If you aren't playing to win, whatfuckingdifferencedoesitmake who your #4 corner is?
SBLII: What Did the Butler Do?
- Thread starter ifmanis5
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It's pretty common that they dress a couple pure backups who barely see the field. Hoyer didn't play. Ted Karras and LaAdrian Waddle only played on FG/XP units. Dwayne Allen played 2 offensive snaps (9 on ST); Wise played 6 defensive snaps (0 on ST). They only deactivated two defensive players, period; there were no other options if they wanted to dress 8 DBs.
And if McCourty plays CB, then it's your Jordan "Coach on the Field" getting snaps.
I'm embarrassed that we've come to a point where Minihane's tweet has any value whatsoever in this discourse.
I'm not advocating that DM be used as a backup corner, however, he was an All-Pro his rookie year at CB, and was the only player besides Suh to get votes for AP Defensive ROY.
Yeah, because he was playing mostly zone and staring at the QB. When he was moved to man and had to play form, he was beyond awful. Moving McCourty to CB would probably been a wash at corner and a massive downgrade at safety.
He has lost three fucking Superbowls out of eight tries. So he has a 62.5% winning percentage in the big game. There are a ton of other coaches who have far better records in the big game including Doug Pederson who has won 100% of the Superbowls in which he has been HC.
In the NFL, you are what your record says you are. Based on winning percentage, BB is a below average Superbowl coach. I am so sick of his apologists not acknowledging this.
In all seriousness, I get the questions - I have them too. But in the last ~ 24 hours I have made peace with the absolute stone cold fact that we will never really know if Butler playing would have resulted in a Pats win. At some point, you have to accept that even if you are certain in your mind that had he played, they win. Its simply unprovable.
I'm on board with shredding BB for this decision, but I'm pretty sure that a 62.5% winning percentage in the Super Bowl puts BB way above average when it comes to Super Bowl coaches.
Bad joke.
Still, my advice is to let it go. It does no good to ruminate over this shit. Its Celtics season (or "szn" as the internet kids call it) now..
Too bad the Belichick Pats missed their opportunity to push their Super Bowl win% back up above their regular season win%.
Alas.
I'm not even sure that you will be able to let it go. I know I wont. What happened with Butler in that game is going to be on my mind for a while and even the most complete, sensible explanation for it will leave me with a lot of What Ifs.
That said, that both the Bruins and Celtics have a legitimate shot to make some serious noise this season is extremely helpful. Both play tonight, which immediately makes tonight a lot better for salving the wounds than last night.
In retrospect i wonder if the patriots would have been better off resigning logan ryan and trading Butler for a couple of 2018 draft picks after last off-season. God knows we could use the extra draft capital right now.
Of course but they also didn’t want to pay Ryan $10M AV. Butler only made $4M this year.
If they had infinite cap room, yes. But it’s hard to see them retaining Ryan and signing Gilmore.
Does this mean that Patricia got to the stadium and B.B. told him Butler was out and Patricia was like ‘wait...huh?’
Or that Patricia was more like ‘well, I was hoping you would decide otherwise after our discussions this week...’
?
(Or is this Fake News?)
If true, that's a really bad look for Belichick. It is almost Grady-level stupidity. It also puts Patricia's non-answers in a different light.
I thought there was a thread for Kirk's bleatings in the media forum. The source matters, and, in this case, the source has never shown himself to be credible on anything.
Kirk was all bitchy a couple weeks ago when Felger got credit for the Brady injury, saying he had that news early in the morning (which he did state on the radio, but nobody took him seriously, because, well, Minihane). Since then, he's been trying to be more out there with his info.
They just interviewed a media member (didn’t get the name) who mentioned the squad captains knew that a Butler benching was possible for “a couple of days”.
Review this thread, yesterday’s entries.
We are in a pitch black room with the door closed on this. Why? Because there is no disincentive for “reporters” to throw half baked crap out there, or even to just make things up entirely. They pay no price for serial garbage twitter posts or on air fabrications.
I’ve quit jumping off the porch to chase these cars. When a reputable reporter comes with a well documented piece, I will pay some note.
Where's Will McSclusive when you need him? I fear the writers out there now can't find their own shadow. Did any of them discover anything significant on Deflategate, for example?
if *what* is true? That "report" is so vague as to be meaningless. The only thing it rules out is that Belichick made up his mind more than a few days before the Super Bowl whether Butler would start or not. Has he ever done that (aside from Brady?). How is he even supposed to do that given Butler's availability during the week?
If Patricia had to talk Belichick out of benching Butler 2 weeks ago, and then Butler was sick and/or had a shitty week of practice (or didn't show up, or was late, or got stoned, whatever...), and some other guy was running snaps with the first team D in practice all week, I don't think Patricia gets a pass because he was *Shocked!* that Belichick benched Butler. Seems like pretty strong possibility that would happen. He's the Defensive Coordinator, for Christ's sake.
Almost certainly this.
Everyone here is way overreacting to the whole "We didn't know until game day" thing. The guy missed multiple days of work due to illness, and Rowe (apparently) got plenty of work with the 1s. Surely Butler's situation was communicated as something like a game-time decision - none of the quotes I've seen suggest otherwise.
I can buy that the combination of Butler being sick and not practicing the game plan, plus a desire to get Rowe out there against the Eagles taller receivers led to the initial decision to start Rowe and not Butler. What I still can’t figure out is why they never adjusted once it was clear that Philly was picking on anyone not named Gilmore with great success. That’s the piece that I’ll never understand, other than if it was a disciplinary thing.
If the reports are true that Butler had a very rough/bad week in practice, they may well have thought that if they put him out there, they'd get even worse on defense. If such a thing were humanly possible, that is.
I keep thinking to the Do Your Job special that came out after SB 49, with Ernie Adams saying "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GAME DAY PLAYER." The team sees practice as the key to winning. If Butler had a shitty week in practice, they may have believed he wouldn't be able to help them win the game.
I keep thinking to the Do Your Job special that came out after SB 49, with Ernie Adams saying "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GAME DAY PLAYER." The team sees practice as the key to winning. If Butler had a shitty week in practice, they may have believed he wouldn't be able to help them win the game.
It would be a stunner beyond belief if all the coaches and players thought Butler was playing and then at the last moment, without anyone else really being in the know, Belichick just told Patricia and the team that Butler wasn't playing. There's no way that at least the coaches weren't aware of what was going on. They may not have liked it, but it's just not believable that they were taken completely unawares here.
A lot of NFL coaches have a rule that if you don't practice, you don't play. Technically Butler did practice, but it sounds like he was so ineffective that he probably shouldn't have.
Or that Butler was dog shit in practice all week, wasn't as well versed in the schemes, and so putting him in was likely to be more disruptive to the Patriots than to the Eagles.
It's not a video game. Butler isn't an "83" rated CB that you can just slot in to replace a "71" CB and have your Defense work better.
Well yeah, but as you note, he did practice. And again, if it was working, fine, but it clearly wasn’t. I say this as someone who does not think that Butler not playing was the reason they lost. I just don’t understand the decision. It just seems so stubbornly wrong to me not to adjust, unless there was a discipline component.
Put him out there for a series. If he’s sucking wind and lets his guy get free for some completions, then take him out. The Eagles receivers were abusing the guys playing in his place, how much worse could it get?
I’m not saying it would have worked better, but it is hard to imagine it working worse. He played 98% of the defensive snaps all year long, how much different could the schemes have been that he wouldn’t have been able to pick them up even with a limited amount of practice.
All I am saying it is inconceivable to me that they never decided to throw him out there for a series to see how he would do. The guys who were playing in his place were absolutely horrendous.
If he had the flu which caused him to arrive late, and then had a shitty week of practice, and THEN got caught up in some rule fraction (arriving to the hotel after curfew? Weed? Who knows?), then you can kind of see the reasoning there of "Hey, we can't depend on this guy on Sunday."
Not saying that that's what happened, but there's at least a logic chain there.
Now, as to whether they should put him in in the second half...no idea. Had they managed to force more than 1 punt he would have gotten more than one snap. If Bademosi or Richards or Rowe gotten hurt he would have gone in, even with the benching.
That information hasn't been confirmed, only person saying that was Minihane who's generally full of crapola.
This is the point. BB chose the approach that he thought gave the Patriots the best chance to win. The defense he wanted to use was spectacularly awful, playing exactly 1 good defensive series in the whole game and otherwise giving Philly whatever the fuck it wanted.
When faced with the choice between his pre-game logic and the reality unfolding in the field, BB failed to adjust.
To borrow from baseball, its almost like BB stuck with his starter a little too long, and tried to steal a couple of outs, but got whacked with a crooked # instead.
Boomer's theory the past two days is that Butler did something to get benched, and in Boomer's experience, it had to be due to Butler sparking up in his room during the week and/or being late to meetings or practice.
I’m a “in Bill we trust” guy, but if Butler getting benched isn’t a reflection of something else (discipline or . . . something, lack of trust by the coaching staff that he was committed to the scheme or something) then I disagree with Belichick’s decision not to at least try to see if he might be better than Rowe, Bademosi or Richards, who were absolutely horrendous all game long, and who were clearly getting targeted by the Eagles.
If it was the case that they thought Butler was still limited by the flu on Sunday, then Bill is doing a tremendous disservice to Butler by not saying that. A simple “Malcolm was sick during the week, and we didn’t think he had recovered enough to be effective, so we went with other guys.” This lets Butler off the hook, disspells all of the rumors about other motivations for why he was benched, and makes logical sense in the way that the answers provided by BB and Patricia so far have not. Also if the real answer is that he was still limited by the flu then you have the issue of the injury report. Butler was off of it by Friday and was a full participant in practice, so saying you didn’t play him Sunday because he hadn’t fully recovered would contradict your last injury report.
The facts just don’t add up that he was still suffering from the flu by Sunday to the point where they thought he wouldn’t be effective. Something else played into the decision not to play him at all even when the game plan was failing miserably. I can understand the inital decision to alter the game plan, and I can even understand more or less sticking with it even when it wasn’t working. But the season was on the line, and the guys they were playing instead of him were failing miserably. If they just failed to try Butler because of a stubborn desire to continue with a game play that flat out wasn’t working, that is not the Bill Belichick I know. There has to be something else that played into the decision not to even try him at all during the game in place of other guys who were simply getting abused. It is the only thing that makes any sense to me.
If it was the case that they thought Butler was still limited by the flu on Sunday, then Bill is doing a tremendous disservice to Butler by not saying that. A simple “Malcolm was sick during the week, and we didn’t think he had recovered enough to be effective, so we went with other guys.” This lets Butler off the hook, disspells all of the rumors about other motivations for why he was benched, and makes logical sense in the way that the answers provided by BB and Patricia so far have not. Also if the real answer is that he was still limited by the flu then you have the issue of the injury report. Butler was off of it by Friday and was a full participant in practice, so saying you didn’t play him Sunday because he hadn’t fully recovered would contradict your last injury report.
The facts just don’t add up that he was still suffering from the flu by Sunday to the point where they thought he wouldn’t be effective. Something else played into the decision not to play him at all even when the game plan was failing miserably. I can understand the inital decision to alter the game plan, and I can even understand more or less sticking with it even when it wasn’t working. But the season was on the line, and the guys they were playing instead of him were failing miserably. If they just failed to try Butler because of a stubborn desire to continue with a game play that flat out wasn’t working, that is not the Bill Belichick I know. There has to be something else that played into the decision not to even try him at all during the game in place of other guys who were simply getting abused. It is the only thing that makes any sense to me.
Or it's:
"The outfielders have made 8 errors on deep fly balls today. Hmmm...our guy is throwing 88 MPH and his curve isn't biting. Let's put in the guy who hasn't pitched effectively in two weeks and recently disclosed he has arm soreness. That will do the trick!"
They did adjust in the second half. Correct me if I am wrong, but to start the game, Rowe (6'1") was on Jeffery (6'3"). In the second half they switched GIlmore (6'0") to cover Jeffery.
I think this is a combination of a bunch of things. Butler being sick. Butler not being effective in the slot. Butler being smaller. Butler having a down year. Butler having a bad week of practice. Butler having problems with coaching.