There's an old phrase and it's also embedded in football. "Just Win Baby," coined by the late Al Davis. In football if you don't win, you get fired. Sometimes winning isn't even enough, as some owners demand championships or bust, which is why the Chargers fired Marty Schottenheimer.
On Thursday night the Patriots got the ball back and kneeled down with a little over a minute left in the game. The Redskins were down by only two points and so head coach Ron Rivera called a timeout. Patriots head coach Bill Belichick was visually not happy with that call. Belichick then abandoned the victory formation. The Patriots still ran the ball, looking to kill the clock but it's not how the legendary head coach wanted to end the game.
In September 2012 Tampa Bay took on the New York Giants. Then Buccaneers head coach Schiano had his players blitz the victory formation. Giants head coach Tom Coughlin was furious and after the game gave his remarks.
Coughlin said, ""I don't think you do that at this level. You don't do that in this league. You don't jeopardize the offensive line, you [don't] jeopardize the quarterback. Thank goodness we didn't get anybody hurt, that I know of, a couple of linemen were late coming in [after end of game]."
Schiano replied, ""I don't know if that's not something that's not done in the National Football League, but what I do with our football team is we fight until they tell us game over. There's nothing dirty about it and there's nothing illegal about it. We crowd the ball -- it's like a sneak defense and you try to knock it loose. Watch Rutgers, they would know if they watched us that's what we did at the end of the game."
Defensive linemen are still told to push the offensive linemen back on those plays, incase there is a fumble. So if you're worried about injuried why have any contact at all during the victory formation. And if there's no contact at all, why line the defense up during the victory formation. Lastly if the defense isn't going to be on the field, why even bother with the kneel down, why not just call the game at what ever the time clock is? It's hypocritical hogwash. It's a double standard in coaching. "Play for 60 minutes but not if you're with in at least tying the score within the final 2 minutes, under those circumstances you are to quit." That's what your telling players, and what coaches are leaving fans infer from their statements.
In 2012 the league agreed with Schiano, even though Coughlin was upset about the unwritten rule being broken saying, "There is nothing further on the incident at the end of the game. There were no violations on the play or afterwards that would require follow up from our office." And even though Belichick won't publicly call out Rivera at the podium, the league would side with the loser again.
Tom Coughlin and Bill Belichick are good and respectable coaches. Bill is arguably the greatest coach of all time. But you don't teach a rule and then put an exception on it, the way the NFL has apparently done. Either the game gets called immediately in the final two minutes when a team kneels or they play until the clock reaches zero. Preseason or not, it doesn't matter, there is no room for an unwritten rules when a coach can get fired for any loss, including a preseason one. Period.
And one more thing, to anyone who says it's just preseason, Bill Belichick actually gave a real answer to the importance of the preseason in 2019, and how much he valued the games as a head coach. In New England we say, "In Bill we trust," so why would we now doubt Belichick on the importance of the preseason? It's trust him or don't, right? If we start questioning his decisions and logic, then we clearly don't trust him and the phrase means nothing. It's simple logic, and there's no room for unwritten rules in sports even when talking about the trusting the greatest coach of all time.
Here's part of what Belichick said, “I think when you look at a 90-man roster, there is a lot of discrepancy from let’s call it 1-90 on what those individual players need. Take (Jarrett) Stidham for example, it would be a good example, when are you going to play him? If you don’t have any preseason games, then when are you going to play him? How do you evaluate players like that? You only have one quarterback, it’s not like the offensive linemen where you can play a tackle at guard, or a guard at center, of something like that. If you want to evaluate that position, which everyone thinks is an important position, if you don’t have games to do it, when do you do it? I think those are questions as a team you try to balance..."
You get the point, The preseason matters. You can find the rest of what Belichick had to say about the preseason in the link below. The point of the matter is Belichick values preseason just as much as the post season. And so do owners. Winning is everything, and to put unwritten rules to attempt to stop coaches from winning is asinine and needs to stop, especially when it's how their jobs are evaluated. Now I know some are going to say If you value Belichick's opinion on the preseason, then you should value them on the end of the game. The difference is, it's not illegal to play until the final whistle, just like it's illegal at the moment for a team to choose to skip a preseason game. So although Belichick may not like it, Rivera & Schiano both played with in the rules and that's something Bill has made a career of exploiting.
https://www.audacy.com/weei/blogs/ryan-hannable/bill-belichick-discusses-importance-of-preseason-games
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