I ‘ve been commissioned to get to the bottom of this. Does Bill Belichick play conservatively during “must win” games – thus leading the under total score line to hit? And can we win millions by exploiting it?

This theory comes from Pardon My Take podcast’s Billy Football. The thing I love most about Billy’s theory is that a “must win” is pretty arbitrary – at least in football guy nomenclature. From a team perspective, “must win” games are an emotional feel stat which pretty much means it’s not a stat at all. Whatever, I’m going to make it one by balancing the analytics and the emotional feel of what I think Bill Belichick would think was a “must win”.

I’m going to use only Bill Belichicks Patriots coaching career and all 41 playoff games are considered “must wins” by default. The regular season qualifiers will be litigated below with the help of this old analytics chart on playoff chances for teams at all kinds of records:

I’ll spare rationalizing the obvious games with clear playoff implications but some “must wins” need a little explanation:

2000 (Weeks 2 – 8)

We’ve all seen the “teams that go 0-2 rarely make the playoffs” schtick and the chart above supports this as only 12 percent of 0-2 teams make the playoffs. This means the season was already on the line in Week 2 for the Drew Bledsoe led Patriots. Well, they lost Week 2 which made Week 3 an even “muster must win” game in which they came up short before a Week 4 “must muster must” game. No luck. This left the 0-4 Patriots with a 1-percent playoff chance.

OK this is quickly getting a little ridiculous. The technically “In the Hunt” 0-4 Patriots stood a 1-percent playoff chance and Week 5 was for keeps. Lose and you face playoff death at zero percent. They won. Week 6 was the same story all around. And at 2-5 going into game #8, they finally lost and kissed their playoff hopes goodbye at 2-6 (0 percent playoff chance).

2001 (Week 2, 3 & 17)

Again losing in Week 1, the Patriots once again blew their “must win” Week 2 match-up. But in the “muster must” Week 3 outing they turned the entire season around by winning. With such an obvious clear impact on team morale, this “muster must” win provided the momentum leading the Pats to their first ever Super Bowl win despite having lost their starting quarterback for the season to injury in Week 2. This all goes to show how big of an impact winning in Week 3 really was.

Week 17: You can’t lose to a 1-14 team right before the playoffs. Don’t worry, even with the backup quarterback, the Patriots won easily due to the momentum of the early season “muster must” Week 3 victory.

2002 (Week 8, 16)

Week 8: Lost in Weeks 5 – 7. You can’t make the playoffs with a streak of four straight loses consecutively in a row one right after the other. Especially if they are all back to back.

Week 16: A fight for the division crown with the Jets (not a typo). Pats lost. Can’t make the playoffs with multiple “must win” loses.

2004 (Week 8)

7-0 Pats vs 6-1 Steelers: “must win” via “establish conference dominance” clause.

2005 (Week 11)

Here’s how the first nine weeks went for the Pats in 2005: Win. Loss. Win. Loss. Win. Loss. Win. Loss. Win.

Week 11 was a clear “break the simulation must win”. The Pats won clearing the way to the playoffs.

2007 (Week 17)

14-0 Pats vs 1-13 Dolphins who were on a hot 1-game winning streak. You can’t lose the most lopsided match-up via W/L difference likely in the history of the NFL.

2011 (Week 17)

A 12-3 team cannot go down 21-0 in the first quarter and expect to keep momentum for the playoffs. Bill Belichick understood this. Pats won 49-21.

OK you get it. For posterity, here are all the games included in the analysis with run percentage and over/under results:

Results Section

So does Bill Belichick play more conservatively in these “must win” games? Not really. He threw 59.1 percent of plays in “must win” games and 58.4 percent in non “must win” games since taking the Pats job in 2000. Not exactly impressive. And even more not impressive is the 38 unders that hit vs 37 overs with two pushes. Turns out, Vegas sort of knows what they’re doing.

Sorry Billy.

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