A pass wasn't a bad call, in and of itself. And Carroll's thought-pattern is understandable: 25 seconds left, one time-out, three downs to try and score, you pass on second down and run on third down if the pass falls incomplete. If the run fails to get in you call your last time-out and you have one shot at all the marbles without worrying that the clock runs out. I don't see any real problem with that approach.
A pass in the middle of the field against a stacked defense is very dangerous. The chances of a deflection leading to an interception are relatively high versus a fade thrown towards a corner or a short flat pass towards the sideline. Sure, if Lockette makes the catch, the world would be wondering why Belichick left a rookie CB in there when he had Arrington on the bench, and patting Carroll on the back for a "gutsy call." But I think there are calls with much lower risk of a turnover in that scenario.
A pass in the middle of the field against a stacked defense is very dangerous. The chances of a deflection leading to an interception are relatively high versus a fade thrown towards a corner or a short flat pass towards the sideline. Sure, if Lockette makes the catch, the world would be wondering why Belichick left a rookie CB in there when he had Arrington on the bench, and patting Carroll on the back for a "gutsy call." But I think there are calls with much lower risk of a turnover in that scenario.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould