but not working smart when preparing to face Patriots coach Bill Belichick. Facing the best coach in the history of football (and perhaps organized sports) can do that to an opponent.Belichick is simply hard to beat Dion Jordan Color Rush Jersey , for a variety of reasons. He’s brilliant. He’s focused. He’s driven. He’s relentless. He’s cracked the code on success in the NFL at a time when the system has been created to ensure parity and to prevent dynasty.So all of this led to a question that was pondered on Thursday’s : Which coach/quarterback combination would you want to face Belichick?Simms and I bounced the idea around for a while, before Simms realized that he was way, way, way off and adopted my way of thinking. I find out my way of thinking, check out the video. And then add in the comments your way of thinking. Monday I looked at third and manageable and how often the Seattle Seahawks found themselves in reasonable third downs, as opposed to third and long. There has been significant backlash towards the run game since the Seahawks dropped the Wild Card playoff game to the Dallas Cowboys, giving Russell Wilson his first ever postseason losing streak, having lost in the Divisional Round of the 2016 NFC Playoffs. In the comments to that article the idea of run-run was presented yet again as able to generate third and manageable, as one reader posted the following comment.Here’s the thing Tedric Thompson Color Rush Jersey , though, running on both first and second down is more likely to lead to third and long than it is to lead to third and manageable. Wait, what? Well, I won’t bore you all with the math, but here’s a super simple table that breaks down the expected yards on a first down run (left side of the table) and the expected yards on a second down run (top of the table). In short, if a team calls a run play on first and second down, it will result in one of four things: 3rd & 7+3rd & 4-63rd & 1-3 ora First Down.The red area of the table is third and long. The yellow area is a third and medium. The blue part is third and short. And the green is a first down and the offense gets to start over. Obviously, those numbers in the table are really small, and the table formatter here is far from perfect Ethan Pocic Color Rush Jersey , so here’s a summary of what the expected outcome will likely be based on these probabilities. 3rd & Long (7+): 24.88%3rd & Intermediate (4-6): 22.64%3rd & Short (1-3): 18.28%First Down Attained: 34.20%Basically, the most common outcome of a first down run followed by a second down run is gaining a first down. However, the second most probably outcome is third and long. Third and long is actually more likely to happen than third and intermediate or third and short, amd that's before even taking penalties into consideration.Now, this is simply a single piece of the puzzle, so throughout the offseason I'll be adding to the discussion through similar posts. Thus, by the time Training Camp opens in six months we should have the entire book of probability out there, which would allow someone to build a model based on the combination of all the various probability trees that are available.