Controversy followed the Patriots’ 52-7 demolition of the Redskins on Sunday. The Patriots continued to score deep into the fourth quarter (some of the starters, including Tom Brady, had been pulled from the field, but a number were still playing right until the end of the game). A number of commentators, including Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk and Gregg Easterbrook of ESPN, wrote that the decision to keep scoring showed poor judgement on behalf of the Patriots.
Easterbrook’s aversion to running up the score is a well-known matter of record; his oft-expressed view is that the Football Gods will punish teams that run up the score on already-beaten opponents. Here is what he had to say about the game in his latest Tuesday Morning Quarterback column on ESPN:

In other football news, man, the Patriots play well -- and, man, are they bad sports. With 13 minutes remaining, New England led Washington 38-0 -- 13 points more than the margin of the greatest fourth-quarter comeback in NFL history -- yet Tom Brady was still on the field, still in the shotgun and still throwing deep. When it was 52-0, most New England defensive starters were still on the field, desperately trying to prevent a Redskins consolation touchdown. In a nationally televised game, Bill Belichick went out of his way to display bad sportsmanship; it was especially coarse that Belichick sought to humiliate Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs, a mild-mannered, dignified man who always treats others respectfully. See more on the Patriots' good play plus bad sportsmanship below. For now, it's enough to say that other teams could have run up the score Sunday but instead showed dignity. When Indianapolis took a 31-7 lead at the beginning of the fourth quarter at Carolina, Peyton Manning and most of the Colts' starters sat down. Tony Dungy made no attempt to run up the score. When New Orleans went ahead 31-3 early in the fourth quarter against San Francisco, Drew Brees and most of the Saints' starters sat down.

The concept of “running up the score” exposes the fundamental dichotomy that exists at the heart of all professional sports between the leaders of successful teams and spectators. The leaders of teams see the situation through the “win or lose”, “compete at all times” lens. To them, the concept of “running up the score” is an alien idea – why not score? If you don’t score enough, the opposition might come back and win. To spectators, on the other hand, there is a discernible difference between beating an opponent and humiliating them. While a score of 78-0 or something similar might get you in the record books, lower-level teams soon learn that it also creates a lot of ill-will that can last for years. Humiliating opponents strips away the sporting veneer and starts to look to many people like macho bullying. Most humans do not want to be known as macho jerks; thus, at the amateur level, running up the score is generally regarded as a Bad Thing.
The dichotomy extends to other forms of sport. In 2002, there was uproar after Ferrari ordered Rubens Barrichello to move over on the last lap of the Austrian Grand Prix to let his team-mate Michael Schumacher win the race. The post-race ceremonies were rendered meaningless, since the spectators knew that without the team orders, Barrichello would have been on the top step of the podium. Michael Schumacher knew this and even pulled Barrichello up to the top step, but boos and catcalls were the predominant reaction to what the viewing public saw as a “fixed” result.
The most interesting aspect of the affair was the reaction of Jean Todt of Ferrari, who seemed genuinely unable to understand the negative reaction. To him, the decision to move Schumacher to the front was a pragmatic professional duty, in order to safeguard the championship points situation. He failed to understand that to most spectators, the decision looked like a negation of the fundamental principles of sporting competition. If Rubens Barrichello was faster than Michael Schumacher, then why should he not be allowed to finish first? Todt eventually realized that the decision was not the smartest thing that Ferrari could have done, but it took a storm of public excoriation to force him out of his “bubble”.
This bubble is the same "bubble" that many sportsmen live in when they assert (incorrectly) that the laws of the land do not apply to the field of play for a contact sport (or, as a coach memorably defined it, a "collision sport" like the NFL).
Which is where we come back to the NFL. For sure, Bill Belichick and the Patriots see the final score as nothing special. They will probably argue that they showed respect to the Redskins when they pulled some starters, but that they do expect backups to be able to score (otherwise why are they on the roster?). They would also point out that with a game next weekend against the Indianapolis Colts, the last thing that any NFL team should do is relax. Beyond that, any discussion with them will most likely run headlong into the professional sportsman – spectator dichotomy that I discussed above.
We need to look beyond this single game for the underlying issue behind the firestorm. The real underlying issue here is not really the score, it is what (for want of a better term) I will call the Bill Belichick Factor. Belichick is the public face of the Patriots most of the time, by virtue of the tight control he exerts over communications between the coaching staff and the media. He long ago adopted the Bill Parcells policy of not allowing his assistant coaches to speak to the media during the season. He himself, like Bill Parcells, always seems to regard interviews and press conferences as about as exciting as a long trip to the dentist. Unlike Parcells, who would deploy ridicule, sarcasm, and occasionally sail into verbal battle with questioners when he did not care for the line of questioning, Belichick is dour, usually devoid of any discernible sense of humour, and prone to respond to questions using empty clichés (if I hear “it is what it is” again in one of his press conference replies, I will scream. I promise). Somewhere beneath the cypher-like exterior, there is a human being, but we are not likely to see that anytime soon.
The 52-7 score will become another sin to be hung around Belichick’s neck, which he will not care about in the short-term, especially if the Patriots beat the Colts and go on to win the SuperBowl. However, in his old age, Belichick might find himself reflecting on the verdict of him in the history books, which will probably say something like “great coach, but a bit of a horse’s ass”. By that time it will be too late for him to do much about that verdict, although humility can be acquired even late in life. The decision as to whether to be a cypher or a human being is one that he does have some control over, which is why I hope that somebody can explain to him that it ought to be possible for him to defend the events of Sunday without sounding either like a miserable old crone, or somebody who fails to appreciate that for the majority of spectators, winning by an absurd margin is not a 24x7 occupation.