SmashMouth

We'll never know, will we?

Why didn't Coach SP know the rulebook like BB with regards to penalties at the end of the game? Ultimately, it's in his lap.

AsylumGuido

Without Coach SP we wouldn't have been in the position to begin with.

Right?

Rell&Gold

Penalty is a penalty shouldn't matter when it happens. And it wasn't that he didn't know the rule Refs are allowed to operate in a different facet than players/coaches

SmashMouth

We were trying to run out the clock. A coach can tell his team to commit a certain penalty to trigger the clock to run down. If SP knew the rulebook like BB, we win both games, Minihaha miracle AND the PI no call Lambs game. Those plays then never would have made history since they wouldn't have existed. BB used that in a game and won a game for NE, even though they were ahead by a lot.

Belichick exploited “loophole” in NFL rules to run extra time off the clock

Comments in the article are priceless.

In both those games, we were merely trying to run off less than 30 seconds which we could have easily done a little earlier when we had to punt.

Now as far as the Whiners' game, that's just plain stupidity in not covering Vernon Davis better. So that's THREE games that should have earned us SB berths. How many of those would we have won? We've been speculating since. Most argue that we were the juggernaut in those three years. So who knows. But I reckon the Saints would have won at least one more Tiffany.

Now the year SP was suspended, that was plain wrong of Herr Kommissar Goodell. It's well documented every team did, and many continue to do, the very same incentivisations to win games. Now that we have gambling allowed, we'll see unfold in all likelihood many permutations of this throughout the league. Those that think games are fixed will have plenty more fodder with which to banter this subject.