Malcolm Butler’s only play in the Super Bowl makes his benching even stranger

The Malcolm Butler controversy is most people’s main takeaway from New England’s loss to Philadelphia in the Super Bowl.

The Pats were stellar when they had the ball, but their defense got torched by Philly’s aggressive offense. In the first half, Eagles receiver Alshon Jeffery did much of the torching, including a TD reception. But the enduring question remains: Why wasn’t Malcolm Butler on the field? Well, he was, but only for about 10 seconds. And he wasn’t covering Jeffery.

And here’s where the Butler thing gets even weirder — when you dig into what the Patriots actually ran him out onto the field to do.

He did about the bare minimum that could possibly be asked of him. That’s not a knock on him because he didn’t really get pressed to do anything:

Butler’s job on this particular punt return is referred to as a jammer. He is a perimeter player who jams (get it?) the coverage team’s gunners off the line of scrimmage and gives the return man more time and space to make something happen. Simplified: Butler’s job is to jam the gunner off the line, flip his hips and turn to run with the gunner down the field.

But New England’s Danny Amendola fair catches the punt, and Butler backs off. It was the game’s only punt.

This was Butler’s second snap all season in this role, so it’s not like it’s something he’d been doing with regularity. That lone snap came against the Titans on one of seven punts in the Divisional Round playoff game.

Butler was a regular on special teams in the first two seasons of his career, but he didn’t take a single special teams snap in any game last season or any game in the 2017 regular season. For whatever reason in the Super Bowl, the Patriots trusted Butler enough to do something he had done only one other time in the course of the last two seasons, over his literal main job.

The answer is becoming a bit clearer, but not by much.

The best explanation comes from the NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport:

And the most cryptic one came from coach Bill Belichick:

Butler had been sick in the week leading up to the game. There was a flu going around the team and Butler was feeling its effects up until Thursday of Super Bowl week.

But remember that Butler had played basically every snap this season on defense for the Patriots:

Butler’s most polarizing comment is understandable in its emotion right after the game:

“They gave up on me. Fuck. It is what it is,” Butler told ESPN afterward. He added, “I could’ve changed that game” and declined to say what was next for him. Butler is set to become an unrestricted free agent this year and might not return to Foxborough.

That actually makes more sense when you take into account what MassLive’s Kevin Duffy reported on Monday:

In the two games preceding the Super Bowl, Butler hadn’t been playing especially well.

He was targeted 12 times in two playoff games and gave up eight receptions for 116 yards, two TDs, and no picks. QBs had a 137.5 passer rating when throwing at him. His poor play also illustrates the point Butler had about his coaches giving up on him instead of trusting him to put things together for the Super Bowl.

With a bye week to plan and practice, the Patriots had the time to alter the way they deployed personnel in practices and then in the game:

The real beneficiary of what the Patriots did differently with DB personnel in general ended up being free safety Duron Harmon, whose snap count went from 27 percent in the AFC Championship Game to 87 percent in the Super Bowl. CB Eric Rowe played nearly every one of the 75 snaps and also saw an uptick, with 97 percent usage in the Super Bowl vs. 62 percent in the AFC title game. CB Johnson Bademosi, who had no defensive snaps in the AFC title game, played 15 percent of the Super Bowl snaps.

You can see probable cause for the straight reason for the benching being that Butler wasn’t playing well. But that doesn’t explain Rowe’s surprise that he was starting over Butler:

“No, that wasn’t the plan,” Rowe said, via postgame quotes distributed by the league.

Keeping game plans close to the vest is something New England is infamous for. But why keep it so close that the players don’t know what’s going on until right before kickoff of the biggest game of the season?

It is a cold calculating game that New England plays, and Butler as well as friends or teammates sentimental to his plight have every reason to be upset and confused.

No matter what the real reason is, hindsight will judge the choice to sit Butler as a championship level miscalculation because something has to be blamed when the Patriots machine fails.