Super Bowl LI: Will Bill Belichick change his coin toss strategy against the Falcons?

Bill Belichick doesn’t stray from his winning strategies often, but hasn’t always been consistent with his decision to defer instead of receive if the New England Patriots win the opening coin toss.

The rule allowing teams the choice to defer didn’t exist until 2008 and many teams resisted changing the strategy of electing to accept the opening kickoff. Teams elected to defer on just 97 of the 256 coin tosses won during the 2008 season, according to Bloomberg. Since then, it has skyrocketed and teams choose to defer more than 80 percent of the time.

There’s debate about the merit of the strategy, but in the nine seasons the rule has existed, Belichick has always leaned toward deferring if the Patriots win the toss. In fact, he’s only elected to receive a whopping four times. The few times he did change his strategy, it usually didn’t work out too well for the Patriots.

The first was Week 1 of the 2008 season and the opening drive ended with a fumble by Wes Welker before Brady eventually suffered a season-ending knee injury later in the quarter. The Patriots didn’t choose to receive again until Week 5 of the 2013 season and it resulted in a three-and-out during a 13-6 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals.

Belichick’s only other times were in recent postseason games. It didn’t work out in the AFC Championship a year ago when the opening drive against the Denver Broncos ended in a punt, but it wasn’t so bad in the AFC Championship this year when the Patriots accepted the opening kickoff and got on the board first with a 31-yard field goal from Stephen Gostkowski.

With the high-flying Atlanta Falcons offense on the other sideline, Belichick may be inclined to want the ball first and try to get out in front of a team that’s likely to score often.

Regardless of the decision, it’s almost a guarantee that the Patriots will call heads on the coin toss. The Falcons are designated as the home team, meaning New England will make the call. The Patriots have called heads on every toss for at least two seasons, according to the New York Times.

The consistent heads call already caused some goofiness in the sports gambling world, according to Scott Cooley of Bookmaker.eu, which originally placed the odds between a heads and tails call as even.

“We started getting some pretty good action on it,” Cooley told the New York Times. “Whenever we get one-sided action, flags go up ... It was obviously negligence on our part.”

In each of New England’s four Super Bowl victories, the Patriots lost the opening coin toss. While the team will almost certainly rely on heads to try to win Sunday, it could be another rare case of Belichick electing to receive, even if the strategy has ruled worked out for the Patriots.