Horrible in-game decision-making has been part of the NFL’s fabric literally for the entire life of the league, since there’s no way the head coaches in 1920 had the information by which to make consistently informed strategic decisions. For decades, coaches went by gut feeling — which are educated in large part by growing sets of personal experience, and therefore have some merit — but have maintained a massively risk-averse posture regarding 4th downs, even as the very nature of the game has changed such that offenses pick up increasingly large chunks of yardage with more frequency, points are at an all-time high, and it makes strategic sense to control the ball (not time of possession, but the actual football) to the fullest extent possible.

So, when the New York Times’ 4th down robot panned McCoy’s decision as leaving his team roughly half as likely to win the game from that point, that wasn’t the most depressing part of the graphic.

Screenshot from the New York Times’ analysis of McCoy’s in-game decision.

Yes, according to the 4th down bot, NFL coaches punt in this situation 94 percent of the time, even though the average success rate on 4th and 4 in this spot is calculated at 46 percent. Someone please pass me the bleach?

Anyway, while you would think the uproar over in-game mistakes like Ron Rivera’s “Punt LOL’d Round The World” in Atlanta a couple years back — a decision that cost his team a full 1/4 of a win in equity when it happened, which is nearly impossible with one situational decision — would change something, we still see this same suboptimal, risk-averse garbage week in and week out. Coaches then defend the decisions in the immediate aftermath as “not wanting to decide the game right there” or “take the game away from my players,” as if any team would get mad if their coach was making proper decisions.

But the condemnation of Ma and Voulgaris was not about the decision itself, nor McCoy’s immediate reaction. It was about his more-considered, had-time-to-think-about-this explanation of the decision that came out of McCoy’s meeting with local media on Monday.

McCoy’s rationale for the decision — again, after having a night and morning to think about it — included gems such as the following:

“I made that decision based on the way our football team was playing,” McCoy said. “The defense was playing outstanding at that point in time. They had the four three-and-outs the first four drives of the second half. They [Patriots] were 0-for-5 on third-down conversions at that point of time, and the way they were playing defensively, I was thinking they would go three-and-out.”

And, even more epically, this …

“It didn’t work, so I wouldn’t do it again. That’s the big thing. If it works, and they go three-and-out and we get the ball back, then we’re not having this discussion right now.”

So McCoy — again, having had time to think this through, in a game where his punter had been injured and his kicker was punting, no less — suggested that he gave away possession of the ball, down by two scores with six and a half minutes left in a game because he thought his defense could get a 3-and-out.

Of course, that is exactly what you would need if you went for it on 4th down and failed, because you would a) need to get the ball back quickly and b) ostenisbly keep the Patriots out of field goal range, so they could extend their lead to 12 and require you to get two touchdowns rather than one plus a field goal.

So, other than the bit of hypothetical field position potentially lost between having New England punt from their 25 or your 45 or so, there was no risk in going for it. You needed the same defensive result — a 3-and-out — anyway to maintain a reasonable chance of winning if New England got the ball after that fourth down play, regardless of whether you punted or failed to convert what is, by any measure, a reasonable 4th down yardage situation.

Sadly, that wasn’t McCoy’s most egregious logic failure. His second quote basically exposed him as a results-oriented reactionary. Even using a less-than-literal interpretation of the first part and assuming McCoy is tipping his cap to the lashback because the decision failed, that reaction is what drives suboptimal choices in the first place. It’s a vicious cycle of stupidity.