BuffOrange

This cannot be emphasized enough. A 9 game sample size is a joke. Three years ago to the day Eric Mangini would've been on this list.

This +100. A few years is an understatement. Cowher choked away the top seed how many times? 92 vs. Buffalo, 94 vs. SD, '01 and '04 vs. the Pats. Hell they should've lost to the Jets but got bailed out by their kicker. But he's a better "clutch guy" because they took out Palmer's knee and benefited from God awful officiating in the SB. The "big game" stuff is jibberish from the same donks who said Arod would never hit in the postseason. Give me Marty any day.

I don't know if I feel as optimistic about it as you, but ya know - I'm sort of in the same boat as far as growing tired of the inferiority complex that people have. Over the years I've been ripped a lot for being pessimistic about a game, or a season, or one of our QB's. "Go root for someone else", "fairweather fan", "don't let the door hit you", etc. All that crap. And when an opportunity actually presents itself - like after this season - to actually turn things around, it seems some of those same people have the defeatist attitude that it's a forgone conclusion that we'll hire another loser. Do these coaches like to party in big cities until 4am? Is the weather in other Northeast cities great? Is the economy in Cleveland booming? Are Pittsburgh and GB happening places to be? They have SB trophies and we don't. Great, that makes them more attractive cities to live in? Yes, Ralph is an issue. Obviously. But if you don't have a glimmer of hope that the old man will write a check and hand over personnel decisions (which he has done this this decade) after eating $7 mill (which nobody thought he would do) then I just don't know why you would bother putting your time and energy into rooting for this team.

Interesting. I wish him the best. Hard(er) to hate the Fish with him and the West Genny (Wildcat!) coach. Too much upstate flavor.

Pasqualoni or the secondary coach?

I find it amazing that the OP is too confusing for people to understand Nobody is saying he doesn't suck. The point being made is why the Tennessee game would elicit more of a reaction than the Saints, Dolphins, Browns, or Texans games. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. This doesn't make much sense either - but neither does Ralph - so it seem like a good a guess as any.

Pasqualoni may be a reach, but I don't understand the hate for the guy. How about a WTF @ the Dolphins secondary coach when that is the worst part of the team (along with WR)?

That's fine but the point remains - unless you want to lure Joe Gibbs out of retirement again, good luck finding a coach who has won titles with multiple QB's. Outside of Champ Bailey in his prime, the 12-4 team that beat NE in the playoffs was a bunch of stiffs.

I like Del Rio. People say that team has underachieved, but I thought all along the Jags SB hype before last season was fools gold and the team just played way over their heads in '07. The Bills could certainly and probably will do worse. The only problem there is I don't think he's a personnel guy so you'd need a GM as well. Yah, Haslett sucks.

Don't think anyone is arguing with that. The timing is indeed a head-scratcher though.

I <3 Leach.

Strongly disagree. Nobody ripped him for punting in the AFC title game in Indy a couple years ago. It's not that there's a vendetta against Bellichick. It's just that fans and blowhards like Trent Dilfer are brainwashed and bad at math. And it's cool for "football guys" to not believe in math (just like it was once cool for baseball guys to thumb their noses at Bill James) and so they make up empty statements that mean nothing, like "sending messages". The NE players got over it when Lawyer Milloy - a respected veteran leader was cut - and everyone working at espn said that "BB lost his team". But OMG how are those defensive players going to get out of bed in the morning and respect their coach after they went for a 4th&2!?

Could be worse. Instead of having their only 2 wins in our building since last November, they could have their only 3 wins in 3 years all in Buffalo. Oh wait - that's actually going to happen next year? Crap.

Well at least you have the right formula. Not sure how you get that right and come to the wrong conclusion though. Colts TD % from Indy 30 vs. (Colts stop on 4th&2 %) * (% Colts TD from NE 30) The discrepancy in how much more often they score from NE's 30 than their own 30 has to be a lot wider than you think for punting to be correct.

What? No coach ever gets killed for punting there - that's my point. You heard crickets on espn when Jauron punted vs. NO. Bellichick is obv. at the top of the job security list. He's one of the few guys who doesn't care what espn says. Whether that's because of his job security or because he has balls, I don't know. Maybe both. As I mentioned after the Bills-Saints game, Marvin Lewis responded to a math analysis with: "Ask the math geek if his mortgage is on the line". That pretty much tells you all you need to know with how most of these coaches think. So yah, I do think coaches decrease their chances of winning in favor of avoiding heat if that's what you're asking. I applaud Bellicheat for not being one of them.

Oh it's more than the inept ones. How many coaches do you think have firm job security? You can count them on one hand when Shannahan, Gruden, and Fisher are among those that don't.

Look at it this way: % of time that Colts score if you punt vs (% of time Colts stop you on 4th and 2) x (% of time Colts score if they take over on downs) Meh, kinda close maybe but I think BB was right. Certainly not terrible. %'s would seem to indicate it's correct even though no other coach would do it. But it's fun for media donkeys to refer to the conventional/conservative call as "the percentage play" when they have no clue whatsoever what the percentages are.

Gah, if you think the heat on the coach would be remotely comparable with a punt&loss then I don't know what to tell you.

Yah, the clock doesn't matter in that spot. It makes some sense to run when you know you have 2 plays for 2 yards though.

silvermike wins thread. Biggest mistake was the lack of decisiveness; ie they probably run on 3rd down if they know they're going for it ahead of time. Really the backlash to this on espn shows you why coaches like Jauron make so many 'lower expected value' chicken decisions. This loss will be pinned on him 100%; where it would be 0% his fault if he had punted and lost. Which is stupid but whatever. Also Manning is the only QB I've seen who manages the clock like a Madden expert. Run and milk the clock, run on 1st&goal, throw on 2nd. No doubt he runs on 3rd and takes his last time out if the 2nd&goal TD had been incomplete. Should be standard fare but it's not to 99% of guys. Just flawless.

Haha, I'm surprised there hasn't been more ball-busting than this. Road favorites have been sooo much better this year than I ever remember; and those are the teams I rarely pick and often fade. Bob Matthews from the D&C has a winning record for crying out loud, which tell me the season has been very outlier; but I don't expect many to understand that. Finally today that came down to earth. But I don't want to just rule out the possibility that I'm doing something wrong either. Haven't been reading Football Outsiders as much this year for one thing.

Yes. It's the same as the local radio. How many times can we say we need a sane owner, a real GM, a real coach, and a QB? These things have been lacking for a while now but for some reason it's different this year. Like, it's just a ridiculous waste of time to break down how we match up with Tennessee. Who cares.

I probably pointed this out ~600 times on various boards between 1999 and 2001. Mighty Mouse fans didn't want to acknowledge these facts 9 years ago when it was fresh in everyone's minds. What are the chances they start now?

I think he might be talking about the Peerless Price catch inside 2 min's left in the half which would've put us in FG range, but somehow wasn't reviewed. Followed by a McNair 3rd down scramble that was reviewed (after further review we're only reviewing calls that go against Tennessee). Followed of course by a defensive holding call on a missed FG that gave them 3 pts.

This +1,000,000. It is unfortunate that the kickoff is the only thing anyone remembers about that game. Every NFL fan should watch this just to see how incredibly one-sided the 1st half officiating was. It was as close as I've ever come to thinking a game was rigged.