After playing 97.8% of the Patriots’ defensive snaps during the 2017 regular season and postseason, Malcolm Butler didn’t see the field for a single defensive snap in Super Bowl LII. Bill Belichick characterized it as a football decision and denied it had anything to do with discipline.

“We put the players and game plan out there that we thought would be the best, like we always do,” Belichick said following the 41-33 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.

Despite the Patriots coach’s insistence on Butler’s benching being based solely on football, many have speculated that the corner’s playing time was cut due to a violation of team rules (Butler has denied such reports). That theory doesn’t really make a lot of sense. If Belichick was going to sit Butler as a form of punishment, why even waste the spot on the active roster? And why not put an end to all the criticism he’s getting by just telling the media it was a disciplinary issue?

The “football decision” angle doesn’t make any more sense. Butler is easily the second-best corner on the team behind Stefon Gilmore and is a year removed from a second-team All Pro selection. He can play.

Making matters even more confusing, we have different accounts of how reps were split up during practice. Eric Rowe has reportedly said that Butler had practiced as if he’d be a major part of the game plan, but we’ve also got Rowe saying that he, and not Butler, was running with the first team during practice.

The situation has left pretty much everyone confused, especially after New England gave up 538 yards of offense — the most ever during the Belichick era.

Why didn’t Butler start? Why didn’t he come in when New England struggled in the first half? What was Belichick thinking? His former players can’t even answer that.

Ty Law wants answers, and that’s exactly why we’re here. Let’s try to figure out why Malcolm Butler didn’t play. And we’ll do so under the assumption that Belichick is telling the truth when he says it was a football decision to sit him.

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Super Bowl LII wasn’t the first time Belichick shocked his defense with an unexpected game plan. Go back 27 years to Super Bowl XXV, when he worked as Giants defensive coordinator, and you’ll find an equally confused locker room.

When Belichick and his defense met for the first time to discuss the game plan for Buffalo’s high-powered offense, he surprised the entire room by saying the Giants had to give up 100 yards to Bills star RB Thurman Thomas in order to win.

Via Giants.com:

“I thought it was a collective brain fart, like, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ ” linebacker Carl Banks said. “I think because we were a team that prided itself defensively on not giving up hundred-yard rushers, not even giving up 100-yard games for a total offensive rush stat. But he said it, we are all in an uproar, and we’re thinking Bill is just conceding that Thurman is just this good of a football player that we won’t be able to stop him. And then he reeled us back in and kinda gave us a method to the madness.”

The method to Belichick’s madness was simple: Thomas was a dangerous runner, but the Bills’ passing game, led by Jim Kelly, was, by far, the bigger threat.

“I think the running game was the least of our concerns in that game,” Belichick said. “Thurman Thomas is a great back. We knew he was going to get some yards. But I didn’t feel like we wanted to get into a game where they threw the ball 45 times. I knew if they had some success running the ball, they would stay with it. And I always felt when we needed to stop the run, we could stop it. And the more times they ran it, it was just one less time they could get it to Reed or get it to Lofton, or throw it to Thomas, who I thought was more dangerous as a receiver, because there’s more space than there was when he was a runner.”

Instead of throwing out their base defense (three linemen, four linebackers and four defensive backs), the Giants played only two down linemen and alternated between five and six defensive backs depending on the Bills’ offensive personnel. Belichick wanted to take pressure off his secondary and put it on his front, which was the clear strength of those Giants defenses.

Fast-forward to 2018, and Belichick was confronted with a similar problem. He was taking on an Eagles offensive line that had punished teams in the running game all season. The Patriots, on the other hand, had been poor against the run due to a dearth of front-seven talent on the roster. If New England’s defense stood a chance of slowing down a dynamic Philly offense, it would have to force Nick Foles to throw the ball … a lot.

So Belichick went back to his gameplan for the Bills, only he took the opposite approach, sacrificing agility for strength this time around. He sent Butler (190 pounds) to the bench, moved Eric Rowe (205 pounds), who had played in the slot all season, outside to take his place and put strong safety Patrick Chung (215 pounds) in the nickel back role.

That would be the Patriots’ base defense for the game. When the Patriots wanted a little more athleticism on the field, they’d bring on a sixth defensive back. In the first half, that was Jordan Richards, a 215-pound corner who was lauded for his physical play at Stanford, instead of Butler or Johnson Bademosi. Once again, Belichick sacrificed speed to get a little more strength on the field.

This strategy would leave New England with mismatches in the passing game, but, in theory, would entice the Eagles to attack those mismatches through the air rather than grinding the game out on the ground and keeping Tom Brady off the field.

And it worked early. The Eagles attempted 23 passes to only 13 runs in the first half. Philly’s coaching staff was happy to take Belichick’s invitation to throw.

“After the first series or two. We were like, ‘ not in the game!'” an Eagles assistant coach told The MMQB’s Andy Benoit. “They have in there. That’s crazy!'”

If Butler’s in the game, maybe the Eagles aren’t as willing to throw the ball. They lean heavily on the running game, grind out the clock and take the ball out of Brady’s hands. Instead of a Foles-Brady shootout, you’d get a grind-it-out game the Pats aren’t built to win.

Belichick will routinely go to three-safety packages when an opponent’s running game poses a far greater threat than the passing game. Here’s his explanation for deciding whether to play three safeties instead of three corners in his nickel package…

“Some of it is matchups. Some of it, at times, is what we’re doing and if we’re doing something that one player versus another one is maybe better at, whether it’s man coverage or zone coverage or blitzing or playing the run … But that’s all part of what we look at each week with our matchups against our opponents. And, again, not just the individual size, speed, personnel strength and weakness matchup, but also, from a scheme standpoint, what our players do well; what position we want to try to put our players in based on the types of calls our defenses we’ll be running.”

If playing the run first was New England’s top priority, taking a corner off for a safety made sense. And if strength and tackling would be key in the game, taking Butler off instead of the much bigger Rowe also made sense. After all, the Pats coaching staff had just seen the undersized Butler get washed away by receivers in the AFC Championship game.

And though the stats didn’t reflect it — mostly because Blake Bortles failed to take advantage — he didn’t fare too well in coverage, especially against bigger receivers. The Eagles are stacked with big receiving options they could have used to attack Butler in the same way they attacked Rowe.

So the initial gameplan made a lot of sense (on paper, at least) but why not adjust after the Eagles had a big first half offensively? The only adjustment Belichick made in the second half was shadowing Alshon Jeffery with Stefon Gilmore and replacing Richards (who was getting torched in coverage) with Bademosi in New England’s dime packages.

Bademosi didn’t play a lot of defensive snaps throughout the year, nor did he offer much of a size advantage over Butler — though he did grade out as New England’s best corner against the run, per Pro Football Focus.

Maybe Belichick was content with what he had seen. The Eagles weren’t running as much as they normally do, and, Rowe, while he was being picked on, was holding his own outside of a long touchdown pass to Jeffery, which the undersized Butler would have had even more trouble stopping.

Rowe got his hands on a few passes, including a third-down target for Jeffery in the end zone, forcing the Eagles to settle for a field goal.

Rowe played well enough to earn an 82.6 (out of 100) grade from Pro Football Focus for the game. His play justified his inclusion in the starting lineup, and it’s not a given that Butler would have fared any better.

If Belichick’s goal was to force Foles into as many third-down passes as possible, then the gameplan worked to that extent. The Eagles were forced into 16 third-down attempts compared to just 10 for the Patriots. The problem is, Foles proved more than capable of beating the Pats on third down, and Philly converted 10 of those attempts as well as two fourth-downs.

This isn’t meant to be a defense of Belichick’s choices — only an explanation of what he was thinking from a schematic standpoint. Even his most peculiar gameday decision — bringing in Bademosi instead of Butler — has a viable explanation: Butler hadn’t practiced in that sixth defensive back role.

This isn’t a Madden video game. You can’t just plug a player into a position he hasn’t practiced and expect him to play well. And, to his credit, outside of a key missed tackle on third down, Bademosi played well in that role.

The Eagles offense was just a terrible matchup for the Patriots defense. We knew this going into the game. Playing Malcolm Butler was not going to change that. As he said after the game, Belichick came up with a game plan he thought would give his team the best chance to win. It was unorthodox, sure, but Belichick made his name 27 years ago with an equally unorthodox plan. They can’t all be winners.