How dare Belichick think that Rowe gave them the best chance to win and play him, when my zero years of professional experience tells me that Butler was obviously the better option? Even the talk radio hosts and Dan Shaughnessy agree with me. How dare he?
You fucking guys need to turn off your radios and watch one of your five Three Games To Glory videos.
I well understand this take. Bill's accomplishments are what they are. And I am far from a Pats fan who is grabbing a pitchfork.
But it doesn't take a talk show yahoo to note that it's one thing to bench Butler -- for whatever reason -- to start the game and it's quite another thing to see that your D is getting fucking shredded and to nevertheless leave a starting CB who played 98% of the snaps on the bench for the entire game. And the disciplinary angle is tough for me to accept because Butler actually played in the game, albeit one snap. If he was being benched and was still dressed for depth reasons, that in and of itself is a little bit of having it both ways, and so is playing him for even a snap. So bottom line, BB does deserve all the deference in the world regarding how he attacked the game to start. But sorry, when he saw Philly routinely going up and down the field on his D and he had a guy just standing there who he had on the field for virtually the entire season, I think the questions are more than fair. The DVDs can wait.
As to In Bill I Trust, there's no one I would rather have coaching the Pats and I will sign up for another 10 years. Period.
That said, there is a decent list of things one could question.
Included:
- Going for it on 4th and13 while in FG range in the Abomination Game;
- Trading Branch after Givens left before the 2006 season;
- Not calling a TO against the Seahawks because he could read Carroll's soul; worked out beautifully but if it had not, we'd all wonder a lot about why he did not preserve the TOs;
- The truly odd game plans for the last two losses in 2005, which essentially gave Denver a home game in the AFCCG and made winning much harder given the Pats' history in Denver;
- Trading Jimmy mid-season and losing the insurance of a quarterback substantially better than Brian Hoyer if Brady went down (as he almost did) for, essentially, a one round move in draft pick compensation and the chance to keep Jimmy from choosing an AFC team.
There are other things one could note. The point is not to re-litigate each item. Good arguments exist on both sides for each of them. The point is that questioning Bill in the past or now given all of the above does not make one a presumptuous ninny or a classic talk show shut in. Bill is the best human HC/GM there is, but he's still human and therefore subject to second guessing.