Super Bowl 2012: Did Bill Belichick's Big Gamble Pay Off?

Bill Belichick is a smart guy. That goes without saying, but we should be reminded of it. The New England Patriots head coach owns five Super Bowl rings and one of the most innovative defensive minds in all of football. It's a mind that doesn't work like yours or mine, and it's one that might or might not have had a defense willingly surrender the game-winning score in football's biggest game.

With his team winning by two, deep in its own end and facing an imminent score, Belichick instructed his defense to give up a touchdown. Yes, a defensive coach, a man who has spent over 30 years keeping opponents out of his end zone, rolled out a red carpet for the New York Giants. In the Super Bowl. The discussion of whether or not it was the optimal call is secondary to the fact that such a decision was even on the table.

Let them take the lead, Belichick told his defense.

The oddest part about the decision is that it actually made sense.

The Patriots' 17-15 lead had all but evaporated when Mario Manningham wandered out of bounds for a 1st-and-goal. No intelligent football fan could second guess the call. Had Belichick's defense held the line, only one of two things could have been expected. Either the Giants successfully drain the clock for a last-second field goal from Lawrence Tynes (and the Patriots lose), or New York scores that touchdown of their own volition and Brady takes over with even less time than he had in actuality (and the Patriots, most likely, still lose).

Instead, Belichick made the only decision he could: He folded his defense and got the ball back into the hands of his Hall-of-Fame quarterback. Even less than a minute of Tom Brady is better than no Tom Brady at all, which is what New England would have had if they had defended their goal line. So they didn't.

And for all of it, the Giants tried not to score. Even Ahmad Bradshaw, the Giants running back who played through a broken bone in his right foot, tried to take a knee at the one, defying every offensive instinct instilled into his body. He approached his intended landing area on a 2nd-and-6 dive, bent his knees and staggered. But instead of downing himself at the one, he toppled over the goal line. Momentum, and over 100 years of football history, seemed to carry Bradshaw in for six points and, it seemed, a chance to lose the game.

Belichick did get the ball back into the hands of his best player, but materials were sparse, even for the future Hall-of-Fame signal-caller, to build a comeback. Brady hurled a ball to an open receiver downfield on first down. Deion Branch dropped it. Tight end Aaron Hernandez, on a crossing pattern, followed suit on the next play. And if the load of carrying his team wasn't enough, it was when Justin Tuck jumped on Brady's back for a third-down sack.

A fourth-down completion to Branch on the left sideline kept the drive alive. Brady found Hernandez for another first down on the next play, but would not complete another pass for the rest of the game. A desperate heave to the end zone would be Tom Brady's last throw of the game, and when time expired, so did the Patriots.

It's custom for the losing Super Bowl coach to make himself available to the media after the game. Why coaches perennially surface from their locker rooms for such masochism is one of the great mysteries of the game. It's a chance for us to get a jump start on any skewering and second-guessing that we feel the losers might deserve, and such an interview serves little other purpose.

We can wait until Monday morning to hear that the coach's hat is off to the other team, that his guys played hard, that they gave it all they had, that it just wasn't their day. Perhaps Belichick agreed or sought the need to defy convention in the Super Bowl one last time.

Belichick may not be a Hall-of-Fame human, or a Hall-of-Fame dresser, but his knowledge and experience in the professional game leaves him without peer. And if he said, in the waning minutes of the biggest of games, that the best defense was no defense, we have little platform for a rebuttal.