amarshal2 said:
He's wrong. He had a minute. He could have taken less than 35 seconds to get a call in. It's not like the super bowl was on the line.
Edit: plus literally nobody believes they couldn't have gone pass/run/run or run/pass/run in 30 seconds. Or pass/run/pass.
Edit 2: plus, they had a timeout. Just not a valid point.
Well, ok, then maybe he's wrong. But it's worth noting that Pete Carroll thinks that, isn't it? I mean, he is the guy who was coaching the team at the time.
Also, your times are taken in vacuums but, in reality, those points are endogenous to the decisions made--even beyond the point made that they needed to burn two timeouts in the final two minutes at times that seemed like they should have been unnecessary.
Seattle has the ball with 01:06 at the 5. Beast Mode goes to the 1, and it's whistled dead at 1:01. NE has 2 TOs, SEA has 1. Everyone thinks NE will call a TO. Announcers are talking about it.
So if SEA takes TO here, yes, they have 1 minute for three plays. Camera on Carroll on the sideline shows Carroll saying basically nothing to anybody.
Ultimately, the ball is snapped with a mere 25 seconds to go.
That’s the key.
Belichick not calling the TO
and Carroll not realizing it in time dropped the clock from 1:01 for three plays to
25 seconds for three plays. Obviously, we have no idea when Carroll put the play in and why, but it’s not correct to say that the Seahawks had a minute to run three plays because that would be dependent on one of the two teams calling a timeout, and that didn’t happen.
As per above, there is no way of knowing when Carroll realized the Patriots were not calling a timeout, but we
do know for a fact that they ran the play clock down to 5 seconds, which tells us basically by definition that they were not ready (or willing) to implement a strategy that involved three runs. With 25 on the clock, even with the time out if they run they have only one sure fire additional run.
Certainly letting time run out with a down to go because they couldn't get the final play off in time would be one of the cardinal sins of coaching. Hence the attempt, as Carroll has stated, to put in a throw-away play to burn a bit more clock, thereby time optimizing a two-run-on-three-plays strategy.
As Belichick said, calling a TO wouldn't have been the wrong decision either. Each has pros and cons. In economics--which we know Belichick studied and continues to get insight from--the theory of rational expectations tells us that momentary/temporary gains can be gotten by acting outside of the expectations. These gains are not sustainable because people then alter their expectations, but can be grabbed in single instances.
In this case, not calling the TO when expected ran off enough clock that it altered the possible set of plays Seattle could call. That is fucking awesome.