[Semtex]

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I think the problem with talking about play calls in the 1st half (a la the 2-minute drill they pulled against Miami), and pulling out starters in the 3rd quarter, etc. is that you put yourself on a slippery slope of making judgements about when to ease up on a team when the game isn't technically out of reach. Sure, coming back against the Pats down 35 with a quarter or so to go is very unlikely, but if there's even 0.00001% chance of it happening, these guys are paid to go out there and make sure it doesn't. They get paid to win, period.

You can argue about when a game is out of reach all you want, but eventually you reach the point where it becomes subjective, and the idea of letting up earlier in a game when it's not 100% locked up in order to keep a game arbitrarily close challenges the very premise of competition itself. Belichick has alluded to this many times in his recent press conferences, pointing out that this is the NFL, anything can happen, and it's not his job to judge how nicely or respectfully he should beat a team. He has every right to flip out on reports essentially criticizing him for doing his job so much better than everyone else. It's truly unbelievable.

I cannot think of one single example in all of professional sports where there have been these kinds of discussions about running up the score until the 2007 Patriots came along. Can anyone find any examples of other teams being openly called out on this repeatedly over the course of a season, in any major sport?

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chance of star player getting injured >>> chance of team coming back from one of those 30 point leads against the patriots