Bill Belichick’s late-game decision-making has been off this season. His savvy decisions have determined so many wins for the New England Patriots in their 20 years under the six-time Super Bowl-winning coach. But this year, he’s lost tight contests to the Seahawks, Chiefs and Broncos. In those tight games, Belichick’s usage of timeouts and challenges flags have come under fire.
It doesn’t help the New England Patriots that they’re dealing with a transition at quarterback during a pandemic, which has limited practice time. But Belichick can’t be happy with his record, 2-3. It’s the first time he’s been below .500 in October since 2002.
In a surprising Week 6 loss to the Broncos, Belichick elected not to challenge the spot of a ball on one of James White’s receptions — the ball placement came up short of a first down but the replay appeared to show that he converted. The Patriots decided to punt, rather than challenge. During a press conference Monday, Belichick was asked whether he feels he’s been happy with his decision-making process, particularly as he didn’t use or used challenge flags in crunch time this season.
“Yeah, I do. I feel that’s — it’s nice to be able to sit up there and watch replay after replay and have unlimited challenges,” Belichick told reporters. “But that’s just not the way it is. We don’t have unlimited challenges. We challenged the quarterback sneak on the touchdown (later in the second half), so we thought that was enough to overturn it. There’s a lot of close plays out there. If you challenge all of them, then you run out of timeouts and run out of challenges and everything else. You have to pick out the ones that you think are the right ones. It’s certainly an unscientific process, but we feel like we take the information and do the best we can.
“I’m sure it could be done better. I’m sure there’s other people that could do it better. But we just do the best that we can.”
Indeed, Newton had a rushing attempt that was initially not called a touchdown, but after review, officials ruled the play a touchdown. That left the Patriots with one final challenge for the final few minutes of the game. At the time of White’s non-first-down, Belichick apparently preferred to have two in his pocket in the event of two more consequential errant calls. Though they did need it for Newton’s touchdown, they did not end up using both challenges.
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