Forgive me.  I can't help myself.  I have to beat this dead horse.

Apparently, Bill Belichick is an idiot.  Forget the six division championships since he took over as New England's head coach in 2000.  Forget the four AFC Championships, and forget the three Super Bowl victories.  The .718 winning percentage and countless coaching honors?  Forget them, too.  As far as I can tell, none of it matters.  According to the vast majority of our astute mainstream sports media, Bill Belichick is officially a moron.

And why? 

Because on Sunday night against the Colts, with just over two minutes to go in the game and his team up by six, Bill Belichick did the unthinkable.  Facing a 4th and 2 from his own 28-yard line, he elected to (gasp!) go for it. 

But let's be honest with each other here.  The real problem wasn't that he went for it.  If he had gone for it and made it, there's no way we would have been subject to an avalanche of articles over the past three days dissecting this decision like it was as newsworthy as a decision over whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan.  No, the real problem began when Kevin Faulk, after catching the fourth-down pass from Tom Brady, was marked a yard short of the first down (don't get me started on how bad that spot was), and the Colts took over on downs.  Here's the video (in part so you can see how ridiculous the spot was):

The real problem - the reason people are suddenly questioning Belichick's sanity - is that shortly after the Patriots' unsuccessful 4th down try, the Colts scored a touchdown with thirteen seconds left and won the game, 35-34.

 
Isn't it easy to judge the intelligence of a decision once we know the outcome?  And that's the fundamental problem with any assessment of Belichick's decision.  We already know the result.  Any article you read about this decision, and any opinion put forth will have been influenced by the fact that we know what happened.  We can't help it.  We naturally link the quality of a decision with its results, and most of the time, the two go hand in hand.  Good result, good decision.  Typically, we consider the most reliable indicator of the quality of a decision to be the result that stems from that decision.  If I tell you I put my life savings in Google stock a few years ago and then pulled out my millions right before the crash (wishful hypothetical), you'd probably consider those to be two pretty good decisions.  How could they not be?  But what if I told you that I based both decisions on the lunar calendar and decided to go all-in at the first full-moon of the year and cash out at the next lunar eclipse?  Was it still a good decision?  Based on the results, yes.  But just because my decisions resulted in wild success doesn't mean they were intelligent, quality decisions.

An excellent example of our tendency to use results to evaluate the quality of decisions occurred in the NFL only hours before Belichick's fateful 4th down call.  With 1:39 left to play in the Jaguars-Jets game, and the Jaguars down 22-21, Jaguars running back Maurice Jones-Drew elected to kneel-down at the Jets' one yard line, rather than run into the endzone.  The touchdown would have given the Jaguars the lead, but also would have left over a minute on the clock for the Jets.  The Jets had no timeouts left, so the Jaguars were able to run the clock down before successfully attempting a field goal with time expiring to win the game 24-22.  After the game, Jones-Drew indicated that coach Jack Del Rio had instructed him to perform the kneel down.  Was it a good decision?  Of course it was!  Jacksonville won!  Del Rio's a genius!  But what happens if their kicker trots out on the field for the game winner and clanks one off of the upright?  Is Del Rio still a genius for essentially taking points off the board in favor of a field goal attempt so he can ensure the Jets don't get the ball back?  I'd love to see those articles.

So sure, it's easy to write a scathing article attacking Belichick for going for it on 4th and 2 from his own 28 with only two minutes left, but that's because the outcome was unsuccessful, and it's nearly impossible for any of us to objectively evaluate the quality of a decision once we know how it turned out.

But what if we tried?

What if we pretended that we don't know the outcome?  What if we attempted to eliminate the outcome from our analysis of the intelligence of the decision, and focused solely on the facts and circumstances that existed at the time of the decision?  Would Bill Belichick still be a moron?

A few members of the media have actually attempted to do just that, but they have focused their articles on the decision from a statistical standpoint, attempting to use probabilities to show that Belichick's decision to go for it was actually the correct move, regardless of the outcome, because it gave the Patriots the greatest probability of victory.  (http://www.advancednflstats.com/2009/11/belichicks-4th-down-decision-vs-colts.html)  While this is certainly an improvement from blindly categorizing the decision as idiotic because of an inability to separate the actual outcome from the quality of the decision, I still have a problem with the analysis (go figure).  Interestingly, the purely statistical analysis suffers from the same fundamental flaw as the rationale put forth by the hoards of commentators who have blasted Belichick for failing to simply follow conventional wisdom and punt.  What's the flaw, you ask?

Unfortunately, neither group has the first clue about what it takes to be a great coach.

Coaching isn't a science.  It's an art.  Great coaches don't carry around a calculator and make every decision based on statistical probability.  Do they understand the difference between a high percentage and low percentage play?  Of course they do.  But I've got news for you - if great coaches made their coaching decisions based solely on probabilities, they wouldn't be great coaches.  Ever seen a coach go for two with ten minutes left in the fourth quarter because he studied his laminated sheet and it told him to?  That's a great example of a coach who's going with the statistics at a time when statistics are meaningless because there's way too much time left in the game, and as a result, way too much uncertainty.  If coaches blindly went with the probabilities, they'd be completely predictable robots, and at that point, we wouldn't even need coaches.  We could just stick a laptop and a statistician on each sideline.  (Of course, for a few teams, that might actually be an improvement.)

And great coaches don't give a sh*t about conventional wisdom.  Again, if they did everything by the book - punted when they were "supposed to", ran and passed when they were "supposed to" - they wouldn't be great coaches. 

Great coaches win not only because they understand how to lead men and how to devise a successful game plan, but because they have great instincts, understand their team, understand the momentum of the game, and when they are presented with opportunities to make big plays to win football games, they give conventional wisdom the middle finger. [See Osborne, Tom]

Bill Belichick had the opportunity to win the game with one play, and he took it.  One successful play - a two-yard gain - and the game is over.  End of discussion.  If you're on a team that's given the opportunity to win a game with one play, how could you not want a man at the helm who's going to go for it?  One completely misinformed writer after another has lamented that Belichick's decision to go for it showed a complete lack of confidence in his defense and its ability to stop Manning and the Colts' offense.  I not only disagree, but I think it shows a complete lack of understanding of what it takes to be a great team to even make such a suggestion.  If anything, what Belichick did showed both confidence in his offense AND his defense.  He believed in his offense's ability to go out on 4th and 2 and end the game, and he believed in his defense's ability to stop the Colts on a short field if the 4th down try was unsuccessful.  A lack of confidence?  Please.  If he suffered from anything, it was overconfidence, but if great coaches have one weakness, that's usually it - believing in their team, and believing that they can overcome any obstacle. 

But who knows.  Maybe he should have punted.