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Belichick explains Super walk off
Bill Belichick has come under considerable fire for marching out onto the field, and shaking Tom Coughlin's hand while there still was one second left on the clock. He already was long gone and headed to the locker room when Giants quarterback Eli Manning took the final snap and kneeled down to end the game. "Basically, on the last play I wasn't really sure of the time," Belichick said. "Everybody started onto the field and then I got over there and I wanted to congratulate Tom. I've been in that situation before after the game. I wanted to get over there and congratulate him and congratulate him on the championship. They deserved it. There really wasn't much left at that point."
Both the media and a sizeable segment of the football fan base love the charicature of Belichick they have built. It is fun to put black hats and white hats on the good guys or bad guys. It is fun making the lab scientist a nerd, the General a hard-boiled taskmaster, and the accountant a bean-counting dweeb. So when it became time to dress up Belichick, an obvious choice was to make him a humorless grunt. Every sweatshirt he wore, and every bit of impatience he showed at interviews with trite questions added to the persona we all love (or love to hate) so well.
With the loss in the Super Bowl, the fans knew their role and Belichick's. It was time for the feeding frenzy of "just deserts." Everyone loves to wipe the look of arrogance from a smug person's face, right? (Even if the degree of arrogance was created largely by the fans and media.)
How shallow is it that the best the frenzy can produce is the one second nonsense mentioned in the article? THAT is how the fans are going to play their role of "mocking the loser?" Has the football fan base become so devoid of love for the game that they will ignore the handful of wildly odd play calls that offer a much better opportunity to say "ahahahaha!" to Belichick? Those are meatier for attacking a coach.
DeLeah Caro
Jessica White
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Excellent points here. And I say this as a guy who's not particularly enamored of Belichick. I rooted for the Giants. The play calling decision he made that baffled me the most was not going for a windless field goal attempt that was in his kicker's documented range.
CSP
Honolulu , HI
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Yea Belichick didn't coach the best possible game. But the noise made about him leaving with 1 second left is WAY overdone. If you were the opposing coach you would not want to stay any longer than you would have to, Belichick did everything he was required (handshake and all). When you lose a game of that magnitude I wish people would just leave them alone, give the guy some time to lick his wounds.
And YES, I know how Belichick treated others. And YES, I'm certain many people are happy that he's getting what he's due. But at the same time this is still a guy that bleeds football and wants what is best for his team. He might not have always used the most ethical methods, but that's the kind of pressure you're handed as an NFL head coach to win in the league.
jho
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