Credit where it is due, the interesting thing is what happened after that: A mess. Some people ossified in their views: Trent Dilfer tried to back up his bombastic criticism of Belichick, though he had more passion than arguments. Peter King said the call “smacked of I’m-smarter-than-they-are hubris,” and compared Belichick to Grady Little. In the process, King messed up his math, but that was really besides the point for him. The call just didn’t feel right.

Although some stats junkies went the other way and proclaimed that it would have been affirmatively stupid for Belichick to have punted, most people, when faced with the compelling statistical evidence that the odds were roughly in Belichick’s favor (or at least so close as to be even with all the late game variables at play), were left in a fit of consternation. And this is why I think the decision has struck a national chord. It gets to the core of how people see themselves versus how they actually make decisions.

Most people fancy themselves as being driven by the evidence such that they will always follow it, but that’s not really true. As amazing and wonderful as the human brain is, it is full of inherent biases, and information, even compelling information, that does not comport with those biases is often devalued, even on a subconcious level. (One famous experiment confronts people with radios where the speaker is discussing views contrary to or similar to those already held by the listener, but the volume is set too low to be heard well. The listeners frequently turn up the volume when the speaker is saying things they already believe; they rarely turn the volume up if the speaker is discussing the contrary views.)

And so it was with the Belichick debate. It’s not that you must agree with the decision, but any reasonable person has to say, as Posnanski did, “Well, hmm, it seemed nuts at the time but I get it now, based on the evidence.” As Keyes said, “When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do, sir?” Yet many people still refuse to reconsider their view on the subject. It was wrong and no degree of evidence can change my view or even make me reconsider. Consider Colin Cowherd’s admonition on SportsNation that “stats are overrated.” (Though I agree that many stats are.) The upshot is that, despite our best views of ourselves, it is very difficult to actually say that we are rational creatures in practice. As Jonah Lehrer wrote:

The reason I bring up this analysis is to demonstrate that even defensible decisions can have wrenching emotional consequences. Belichick’s call might have been statistically correct, but it felt horribly wrong.

. . . The point is that there’s often an indefatigable gap between the rigors of cost-benefit analyses and the emotional hunches that drive our decisions. We say we want to follow the evidence, but then the evidence rubs against a bias like loss aversion, and so we make an exception. We’ll follow the evidence next time.

It’s not really fair to pick on Tony Dungy, who was an excellent football coach, because his excellence had nothing to do with any training in statistics or probability. But his comment that “you have to play the percentages and punt” is symptomatic of a wider issue, which is that when something “feels horribly wrong” we inherently want the evidence to comport with that feeling and we convince ourselves that it does. Dungy is a conservative guy, he likely would say that punting gives him plenty of chances to win, he’s a defensive coach so he has no qualms about showing faith in his defense, and, bottom line, the idea of putting that much significance on one play just didn’t sit well with him. That’s all fine, but it has nothing to do with the percentages. Yet his brain and experience had told him that somehow the percentages supported it too, and thus Belichick’s move was the “risky gamble.”

The fourth down debate is significant (though I risk inflating its significance), because it forces you to consider how you actually tackle problems. Indeed, the entire point of probability, statistics, and science generally is to make progress in spite of, not because of or consistent with, our preconceived biases:

This does not mean that one should reject intuition and reflexive feeling. These stances often encapsulate the wisdom of evolution (e.g., aversion to sibling-sibling incest) and/or society (again, aversion to sibling-sibling incest). The totally rational life, where all acts and opinions are subject to deep and thorough criticism, is not the human life (even Karl Popper was more of a theoretical critical rationalist than an operational one judging by his private and personal actions and style of argument). But, serious problems emerge when our intuitive prejudices push themselves into the scientific domain. Natural science has over the past few centuries has proven itself to be a marvel not by extension of our intuition, but contravention of that intuition resulting in an even closer fit to reality (contrast Newtonian physics with “folk physics”). Humans have always had engineering in the form of tinkering with technology. But the last two centuries of productivity growth through mechanical improvements have been based in part on the rise of science as a theoretical framework which allows for more than trial & error experimentation guided by intuition. Science allows us to stand on the shoulders of giants, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive their theories are, because they are judged not on plausibility but predictivity.

Of course, one of the fascinating things about the brain is it can be trained. I do not think Belichick worked out the numbers as Burke had. Yet he didn’t have to. His intuition was the kind of specialist’s ingrained intuition that came from years of thought about just such issues. Belichick, an economics major, had long thought outside of the box in terms of fourth downs, and we know he is familiar with David Romer’s research on the subject. When presented with the possibility of the fourth down, his intuition, built on three decades of thinking about fourth downs and many, many trials where his team had succeeded and won the game in such circumstances, that he knew the odds. This is the difference between a specialist’s intuition and a layman’s. Yet this is also the point of doing the analysis like I tried to do and Burke and others did: It trains your mind. The more you think in terms of possibilities and potential outcomes, the less you are fooled when some rare or at least relatively unlikely outcome occurs anyway. Ask any poker player.

As a counterpoint, I love the guys at Football Outsiders, but I was generally disappointed with their response to this. They are big “stats guys” in the sense that they track a lot of data and do a lot of good work to try to determine who the best teams, players, coaches, and the like are, but you don’t see a lot of probabalistic/stochastic reasoning in their work. Burke, on the other hand, is big Nassem Taleb fan, and his reaction, like Belichick’s, was to think about the variables at play and to mentally move them around to figure out what really was the best call. Even stats guys can have faulty intuition on these issues. (Barnwell and others eventually went back and crunched some numbers and admitted that it was at least quite plausible that Belichick made the right call, which in my view is an understatement.)

And yet, the unemotional Belichick aside, humans are not machines and do not make decisions like them; and nor should they. The emotional side of the brain — the side with all these crazy biases — is often our only hope for processing huge amounts of information in a limited time span, i.e. the seconds a coach has to make a fourth down call. Think of pilots, soldiers and their commanders during a firefight, lawyers being questioned by judges, doctors during surgery, or all manner of “learned” yet time-sensitive decisionmakers. And there is a human side to many stories. Even in this one, many have justified their rejection of Belichick’s call (mostly on an ex post basis, however) because “what message does that send to your defense.” And maybe there is something to that: Once Manning got the ball around the thirty, with the crowd and the frenzy of the moment, the defense gave up a huge run to Joseph Addai and Manning threw a touchdown pass shortly thereafter. (On the other hand, an already depleted New England defense had been decimated by injury throughout the game, and #18 is a very good quarterback, or so I have heard.)

So we don’t want decisions made only on the measurable evidence, always and forever. But this debate has reinforced a somewhat cynical view of people that I have. There are two basic types: Those who, when confronted with evidence that challenges their instinctive or “gut” reaction, are cynical of their gut, or those who are cynical about the nature of evidence itself. I think over the years of writing this blog I have shown that I am clearly in the former camp. Note that this does not mean you always and forever follow the first evidence that is shown to you: Often we have “gut” feelings for a reason, and some of the best work is done when some support is shown for a proposition that feels wrong, and then people try to figure out why they feel so differently about it. In those cases, the evidence either survives or is even improved (and hopefully some minds are swayed), or the rigorous testing shows that there was some flaw in the evidence. But this view almost always leads to a healthy, respectful debate, and we all learn through the process.

On the other side are those who distrust anything not in their gut. And these people, like Tony Dungy, might have very good instincts. But the result is the dismissal of many good ideas, along with any pretense at debate. “Why is that wrong?” “It just is. I’m telling you.” The sad fact is it is easier to dismiss or ignore arguments (and people) than it is to engage with them or to justify your own views.

Now, whether or not some coach went for it on fourth down is a pretty silly thing to get worked up about. Yet I think the reason people have is that this deep divide — between the instinct sceptics and the evidence sceptics — has become exposed again. To be fair, football is a fair place to leave rationality at the door, and most people, including me, no doubt occasionally operate in the opposing camp depending on the issue. But following the evidence is a lot harder than we usually allow. And for doing that here, Belichick deserves credit. May we all be so bold.

Q: Can you talk about the job the defense did on Tony Gonzalez? He was a big topic of conversation this week.

Belichick: Well, he’s good. We devoted a lot of coverage to him. We doubled him a lot and he’s a guy — game plan-wise — that you’ve got to account for. You’ve got to put some coverage on him; he’s really hard to handle. Again, I thought our guys stepped up and did a good job on him. We doubled him plenty of times and he still caught the ball. He’s tough, but then we held up in some other spots as well. Terrence [Wheatley], Shawn [Springs] and Leigh [Bodden] really did a good job out there. We didn’t give them very much help and they stepped up to the challenge on a good group of receivers and did a competitive job. . . .

Q: Can you talk about the job Brandon McGowan did today? It looked like he was part of your coverage on Tony Gonzalez.

Belichick: Oh, he was. Brandon [McGowan], it seems like he does a good job for us every week in the kicking game and on defense. He’s involved in a lot of plays, makes tackles and is a good coverage player and he did. He had a lot of responsibility on Gonzalez today. But we put a lot of coverage on Tony, too, and I’m not taking anything away from the job Brandon did, but we gave him some help. I mean Gonzalez is almost impossible to matchup with. . . .

Q: Were there changes defensively in the second half?

Belichick: No, not really. It was basically the same game plan we went into the game with. The calls matchup differently like they always do. Certainly, a big part of this game was to deal with Gonzalez, which I am not coming in here talking about him being seven [catches] for 110 [yards] with two touchdowns. . . .

And then Tom Brady had some interesting insight into Belichick’s role with the offense, specifically in drawing up plays in the dirt:

Q: On the Chris Baker touchdown, a guy had you in his grasp, but you were able to get away from the defense and deliver the ball well.

Brady: Yeah it was great protection. It wasn’t how we drew that play up. It was pretty much on the sideline, Coach Belichick said, ‘Well, what do you think about this?’ The guys that ran the play didn’t run it all week in practice and they made an adjustment. Chris [Baker] has been really dependable for us since the day he got here, and he made a great catch and run. . . .

Q: You said Bill Belichick drew up the Chris Baker touchdown play on the sideline. Was he more involved in the offensive communication with you and the play calling this week?

Brady: He’s always involved. He’s involved in every play that’s called. That one, like I said, we just kind of drew it up there on the sidelines and made it work.

The play was a variant of “smash” to one side, with the tight-end, Ben Watson, running a post route. I don’t have all the possible reads and route adjustments available, but the Pats ran the play the same way both times. To the two receiver side the Pats ran the smash concept, with the inside receiver on a corner and the outside on a quick hitch. To the other side the outside receiver, Randy Moss, ran a type of under route, presumably to settle in a hole against zone or run away from man coverage. The runningback just ran the flat — Brady always had this option against man coverage to hit Kevin Faulk if he could outrun the linebacker.

The tight-end of course ran a post route. His job was to jab like he was going to the corner (and I believe the Pats have run a variant where he ran a corner route), and then break for the post inside the near safety. The corner route on the other side runs away from the safety to his side. Brady’s job is to read the safeties first and if the corner or post doesn’t come open, work to the underneath guys. Both times last night, he didn’t get that far into his progression. The first time Watson was simply wide-open. On the second touchdown, the linebacker did a better job getting down the deep middle in a “Tampa Two” defense (Tampa two is simply cover two where a linebacker tries to get deep down the middle). But the pass was good and the catch even better, and the rest is history.

Here is a link to video of the Pats’ final two minutes, though it is low quality. Here is a link to Brady’s passing highlights from NFL.com; if you watch this you can see how often the Patriots ran the above play, though they often hit other receivers besides Watson, before hitting the game winners.

Relatedly, one of the ongoing questions was how the Pats’ offense would be after Josh McDaniels left. Brady recently told ESPN.com, “As long as we have Belichick, I always think that we’re going to be just fine.” Coach Bill knows offense, and is heavily involves. This gets to the other point that I enjoyed about last night: with Brady back, Belichick did not pull any punches, as, partly because the Pats got behind in the game, Brady threw it 53 times and set his own career record for completions with 39. Indeed, Belichick knows for Brady it is about getting reps to get the rust off. A lot of coaches take their rookie quarterbacks or a guy returning from injury and want to “ease them in.” Besides ignoring the fact that it is repetitions that make you better — you learn and improve by doing — the conservative playcalling often forces the passer into a lot of third and longs anyway.

But Belichick, never afraid of set his own path, knows that his team will rise and fall with Brady and he was going to let his guy throw it. Early on Brady was rusty, but that rust clearly began to wear off. It reminded me of Joe Tiller’s famous quotation when he first got to the Big 10 and caused waves by throwing it around sixty, or even eighty (!) times (against Wisconsin): “We’re going to throw it ’til we got hot, and then we’re going to keep throwin’ it.” It’s how you get better.

Finally, I wanted to highlight a great quote from Belichick about the passing game, passed along by Coach Mountjoy.

What the passing comes down to is the timing and execution. That’s true of every team in this league. It doesn’t matter what level you throw the ball at. It’s a combination of the throwing and the catching of the skill players and the protection of the blockers, which includes backs and tight ends. If a team pressures, they are involved in the protection, too. What you want to do is protect the quarterback. Whether you’re throwing three-step drop or seven-step drop or whatever the pattern is, protect him long enough so he can drop back and get set and throw the ball on time. The receivers need to get open and come open on time when the quarterback is ready to throw. Not a second before he’s ready, not a second after he’s ready. That’s just not the way to do it. You might get away with one here or there, but that’s not the way to do it. So all of that needs to be synchronized and if it is, then you have a well executed passing game. If it isn’t, then something’s going to go wrong. We are all part of that. Sometimes the receiver is open and the quarterback can’t throw. Sometimes the quarterback can throw and the protection is good and the receiver is not able to get open on the route, or the distribution of the receivers is wrong and then the quarterback doesn’t have a clear throwing lane. Sometimes the guy drops the ball. Sometimes the quarterback makes a bad throw. Sometimes it gets tipped. There’s a lot of things that could happen in the passing game.

If you throw the ball well, you’re completing in the mid-60s, the high 60 percents. Not 90 percent, that’s a good passing game. You’re completing 68, 67 percent of your passes, that’s good. If you’re the best passing team in football, you’re probably going to miss one out of three. The difference between hitting one or two more per game is the difference between having an okay passing game and having a good passing game.

To 4-3, or not to 4-3?

4-3 vs. 3-4 defense

“. . . .We have the versatility to play in a lot of different fronts, a lot of different packages, whatever is going to give our team the edge. You know, the offense always knows where the play is going and the snap count, so if we can do some different things on defense to help us out in that process, whether it’s the 3-4 or the 4-3, whatever can give us the best chance to win.” . . . .

Does the 4-3 allow him to stand out as a pass rusher?

“It depends on what we’re executing. It isn’t always about sacks, [that)] can be overrated. It’s about getting pressure on the passer, taking care of your responsibilities first. There’s a time and a place for everything. If it calls for us to penetrate, get in the backfield, then that’s what we’ll do. But sometimes we’ll 2-gap, when playing 4-3 front as well. Some teams have different philosophies, where it’s a 1-gap defense, but we still 2-gap and everybody is responsible for two gaps.”

It’s way too early to tell anything firm (I haven’t even been able to watch the Pats this year yet!), but a few points to remember. One, this is not necessarily a huge change in philosophy. Nick Saban, a Belichick protege, has managed to cycle between being a 4-3 and 3-4 guy as his personnel has dictated, without a lot of changes. Second, a big move these days is the rise of the 4-3 “under” look, where the backside defensive end is some kind of “hybrid” guy who can play either outside linebacker or defensive end. That way a team like the Patriots could still basically play with their usual three linemen — Seymour, Wilfork, and Warren — and the hybrid guy could move seamlessly between being a true 4-3 defensive end or an outside linebacker.

Indeed, in the diagram above of a zone-blitz he drops off. Is he a linemen dropping back, or an outside linebacker? It honestly doesn’t matter too much.

The other thing Seymour mentioned was the use of one-gap or two-gap principles. Most 4-3 teams  consider themselves “one-gap” teams, meaning each guy steps to a gap. A lot of 3-4 teams consider themselves two-gap, which means that, say, a nose guard is responsible for the gap to either side of him. In practice they still will play a one-gap because they will step where the linemen are, but this is an important thing when designing a defense and dictating the angles of the linebackers and safeties when they play run. It sounds to me though that Belichick is comfortable moving between the two somewhat, maybe even on the same look. The old 46 defense that Buddy Ryan used with the Chicago Bears was a one-gap defense where the nose guard was responsible for two gaps. It can be adjusted.

Which leads me to believe that Belichick is primarily just looking for more tools in his belt to be able to throw at people later. The offense should be in solid shape, while the defense saw a fair amount of attrition combined with an influx of new guys that will need to be fit in there, somewhere. It will be interesting to watch, for sure.

Hat tip: PatsPropaganda.