A.J. Scott
Jan 18, 2017 · 2 min read

Not going to even acknowledge your old, lazy, “cheater” and “AFC East is the worst division comments”. If you seriously think that filming from a bad location and bogus deflation claims are the reason for the Pats’ success, and that the AFC South and NFC West were better than the AFC East this year, I suggest you stop watching football.

What I will address is the flaws in your road/neutral record comments. First, you can’t just conveniently not count the games from their first three Super Bowl runs. What makes a game in 2006 or 2007 more relevant than a game in 2004 or 2005? Answer: Nothing. By the way, counting each game, over the course of his Pats career, Belichick is 7–6 on road/neutral sites in the playoffs. So that point is ruined. I also enjoy how you say they were lucky in the Seattle Super Bowl because the Seahawks didn’t run it with Lynch. Did you ever think about how lucky Kearse was to catch that pass earlier in the same drive? What about the Giants’ fifth receiver Tyree pinning the ball to his helmet in SB42? How about Eli’s throw to Manningham that he probably completes 5% of the time or less or Welker dropping a ball he catches 75% of the time in SB46? You can’t just selectively say choose points in time to start counting stats or claim that a team has won because of good fortune, but have never lost due to bad fortune. What you are showing here is confirmation bias, which is a common fallacy that the human mind has where you only point out things that help support a preconceived notion that you have. It leads to ignorance, and being wrong, like you are here.

Lastly, due to the NFL seeding rules, Belichick’s better teams would have only played at home, while his worse teams would have played more road games. Therefore, wouldn’t you expect a worse winning percentage at road/neutral sites? His career home record in the playoffs with the Pats is 16–3. Are you just going to completely discount that? By comparison, Aaron Rodgers is only 3–2 career at home in the playoffs. Peyton Manning was 10–6 at home. Big Ben is 6–3. Those are all solid, but worse winning percentages than Belichick has in smaller sample sizes. I don’t get how you can just ignore that.

Calling the greatest coach of the past 20 years overrated is just ignorant. I’m sorry your team hasn’t been fortunate enough to enjoy the same success Belichick has since 2000, but clearly your jealousy and hatred for the Pats has clouded your ability to see rationally here. I hope I have helped you with that.

    A.J. Scott

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