This comment is nonsensical, fails to respond to any of my points, and in general does not meet even the basic requirements of amounting to an argument.

But of course, that is not at all what my argument boils down to. But strawman away, if that suits you. One thing that is certain is that the response in this space demonstrates that my larger understanding of the way your movement argues and acts is entirely correct.

Exactly that, for one. Another is simply acknowledging that there are people who can come up with similarly complicated metrics that would indicate that punting was the obvious choice.

But the choices in the metrics used to challenge the conventional wisdom are full of debatable and contingent assumptions at every point.

Also-- I am clearly guilty of overstating my own case in the process of arguing it, which is exactly the failing that I am identifying in the people who are arguing against me. Which, you know, is a character flaw, and hypocritical of me. I'm working on it; you'll all just have to be patient.

I believe that I indeed say "indeed" too much.

OK, OK. Let me restate my position. I believe that the Patriots had the best chance to win by punting it deep and letting their defense play. I believe both Peyton Manning's abilities and the Patriots defense's inability to stop him have been widely exaggerated in this discussion, and particularly his ability to cover 70 yards in the two minute drill. I certainly think that the fact that the Patriots defense did indeed stop the Colts on many possessions in that game is germane to the question at hand, and I find that the people arguing that the Colts had "momentum" are likely people who would dispute the very idea of momentum when doing so is flattering to their preconceptions. And, yes, I think the fact that the Patriots did indeed go on to lose the game in precisely the way that anyone who would have advised against going for it could have predicted is indeed a fair and valuable metric for evaluating his decision. I really do. Is the decision, overall, debatable? Yes, it's debatable. But in this instance, exactly what Bill Belichick did not want to happen, happened, and to say that totally ignoring that reality is not only smart but obviously so seems to me to be the product of a mindset that privileges iconoclasm, and sneering at the other side, over utility.

I have said and will say again that if the metrics crowd was more inclined to self-criticism, and to admitting that they have their own set of biases, blinders and faulty assumptions, they would be vastly more credible in their opinions. Instead, as a movement they are incredibly patronizing and evangelical, a really odious combination.

I would further like to point out that I was responding to a post by Will which was gushing towards Bill Belichick-- the man who assembled this roster, coached them for all of training camp and the majority of a football season, and yet was still unable to get them to stop Peyton Manning when it mattered most. Defending this decision as a way to defend Belivchick is very, very strange to me. Perhaps the defensive genius and brilliant football mind has been overrated for some time, both in his ability to build and direct a defense, and in his willingness to flout the conventional wisdom in the way his fans enjoy so far out of proportion with its success. End communication.

Because they are choosing what to compile, and they are choosing the relevance of the various pieces of data they are compiling.

I think that rational human beings evaluate decisions based on the outcome of those decisions-- not entirely, not without acknowledging error, but to some large part, they do. They do because this is frankly one of the only ways to make considered judgments about human behavior. And I think that this general schema cannot be dismissed entirely in this instance simply because it is to the benefit of the people who are so adamant about asserting their own unconventional bona fides.

Yes, I get it-- you are all brilliant iconoclasts far too free-thinking and out-of-the-box to be hemmed in by the Man and his antiquated notions of "punting" and "playing defense". I am suitably impressed. I continue to believe that going for it on fourth and 2 from the shadow of your own end zone was the wrong decision. I don't claim, unlike my interlocutors, to have some sort of unique access to the capital-T truth on the matter, nor do I pretend that I am accessing some hyper-rational computer knowledge that demonstrates that my opinion is correct and that everyone who disagrees with me is the enemy of rationality.

Like all attempts to leverage particular viewpoints with appeals to some sort of perfect or non-situated rationality, sports metrics rely ultimately on assumptions, conjecture, the privileging of certain data over others, human contingency, human error and more than anything else, the vast bias towards seeing what you want to see in the data. Does that make it useless? Absolutely not. Does that make claims that any consideration of what vast numbers of coaches, scouts and players are saying is some kind of obstinacy or clinging to outmoded traditionalism a farce? Yes. I believe it does. Take from that what will; I'm sure you'll devise a set of statistics that you're certain demonstrates that I'm wrong.

Quote: "you cannot judge decisions based on outcomes."

I'm sorry it's inconvenient for all of you that he said it, but he said it.

And they are cherry-picking too. The difference is, one group insists that they have unerring access to "rationality," and one does not.

Excuse me, the above is a direct quote. Follow the link before you accuse me of misquoting someone. Seriously.

Please note that I'm a fan of being a bit of a punk while arguing. Especially about things that are low stakes like sports.

OK, again-- one set of statistics is that the Patriots had quite handily stopped the Colts the majority of the time in that game. Why do you privilege the other set of statistical data? My data is from the self same game. Surely there is no other data that so thoroughly meets the burden of being applicable to that situation than data from that same game.

Again, the sports metrics world reveals its fundamental immaturity. The vast claims of superior predictive power are just utterly unfounded; go around and evaluate all of the season opening predictions of the metrics crowd and compare them to various other people making predictions based on other criteria. The metrics crowd, despite all of their crowing and their self-felating rhetoric, don't have any consistently superior success to the other kinds of evaluation. If these advanced metrics are so powerful why is that the case?

In the most similar of circumstances-- that very game-- the Colts failed to score on 9 of 14 drives. Why is one method invalid and the other valid?

Bill Barnwell is not arguing against induction

Quote: "you cannot judge decisions by their outcome."

And the crickets chirp.

No; as is clear, I am not saying that "this one event demonstrates the folly of going for it." I am arguing that the urge to dispute several decades of received wisdom and experience is what is driving this sports contrarianism, not a supposedly hyper-rational appreciation of the facts.

I think it is worth pointing out-- Belichick is, by all accounts, the strong man in the Patriots roster management system, as well. He is functionally the GM as well as the coach, if not by title. If he built a defense that he is sure is incapable of stopping Peyton Manning-- despite being successful at stopping him more often than not in that very game-- then it is his own fault. Why are his vaunted powers as a defensive genius and the roster he put together himself incapable of defending the Colts?

The defense to your inductive reasoning attack is that on a single football play, the random chance and luck factors involved make it very difficult and/or wrong to inductively reason from it.

Precisely why drawing deterministic readings of statistical data is folly.

Uh, you mean like "basic argumentative consistency"?

I have to tell you, man-- saying that the only difference between Madden players and real players is that one is seen nationally and the other is not, and not only saying it but prefacing it with an "of course"-- of course!-- that seems, frankly, crazy to me. I know the metrics people like to deny that this is the case, but athletes are not purely deterministic automatons. Yes, many commentators overemphasize the power of emotions in sports, but in fact there is such a thing as human psychology, and athletes are not immune.

Perhaps defensible; but still wrong, I'd wager.

This reads like a parody of the new metrics vision of football.

Actually, I think who your quarterback is on third and two should be irrelevant. If you have a power running game-- that is, if you haven't ignored your running game for at least five years in your role as GM-- your QB doesn't do anything but hand off twice and pick up the two necessary yards.