 minute mark, so there is time for 3 run plays if they wanted to.

If you think the play call was bad, wait till you read the explanations:

Offensive coordinator: "We were conscious of how much time was on the clock and we wanted to use it all"
Pete Carroll: "We were going to run the ball in to win the game, but not on that play"

So they wanted to eat up clock. How do you do that? By running a pass play, and not any pass play, but a inside slant into traffic. Brilliant.

cherdano, on 2015-February-02, 05:26, said:

How often do you expect this to happen? Butler is an undrafted rookie who came in as a backup, and used to play Division II football in college... I mean, he didn't even know he should go down in the endzone after an interception at the goal line.

How often do you expect to see a guy who was selling shoes at Footlocker a few months ago and who did not catch a pass in NFL before this game to have 100+ yards in the Super Bowl?
How often do you think Kearse will make the same catch again?

[kenberg]

Even I watched the superbowl and in fact I enjoyed it a great deal. A question occurred to me. It involves several players, not all of them known to me, so I will call them X, Y, etc.

X throws a pass, intended for Y. Z is there to deflect the pass, the ball B pops up in the air and Y and Z fall to the ground. Let's suppose there is another defender W who, by the time Y and Z are on the ground, is fairly close. He sees that Y is on his back, and he sees B descending in the direction of Y's arms. Is W 100% certain the play is not over? I thought it was over until I saw Z charge Y as Y got up. Sure, a whistle ends the play. but there is a lot going on. If W leaps at Y, landing on him and grabbing for the ball, there will be a substantial penalty if the whistle has blown.

Maybe this wasn't an issue. I at least thought the play was over, I had no idea the ball was still live. I have not seen re-runs, but was someone close enough so that if he was alert to the situation he could have downed or even intercepted that pass?


As to the brawl, I'm sorry that it happened and penalties should be assessed, but I am not all that outraged. The last two minutes or so were extraordinary and I think what happened is very human. It has to be decried and punished but until the game is played by people with angelic restraint I don't think of it as being at all beyond understanding.

Anyway, I thought that there was enormous talent on display and I enjoyed it.


As to the pass at the end, I plead ignorance. Ground games sometimes lead to fumbles and sometimes fail to score, passes get intercepted. Ground games often make the last short distance, and passes often work. I'll leave that be. I do think though that when the team with possession is right on their own goal line and centering the ball will take them behind the goal line, defensive players should be paricularly careful not to draw a penalty. I imagine that this has been explained to the player involved.

[mgoetze]

Mike Sando, ESPN.com @SandoESPN

#NFL teams this season threw 66 TD passes with 1 INT on passes from the 1-yard line. That 1 INT was ... well ... tonight.

Mike Sando, ESPN.com @SandoESPN

5th time since ‘01 a tm down 4-8 pts had 2nd/GL from 1 w/20-40 sec left and 1 timeout. 2 ran and fell short. 2 threw TDs. SEA threw INT.

---

By the way, after they almost got in on 1st down, I was seriously thinking to myself that Belichick should take a timeout and let them score so that he would have one minute and one timeout left to even it up with a field goal.

[mgoetze]

kenberg, on 2015-February-02, 07:31, said:

X throws a pass, intended for Y. Z is there to deflect the pass, the ball B pops up in the air and Y and Z fall to the ground. Let's suppose there is another defender W who, by the time Y and Z are on the ground, is fairly close. He sees that Y is on his back, and he sees B descending in the direction of Y's arms. Is W 100% certain the play is not over? I thought it was over until I saw Z charge Y as Y got up. Sure, a whistle ends the play. but there is a lot going on. If W leaps at Y, landing on him and grabbing for the ball, there will be a substantial penalty if the whistle has blown.

Maybe this wasn't an issue. I at least thought the play was over, I had no idea the ball was still live. I have not seen re-runs, but was someone close enough so that if he was alert to the situation he could have downed or even intercepted that pass?

Here's my solution:

X = Russell Wilson
Y = Jermaine Kearse
Z = Malcolm Butler
B = Fully inflated official Super Bowl game ball
W = Duron Harmon

I have never played football, especially not in front of a crowd of tens of thousands, so I cannot speak to the difficulty of discerning whether a whistle has blown or not. But I would add that Harmon had the additional aid of being able to see much better than the TV camera at the time that the ball had not actually hit the ground, and I'm sure once the party is over he will get an earful for jumping over the play like that instead of going for the ball.

[billw55]

I would call the Kearse catch the luckiest in a super bowl, not the best. Basically the pass was defended, then bounced around and landed where he could grab it.

Also, interesting to see how the safety coming across evaded the defenseless receiver. Ten years ago, he hits him instead, and the catch doesn't happen.

[andrei]

If you think an interception from 1-2 yards out never happened in SB before, you can watch Kurt Warner throwing one: https://www.youtube....h?v=RqnQwKAI4OE

Pass play can go wrong if:
defense makes an amazing play and makes an interception (like last night)
QB makes a bad throw and gets intercepted (like last night, lol)
pass bounces from receiver hands and gets intercepted (it just happened twice for RW against Packers)
receiver catches the ball before goal line and fumbles it

Run play can go wrong if:
fumble at hand-off
running back fumbles the ball

Carroll tried to be too cute and got bitten. He was lucky with first half last play call and with Kearse catch and was pushing it.

Are there statistics for how often you have 3 tries to run the ball 1 yard and fail?
With Lynch running the ball?

edit: 2 weeks ago everybody was agreeing with Justin that you can't settle for field goals when you have the best passing QB. Now there are people defending decision to pass the ball when you have the best RB in the game.

[cherdano]

andrei, on 2015-February-02, 07:24, said:

1st and goal, Lynch was stopped at 1 yard line at around 1 minute mark, so there is time for 3 run plays if they wanted to.

Ok, they could have hurried up and probably run it 3 times. But it's also easy to see why they didn't do it: if they succeed on 2nd down after hurrying up, they give NE the ball with 45-50 seconds left and two timeouts. NE scoring a touchdown or field goal with that much time left is much more likely than an interception on a 1-yard slant at the goal line.

Btw, I don't think the "bounce-and-interception" is likely at all given the man coverage.

I will give you this: I am not sure they actually planned to let 40 seconds tick off the clock and then run a pass play. They were expecting Belichick to call a timeout right away and then call a run play.

[billw55]

andrei, on 2015-February-02, 07:24, said:

1st and goal, Lynch was stopped at 1 yard line at around 1 minute mark, so there is time for 3 run plays if they wanted to.

This is not entirely correct.

First note, Seattle has only one timeout left.

On 1st and goal from the 5 yard line, snap at 1:06, Lynch runs to the 1 yard line.
Seattle chooses not to use their timeout, instead allowing the clock to run.
Next play, 2nd and goal from the 1 yard line, snap at 0:26.

Clearly, Seattle could not run the ball three times. With 0:26 remaining and one timeout, they could afford to run and fail once. So, with three chances, they can run only once and must pass twice. They chose not to use the run first time. I cannot call that obviously wrong.

Perhaps they could call their last timeout immediately, leaving about 1:00 on the clock. I do not think that this would realistically give them two running plays though, and still get a third play off. To do that they would have to use a hurry up, which reduces effectiveness.

[andrei]

Quote

1st and goal, Lynch was stopped at 1 yard line at around 1 minute mark, so there is time for 3 run plays if they wanted to.

billw55, on 2015-February-02, 10:08, said:

Seattle chooses not to use their timeout, instead allowing the clock to run.

They can run 2nd down at 0:40, if they are blocked run 3rd down at 0:15 and call a TO before the 4th down run. There was time if they wanted to.

Very true that if they go in with 0:35 on the clock and 2 timeouts they give NE a chance.
But defense (ya, I know, they got shredded in the 4th) and Lynch got them that far, why go away from it?

[Bbradley62]

cherdano, on 2015-February-02, 05:26, said:

Butler is an undrafted rookie who came in as a backup, and used to play Division II football in college... I mean, he didn't even know he should go down in the endzone after an interception at the goal line.

It appears to me that he caught the ball in front of the goal line then was pushed back into the endzone. If he (reasonably) wasn't sure as to whether this was the case, he shouldn't kneel. http://www.sbnation....-malcolm-butler

On the other hand, Jeremy Lane was clearly in the endzone when he made his interception and would have been able to play the rest of the game if he had been smart enough to take a knee. http://sports.yahoo....-235751596.html

[cherdano]

Ok, so I have thought a lot more about this coaching decision, pondered reasons either way, and I have really come to the conclusion that I cannot find any good reason to defend

Spoiler

Belichick's decision not to call a timeout right after the Marshawn Lynch run to the one-yard line.

[cherdano]

Maybe the story is that we usually talk about the less important aspects of coaching, i.e. the parts we can see. The main story is that the patriots were well-prepared for this specific play:
https://www.profootb...xlix-that-play/

[andrei]

The play Patriots were not well prepared for?

Stopping the power run: they were dead-last in the league.
Seattle were second best in running it:

http://www.footballo...rs.com/stats/dl


But yeah, let's run a pass play to Lockette, who has a whooping 18 catches in his 4 year long career.

[billw55]

I rethought this, and realized that of course they can always run the ball on 4th down. So technically they are only forced to pass once, not twice. Still, passing on 2nd down keeps the rush in play on 3rd down, forcing the Pats to defend both on that play. That could make the difference between getting in and not.

OK, maybe a slant into traffic wasn't the best choice of passes. Maybe a fade, or something else safer. But I don't think that passing was automatically wrong.

[jjbrr]

billw55, on 2015-February-03, 10:45, said:

I rethought this, and realized that of course they can always run the ball on 4th down. So technically they are only forced to pass once, not twice. Still, passing on 2nd down keeps the rush in play on 3rd down, forcing the Pats to defend both on that play. That could make the difference between getting in and not.

OK, maybe a slant into traffic wasn't the best choice of passes. Maybe a fade, or something else safer. But I don't think that passing was automatically wrong.

SEA thought they were getting exactly the look they wanted to score on the pick play with NE putting 8 in the box to stop the run with 3 CBs on the 3 WRs. The problem as has already been said was that NE (particularly Butler) knew the exact play that was coming when they stacked the receivers. If SEA had thrown in any tiny wrinkle, Butler was selling out 100% to the pick route, so it would have been an easy pitch and catch. Some sports science guys were showing that when the WR planted his foot to cut inside on the slant, Butler was able to react in less than a 10th of a second or something ridiculous.

And then on top of that, Butler made an amazingly athletic play to beat the WR to the ball and instinctively shield the ball with his body so that he could make a pretty difficult catch. When the ball leaves Russell's hands, if you watch the play, it looks like it's exactly what they wanted from the play. The break Butler makes on the ball though is unreal.

To me, if this were an ATB problem, I've got like 10% on the play call and 90% on pats/butler preparation and execution.

Maybe someone can dig up the actual percentages, but I'd guess the difference in win expectancy between pounding ML and throwing there is very small, except of course when NE knows beforehand what the play is going to be, which obv they didn't account for.

[jjbrr]

Also it should be noted on that play that the other SEA WR is supposed to push Browner back into Butler creating the pick, but Browner holds firmly on the line to give Butler a clear path to jump the route.

So any number of things could have gone wrong in the pats execution or gone right in the SEA execution and the outcome would be totally different.

Can't blame Carroll imo.

[cherdano]

jjbrr, on 2015-February-03, 12:00, said:

Also it should be noted on that play that the other SEA WR is supposed to push Browner back into Butler creating the pick, but Browner holds firmly on the line to give Butler a clear path to jump the route.

So any number of things could have gone wrong in the pats execution or gone right in the SEA execution and the outcome would be totally different.

Can't blame Carroll imo.

I agree with all your points, disagree with your conclusion. You had a bye in wild-card weekend. You have two weeks to prepare for the superbowl. Shouldn't that leave time to add a wrinkle to what is apparently the goal line play your opponent was expecting? (As you say, it wasn't just one defender who knew what was coming.)

Carroll deserves blame - but for bad preparation much more than for the call.

[billw55]

Maybe New England was spying on practices again

[jjbrr]

Also this link

[PhantomSac]

jjbrr, on 2015-February-03, 11:53, said:

SEA thought they were getting exactly the look they wanted to score on the pick play with NE putting 8 in the box to stop the run with 3 CBs on the 3 WRs. The problem as has already been said was that NE (particularly Butler) knew the exact play that was coming when they stacked the receivers. If SEA had thrown in any tiny wrinkle, Butler was selling out 100% to the pick route, so it would have been an easy pitch and catch. Some sports science guys were showing that when the WR planted his foot to cut inside on the slant, Butler was able to react in less than a 10th of a second or something ridiculous.

And then on top of that, Butler made an amazingly athletic play to beat the WR to the ball and instinctively shield the ball with his body so that he could make a pretty difficult catch. When the ball leaves Russell's hands, if you watch the play, it looks like it's exactly what they wanted from the play. The break Butler makes on the ball though is unreal.

To me, if this were an ATB problem, I've got like 10% on the play call and 90% on pats/butler preparation and execution.

Maybe someone can dig up the actual percentages, but I'd guess the difference in win expectancy between pounding ML and throwing there is very small, except of course when NE knows beforehand what the play is going to be, which obv they didn't account for.

So, BB GOAT in other words.

If I could go back 10 years in time and draft a team I got Bellichick as a higher pick than Brady.