Super Bowl Open Thread: Can Seattle win for America?
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Our podcast is here. Schatz has the analytic preview. The Seahawks are a better team but the Patriots have shown enough improvement over the second half to make the -4.5 line fair. I am not betting on the game but if I was I would lay the points and take Seattle — the Patriots can certainly win but I think the most likely scenario is the Seahawks pulling away late.
A couple of interesting Belichick related points in the latest column from Sea-Tac’s own Mike Sando. The first is on the mythology surrounding the horrifying end of Super Bowl XLIX:
There is an interesting connection. Belichick failed to call defensive timeouts to preserve time for a potential Tom Brady rebuttal drive, even though Seattle, down by four, had second-and-goal from the 1 with 1:00 on the game clock, and New England had two timeouts.
Belichick and the Patriots later claimed Seattle’s sideline was frantic, so the decision to let the clock run was strategic.
But there were zero signs of stress on the broadcast.
Cameras showed Carroll chewing gum with 20 seconds on the play clock, with no signs of confusion or frantic communication. As Seattle aligned for the fateful play with 10 seconds on the game clock, the offensive operation appeared routine. Al Michaels noted on the NBC broadcast that Seattle was bleeding the clock. Seattle snapped the ball with five on the play clock. Again, no signs of stress.
“Bill was absolutely great at 15 things, but managing the game?” a coach from another team said. “In the biggest chance ever to save time for an elite quarterback, Tom Brady stood there helpless on the sideline while time ticked away. Do you think Vrabel will take defensive timeouts under a minute in regulation if Seattle explodes to the 5? Of course he will. That is the mystique of Bill that gets tiring. Everything else is real.”
In retrospect, Belichick not calling timeout worked out, because given the time Carroll might have gotten a more favorable personnel group on the field or made a better play call. But maybe not, since Bevell seems convinced to this day that trying to pick one of the most physical corners in the league to try to set up a raw receiver whose only asset was speed to make a catch in very tight quarters using a play one the best defensive coaches in league history had already seen was akshully brilliant and the players let him down. But either way, it seems like this was more of a bad decision by Belichick that worked out because of an even worse one rather than some stroke of brilliance.
Second, Sando (a selector) explains the problems behind Belichick not being a first-ballot Hall of Fame selection. There definitely is a structural issue — increasing the vote threshold, as Bill James pointed out in his work about Cooperstown, is a bad idea that always backfires, and players, coaches, and owners should be considered seperately. But none of this excuses the voters:
If, say, 20 of the 50 selectors are predisposed to favor long-waiting candidates, vote splitting will continue to produce results that seem baffling to the vast majority of the public. This created a crisis for the Hall when Belichick missed, and it must be rectified.
The logic behind favoring long-waiting candidates over those with superior resumes raises questions about the selectors’ mission.
Are we 50 air-traffic controllers, each charged with determining the order in which the candidates land in Canton to get fitted for their jackets, based on what each one of us thinks is fair?
Because if we are, there’s going to be wreckage strewn across the runway, and investigations into what happened.
That is where we are today.
The way I see things and have always seen them, our job is to evaluate each class on its merits, electing the best from each class, without regard for whether someone has been waiting a long time and might slip through.
This is the only way to fulfill the Hall’s stated reasoning for changing the rules: “to help ensure that membership in the Hall of Fame remains elite.”
The job of the voters is to identify the best candidates, not to engage in (ineffectual!) galaxy-brained game theory over marginal ones. Anybody who didn’t have Belichick on their ballot wasn’t taking their job seriously and making it about themselves, period. I’m not sure if the various -gates played any role, but if so, it’s worth noting again that they’re the NFL equivalent of EMAILS! except that they come from sore losers rather than sore winners.
Go Hawks! Enjoy the game, everyone.