Weeks ago, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick couldn’t contain his glee. He smirked on the sideline in a blowout win over the New York Jets. Belichick had identified a loophole — it was yet another example of his thoroughness in understanding the NFL rulebook.
That same loophole burned him badly in the Patriots’ 20-13 loss to the Tennessee Titans on Saturday at Gillette Stadium. And Belichick was not smiling. To the contrary, he was irate, yelling at officials on the sideline.
The loophole goes like this. If a team wants to punt the ball to their opponent but they want to bleed clock before doing so, they can take an infinite number of delay of game penalties and false start penalties before ultimately making that punt. That team will move backward in terms of field position, but they can reset the play clock and let game clock run. The Patriots did it to the Jets. And the Titans did it to the Patriots. Tennessee ran two minutes off the clock before punting the ball to New England with four minutes left in the game.
New England went three-and-out on that drive. They got the ball once more, but had just 47 seconds on the clock. Quarterback Tom Brady forced a pass, and threw a pick-six. Game over.
“We’ve talked about this,” Belichick said during a postgame press conference when asked about the sequence. “It’s the same thing we’ve talked about before. It’s the same. Nothing changed.”
Do you have any additional thoughts?
“No,” he said.
Belichick referenced his explanation of the situation from the postgame press conference after Week 3. Here’s what he said then.
“No, no. It was just the way the rules are set up,” Belichick on Oct. 22. “We were able to run a quite a bit of time off the clock without really having to do anything. It’s a loophole that’ll be closed and probably should be closed. But right now, it’s open.”
Over the offseason, the NFL will surely prioritize amending that rule. In the meantime, the Titans should be thankful it’s open.
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