Call him what you want. But the truth of the matter is he is smarter than everyone else. If you want to call him a cheater, go ahead. I'm not here to debate that topic, I'm here to tell you about how he was able to kill clock on Monday night's game against the Jets.

With the Patriots up 33 to 0 in the fourth quarter, Belichick was looking to kill some clock. He found a loophole in the NFL rule book that allowed him to run lots of clock. Just follow the course of events.

  • With 11:05 left in the 4th quarter, the Patriots ran a third down play.
  • Instead of punting before the play clock ran out, the Patriots took a delay of game penalty.
  • The Jets declined the penalty.
  • The game clock began to run again.
  • The Patriots took another penalty.
  • The Jets declined the penalty again.
  • The game clock began to run... AGAIN.

By the time the Patriots finally punted, 1 minute and 22 seconds had run off. The point of the play clock is so a team can't take more than 40 seconds between plays.

Here is what Belichick had to say about the tactic.

No, it was just the way the rules are set up. We were able to run quite a bit of time off the clock without really having to do anything. That’s probably a loophole that will be closed and probably should be closed but right now it’s open.

Belichick is very familiar with the league needing to close loopholes that he's found in the rule book. The Patriots had almost perfected jumping over the line to block a field goal, now that's illegal. They also used a very unorthodox formation that made a man split out wide an INELIGIBLE receiver, while someone lined up like a lineman WAS AN ELIGIBLE receiver.

Is Belichick the only coach to ever push the rule book to its limits? No. He's just the best at it.

 

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