I despise the New England Patriots – always have – basically for a few reasons really:

1. I hate Bill Belichick. He is a confirmed cheater.
2. I despise Tom Brady – I believe he is one of the most overrated Quarterbacks of all time.
3. I cannot stand being told whom I am supposed to believe in – on any subject – in this one, football, we the people have been told that both the Cowboys (another team I hate) and the Patriots are America’s teams. Screw that crap.

Sunday was the Superbowl. It was a solid game – a real nail biter. There were two plays that made the game great. The first was an amazing throw/reception combination by the Giants that set them into position to win the game. The catch was so spectacular that they needed to review it to make sure that it really even happened and was legal. No joke.

The second play was, I admit this grudgingly, a genius maneuver that ultimately did not pay off by Belichick. Realize I hate this guy. I hate everything about him. That said he made a call, really the only intelligent call any coach could have made, to try to give his team the best shot at a comeback – a call that almost nobody would have thought of. See, I am a football coach, albeit not on the scale of Belichick’s career, and thus I am familiar with the hard decisions, and sometimes off the cuff calls, that a coach faces in game. It is much more difficult than people think – trust me here.

Belichick faced a situation where his team was going to be forced to watch the game clock go down to almost zero, watch what we can only assume would be the game winning kick by the Giants, that would lead to the Patriots losing by exactly one point with time expiring. The game was, in effect, already over. Belichick got this. Hell the only thing that didn’t happen was the rolling credits by the television station that was smart enough to buy up the rights to show the game. The commentators were talking about how the end was inevitable - the Giants had pulled an upset – and poor poor Belichick had to watch it all happen in painful slow motion.

No, Belichick wasn’t going down like that – and he sure as hell wasn’t going to go down with his “Star Quarterback” on the sidelines. During the pre-game hype Brady said that if given the choice he’d rather be on the field, down by a few points, with two minutes left than watching Eli do the comeback. Brady is confident enough that he can comeback, as he has in the past, and more importantly so can Eli – thus he’d rather it be him with the chance of glory instead of being forced to watch another take it from him. Belichick’s solution to the problem at hand was to do just that – get the ball back in the hands of Brady. But how?

The Giants owned the clock, the ball, and just needed to wait it out, kick an auto win field goal, collect a trophy and go home. To do so they would execute two simple run plays where the Running Back is told to hold the ball as if his life depended on it. Take a handoff, hold the ball, run straight ahead. That is what Belichick would tell his Runningback, and he knew that is what the other coach was doing as well. He knew it balls to bones – and so he did the unthinkable – he ordered his defense to simply step out of the way. It was a gamble – let them score. The Giants, after all, were down by two. That meant that if they scored, and went for two, the best they could be is up six points – giving Brady and the evil Patriots a shot at that last minute comeback – the one they had done so many time prior.

In effect, this call, is quite possibly the singularly greatest call by a coach I have ever witnessed. Remember, I hate Belichick, truly. I would love to see him stripped of his titles for cheating. Really. That aside for a moment, just a short moment, I really respected his abilities as a coach. If not for the cheating I could probably even respect the guy. Bravo sir. You made a call that few would think of and even fewer would have the balls to make.

Tragically you still lost.