Bill Belichick: 55 Minutes of Football is Fine With Me

George Romer — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:54:44 -0500

Bill Belichick has convinced me that not only has he lost his football touch, but he has also lost his mind.

How many times have we heard players and coaches alike preach the phrase “Play 60 minutes of football?” It seems to be a weekly utterance during pregame and postgame interviews league wide. In fact, the new campaign launched by the NFL geared towards keeping children active is called “PLAY 60!” It’s almost to the point of becoming cliché.

Bearing this in mind, can someone please explain to me why, with 5:26 left to play and down by 21 points, would Coach Belichick pull one of the leagues most elite quarterbacks from Monday night’s game?

Did he think that there wasn’t nearly enough time to get back into the game? Perhaps he should’ve checked in with Houston Texan’s Coach Gary Kubiak if he wasn’t clear on that thought.

The Indianapolis Colts humiliated the Texans in week five of last season by scoring 21 points in two minutes and ten seconds to win the game. Some say that that was just dumb luck and I might have agreed, had they not done the same thing to the same team just last week. Granted, this time it did take the Colts about five and a half minutes to pull it off.

Now, I understand that Coach Kubiak was out of town and Belichick didn’t have time to track him down for some advice, but Coach Jon Gruden was in New Orleans last night. Maybe he should’ve asked him.

Surely Gruden would have told him the story about how the Colts deflated his Bucs in 2003 by scoring twenty one points in less than four minutes sending the game into overtime where Mike Vanderjagt kicked the game winning field goal for Indianapolis.

Of course I say these things in jest. Coach Belichick obviously can’t call on other coaches for advice. Nor should he have to. He is supposed to already know these things. In fact, he was given his very own “Play 60” lesson by the Colts just two weeks ago when they overcame a three score deficit in the fourth quarter to beat his Patriots.

The bottom line is that the coach is supposed to have confidence in his team regardless of the situation. Belichick has proved for the second time this season that he does not. When he looked up at the scoreboard and saw 5:26, Bill Belichick committed one of the NFL’s biggest sins:

He gave up.

By benching Tom Brady, he told his team that it’s okay to give up. It’s alright to only play 55 minutes of football. What’s worse? His team bought it!

Try selling that to any of the real elite teams in this league.

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Bill Belichick: 55 Minutes of Football is Fine With Me