On coaches and decision making

A few weeks ago, prior to the match-up between the Patriots and the Giants in the last game of the NFL regular season, I stated that I believed the Giants would be crazy not to rest their players in the game, which was meaningless for them since they were locked into their playoff position regardless of the outcome of the game. (You can see that statement within this entry.) As you might know, the Giants did play their starters the whole way against the Patriots in that game, playing quite well before ultimately becoming the last victim of the Patriots' first ever 16-0 regular season. You are also probably aware that the Giants continued to play well in the postseason, winning 3 straight road games to become the first NFC wild card team to make the Super Bowl in over 30 years.

First, let me pat myself on the back (pat, pat) for bringing this topic back up, unlike many in the sports media who make brash statements and then "forget" about them when they go awry. At the same time, I don't necessarily bring this back up to concede defeat on the matter. It's certainly hard to argue that the Giants made the wrong move, given where they are, and given the number of teams that rested their players only to fall along the wayside - 2 of them at the hands of the Giants.

I am willing to concede that it may have been the best move for this particular team to go out and give the Patriots a game. And yet, I have to say that we constantly deal with this false idea that because a certain decision worked out, it was automatically the best decision to make. The reverse is of course also often assumed - that something that doesn't work out is the wrong decision. However, it's really unfair to view decision making through hindsight this way.

I essentially minored in statistics in college, and while lots of that knowledge has departed from head due to lack of use in the last 5+ years, I do still have a pretty good grasp on probability, or at least I like to think I do. And I know that choosing the option that has the highest probability of success doesn't always bring success when you are only looking at a sample size of 1. Sometimes, making the right decision leads to the wrong result. And sometimes, making the wrong decision still works out well anyhow. But the simple fact is that the guy who is consistently making the decisions that give his team the highest probability for success is going to have more success, in the long term, than the guy who is consistently making decisions that put his team up against longer odds.

I'm speaking theoretically thus far, so let me give some illustrations. First, from college football this year. In the Auburn/LSU game, LSU had the ball at the Auburn 22, trailing 24-23 with less than 10 seconds left, with no timeouts remaining. Rather than kick a field goal, LSU coach Les Miles had the team take a shot at the end zone. It was successful, with the touchdown catch coming with 1 second left. Masterful, gutsy coaching, right? Absolutely not. Anything other than a completed TD pass in that situation ends the game in an LSU loss. Kicking the field goal clearly offered the higher percentage chance to win the game. And we learned later that apparently Miles lost track of the time on the clock, and thought there was enough time on the clock to take the shot at the end zone and still kick the field goal if it didn't work. Miles gets burned on that most of the time, but this time he escaped. An example of a good decision that went bad would be Joe Torre sending Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer in postseason history, in to the game to close out the 2001 World Series. I highly doubt you'd find anyone who would question that decision despite the outcome, and yet there are so many times when people are unwilling to get past a bad outcome when discussing whether the proper decision was made.

So, all of that is to say, just because the Giants made the Super Bowl doesn't mean that playing their starters the whole game against the Pats was the right decision. Let's remember, they lost a few starters for portions of the playoffs in that game, which clearly was a negative outcome of the decision. For my part, while I'm willing to give a little bit on this one, I think the Giants' Super Bowl run says more about just how wide open the NFC playoffs were this year, and how good the Giants have been on the road (10 straight road wins) than it does about Tom Coughlin's decision to play the whole game against the Patriots. Regardless, Coughlin's players went out and got the job done for him, and that's all that ultimately can said with any certainty, because we don't get to play the scenario out 100 different times and see which decision led to more success, we get to see one decision, one outcome. That's why I tend to be fairly easy on coaches when it comes to individual strategic decisions like this, because they don't go out on the field and play. Players can easily make a good gameplan look terrible, and a bad gameplan look good. You really have to look at the big picture when evaluating coaching.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I definitely think the Giants would be smart to play their starters in their next matchup with the Patriots.