There’s been a lot of chatter this morning about whether or not Bill Belichick is an idiot for deciding to go for it on fourth-and-2 from the Pats’ own 28-yard line with 2:08 to go when his team was up six. On the surface, this does seem a bit silly: if you don’t make it past the first-down marker, the Colts only have to go 28-29 yards in two minutes for a game-winning drive. And that’s exactly what happened: the Pats were stopped short, and Peyton Manning lead the Colts to victory on a game-winning drive.

You rarely, if ever, see an NFL coach go for it this deep in his territory with these kind of results at stake. But just because you don’t see it that often, doesn’t mean it doesn’t come with logic behind it. There’s been studies that show it makes sense for teams to go for it on fourth down every time.

And as Advanced NFL Stats shows (HT: SB Nation), the win probability for the the Pats if they go for it in that situation is 79 percent. And if they don’t go for it and punt? 70 percent. Therefore, Belichick’s call, at least according to the odds, was the right one. Now, there is some exception here:

Statistically, the better decision would be to go for it, and by a good amount. However, these numbers are baselines for the league as a whole. You’d have to expect the Colts had a better than a 30 percent chance of scoring from their 34, and an accordingly higher chance to score from the Pats’ 28. But any adjustment in their likelihood of scoring from either field position increases the advantage of going for it. You can play with the numbers any way you like, but it’s pretty hard to come up with a realistic combination of numbers that make punting the better option. At best, you could make it a wash.

Any way you slice it, it’s just a situation that shows you can play the odds in every situation at all times, and still come out on the wrong side of them; unless the odds are 100 percent on your side, there’s always a chance the results won’t be in your favor.

Just ask Shane Battier about that one.