So much has been written and said about Bill Belichick's decision to go for the first down on fourth-and-two from his 28 late in the Sunday night game at Indianapolis. But few people ask this question, so I'm going to: Crazy as it was, wasn't it refreshing to see one NFL coach go against the mold and actually try to … you know … WIN the game right then and there?

Bill Belichick has won a lot of games in New England, sometimes with unorthodox decisions. Sunday night he lost one with an unorthodox decision and he's taking a lot of heat for it. Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe even compared him to Bill Buckner.

You have to love this guy for this idea – although the day may come when I regret supporting it.

Jeff Fisher might be on the coaching market in 2010. Just in case the … umm … well … err .. the … the … the Browns (cough cough) need a coach.

Just in case.

On another subject … people make so much of things that don’t matter these days.

Fisher Tuesday introduced former Colts coach Tony Dungy at a charity fundraiser. He took off his dress shirt to show he was wearing a Peyton Manning jersey, then quipped: “I just wanted to feel like a winner.”

Those present, in Nashville, laughed.

Well this joke become a mini-controversy, with one radio host saying Fisher should be fired.

How’s this? A guy gives 15 good years to a team then should be fired over a joke because his team has started poorly? It was a joke.

As Fisher said on his radio show: “I was introducing Tony, just having fun with it and I really apologize if I offended anybody, but if you’re offended over the nature of that type of thing, then I think you need to rethink things.

“This is a very worthwhile and needy benefit and I was honored to be there.”

By the way … if … if … if … the Browns need a coach after the season and Fisher is available and they don’t try to hire him … well … that would be disappointing.

(thanks to waitingfornextyear.com for the image)

Everybody watching Sunday’s game knew the Browns got hosed on that first-down call late in the first half, the one where the measurement showed the Steelers came up short.

The only one who didn’t know was the referee who made the call.

Here’s what that referee, Walt Anderson, had to say in explaining the ruling:

"The ball has to penetrate the plane of the stake. When we set the ball up ready to measure and we bring the chains out, the chains are set beside the football; they're not put down on top of the football. So I get on the side and I'm looking straight in at that angle. So when the stakes go down I'm sighting in between the nose of the football and the stake. So if the nose of the football touches the stake, then it's a first down. It's kind of like a football touching the plane of the goal line. But we don't actually put the stake up against the nose of the ball because of the way the ball is shaped. The chains and the stake are laid beside, so it kind of depends on the angle you might be looking at it from." OK …

He continued, obviously forgetting the advice not to keep talking when things aren’t going well.

Told the TV picture showed the Browns had stopped the sneak, Anderson said (And this comes directly from the official transcript of the pool report provided at the game):

“It depends on which angle you might be looking. I’m looking from straight on so I guess it’s conceivable that’s why I don’t get it back at an angle because it can be deceptive because there’s a little bit of a distance probably in the neighborhood of five or six inches between the actual point of the football and where the stake sets on the ground. If you shot at an angle maybe from back behind the ball it might look like it’s short. If you shot at an angle the other side, it might actually look like it’s further in advance of the stake than what it actually was.”

Glad we cleared that up.

Following up on a couple posts of yesterday …

Eric Mangini was fined $25,000 by the NFL for not reporting Brett Favre’s injury on the weekly injury report last season.

This means the league believes the Jets and Mangini were deceitful in their reports, but it also means the league doesn’t consider this a Class A felony.

This means we’ll probably see 32 guys listed every week as probable on the Browns injury report (Hey … it’s a JOKE).

The no comment from Mangini will come later today.

Finally … you guys sure were hard on Courteney Cox. Talk about ruining a guy’s day. Have you possibly considered that when I do these surveys, I’m not checking the same age range as many of you?

I stand by her, though I will not put her through the future indignity of being the babe of this blog.

The search continues …

I think the NFL’s use of replay is ridiculous. I’ve long been on record that there’s no need for a frame-by-frame review of a play. The college system is so much better.

But I think replay got a call right when it took a touchdown catch away from Oakland Monday night. Because the rule was interpreted properly, even though NBC’s announcers didn’t think so.

That being said, I think the rule is flawed.

To review, JaMarcus Russell hit Louis Murphy in the end zone for an 18-yard touchdown. At least it looked like one. Murphy caught the ball, took two steps, then was tackled. All took place nearly simultaneously, but there was no doubt Murphy got two feet down. As he fell, the ball squibbed loose … it clearly moved when he hit the ground.

The pass was ruled incomplete, because that’s what the rule says. The ball cannot move if a receiver is tackled after a catch.

Now … a running back can run five yards, get tackled and have the ball squib loose when he hits the ground. Then, he’s down. Because the ground cannot cause a fumble when a guy is tackled.

But the rule is different after a catch.

A receiver catches a ball, takes two steps, gets tackled and the ball squibs loose and it’s incomplete. To me that’s inconsistent – provided the guy did get two feet down with the ball.

Once it settles proper heights for scoreboards, the league’s Competition Committee might want to ponder this rule a bit.

I’ll be interested to see how the league rules on the New York Jets false injury report reports late last season.

I've refrained from writing about this because it's seemed like the league was interested in the Jets, but now the league said it wants to talk to Eric Mangini, which brings it a little closer to home.

By way of background, the Jets and Brett Favre knew he had a torn biceps tendon. Favre said before the opener that during a discussion everyone agreed that medically it might be the best for all if he missed games. But the Jets asked Favre to play through it – and apparently Eric Mangini was one of those who wanted him on the field.

So the Jets knew he was hurt, but never once listed him on the injury report. Not even as probable.

Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum admitted the error, and took responsibility. But every team I’ve ever covered, it’s the coach who does the injury report.

Injury reports can be tenuous. Some coaches list everyone. Tom Brady once was listed as probable every week of a season. Jeff Fisher used to list a ton of guys as questionable. Coaches can easily fudge or hide injuries. A Jets reporter last season got into it with Mangini about not listing kicker Donald Nugent when he was injured. Mangini clearly does not like to reveal too much.

This is why commissioner Roger Goodell wants consistency.

I don’t know what happened in New York. But I think it will be interesting to see what happens with this investigation. And Mangini is part of the investigation.

Said Goodell: "We establish policies. They're to be followed. And all 32 clubs are going to be held accountable for that … “

I also find it interesting that all this happened and after the season Favre became the scapegoat for everything wrong in New York. Shortly after the season ended, one of Mangini’s right-hand men trashed Favre. So we had a guy being begged to play, then being trashed for being unable to play.

Why does any of this matter? (I can hear the … here he goes again laments already  …)

Well … because it’s my blog, and I feel like writing about it.

Hey … that’s a JOKE.

It matters because it gets to issues of trust, honesty and being willing to follow the rules. A coach who makes his players run laps because of mental errors can’t really command respect if his players realize he’s fudging rules he doesn’t like (if indeed that did happen).

At this point, Mangini might be the best coach in the league regarding injury reporting. But … his reputation on this matter is not good. The New York Times even did a study of his injury reporting late last season that was not favorable. It explained the injury report’s importance this way: “The N.F.L. has required its teams to report players’ injuries since the late 1940s, when the influence of gamblers became a heightened concern. The league worried that bettors would seek out members of the teams’ medical staffs to learn whether a star player was hurting. So all injuries were listed publicly.”

Jets guard Alan Faneca told the Times he would use injury information to gain an edge, but most players I’ve spoken with do not like lies and deception, even about injuries. When Kelly Holcomb broke his leg a few years ago, Butch Davis did not reveal the injury on Monday. I ran across a player in the locker room who asked what he said, then laughed when he heard Davis had said little. “He broke his leg,” the player said. “He’s out.” Davis then trotted Holcomb out to practice for the portion of the practice open to the media and said Holcomb might play the following Sunday. On a broken leg. His leg were wrapped up like the mummy. A different player laughed at the end of the week, because he said the second the media left practice Holcomb went back inside to the training room. Competitive advantage?

Me, I don’t ask a lot. Just be honest with me. If a guy doesn’t want to answer a question, that’s fine. Mangini did that in training camp when I asked him if Braylon Edwards hurt himself this summer doing something outside of football. Mangini was very polite in saying he just would not discuss it. That’s fine.

But once the season starts, there are rules that have to be followed. Mangini could be following the rules with utter perfection this year. But it will be interesting to see how the league rules things went in New York with Favre.

Only the NFL can turn a down economy into a marketing opportunity. The league announced this week that it will not lift the blackout rule, even though there are many civic leaders crying for it to be lifted because the economy makes it tough for average, everyday folks to buy tickets.

The NFL said no – and in a way I can’t blame them. If they show the games live for free, it might be a disincentive to people to buy tickets. Other leagues do it and still sell tickets, but there are fewer NFL games … blah blah blah.

The league's announced thought that it will make all games available online for a subscription fee at midnight on Sundays. If the game was blacked out, the game will be available for free for 72 hours.

Hoo hoo!

You get to stay up until midnight to watch your team play. And if you can’t stay up that late, you can watch on Monday – but not during Monday Night Football.

This might be seen as a kind gesture, but it’s also a way to drive traffic to the NFL’s internet sites, which allows it to sell ads, which brings in more revenue.

Too, the NFL seems to want to own every minute of every day. They have games on Sunday, Monday, Thursday, Thanksgiving and right through the Christmas holidays. They moved games back form Labor Day because TV ratints just weren't high enough, and they'd no doubt play a game the third Saturday after Easter if they could.  They have their network. They have endless coverage on ESPN. Now they have the internet, where games will be available at ridiculous hours for 72 hours.

Then there’s an issue brought up in a column by AOL’s Kevin Blackistone. He quotes a Vanderbilt economics professor and former Kansas State football player, John Vrooman, who said: "This seems rather inappropriate in the current economy in that almost every stadium design in the last 20 years has sought to eliminate the everyday fan and charge half as many people [corporate clients] twice as much."
Right.

There is that little detail.

I have an MVP vote for the NFL and I strongly considered Ben Roethlisberger last season. It was tough to get past his 17 touchdowns and 15 interceptions, because those numbers aren’t glittering. But I take valuable to mean just that – valuable. How would the team be without him? I thought Roethlisberger won a lot of games for Pittsburgh by himself last season.

I didn’t vote for him.

But I wish I had, because he deserved it. And he proved it in the Super Bowl.

Just like he proved it last night. The Steelers could not run the ball, but they won. They won because of Roethlisberger, who shrugged off a last-minute Hines Ward fumble in regulation to come out in overtime and lead a game-winning drive.

Roethlisberger has “it.” When you list qualities of a quarterback, there’s all the measurables. But the immeasurables are just as important. The guts, the moxie, the fight to keep a play going. Roethlisberger now has this thing he does where he pumps like he’s going to throw, but he holds onto the ball. This is much harder to do than it looks. It takes strength, and guts – because the longer you hold the ball the more likely you’re going to take a shot in the ribs. But Roethlisberger makes it work.

The by-the-book quarterback doesn’t do the things Roethlisberger does. But the by-the-book quarterback also doesn’t win as often.

John Clayton of ESPN points out that Roethlisberger has 18 fourth-quarter or overtime come-from-behind wins in the regular season since 2004.

He’s started 73 games in that time. Which means that one in four were wins he produced when it mattered most.

Pittsburgh has won 52 games since ’04, which means Roethlisberger won more one-third when it mattered most.

He’s got two more come-from-behind wins in the playoffs. And he’s won two Super Bowls.

This guy ranks up there with the most valuable players in the league, and he should be considered with the best quarterbacks in the league.

He’s on a Hall of Fame path. And the Browns will have him stuck up their craw twice a year for the next several years.