one more Super Bowl note

A friend reminded me, and I've been hearing some other talk today, about a key moment in the first half yesterday. At the time I had fully taken notice of it, but I forgot about it in the excitement of the fourth quarter and afterglow.
It was the 4th-and-13 play the Patriots faced at the New York 31-yard line late in the half. Obviously, the 48-yard potential field goal attempt was within kicker Stephen Gostkowski's range. His career long is 52 yards as FOX noted. But in that moment it was apparent that the Patriots felt more confident going for fourth-and-long in a close game (7-3 lead at the time) rather than trying to kick the field goal indoors. Now, I would guess that Belichick in part wanted to put a stranglehold on the game, go into the half with a lot of momentum and be able to put the game away early in the second half (along the lines of my last blog about past champs). But if he had an automatic guy like Adam Vinatieri there still, my guess is he takes the guaranteed points.
Looking at Gostkowski's stats (http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/players/stats?statsId=7867) for the season, he made 21 of 24 field goal attempts for 87 percent. That's a great number. But a closer look reveals that he attempted only 5 from forty yards or more and is 6-0f-10 in his career. He had none over 50 yards this year and made his only 50-plus attempt in his career last season. Gostkowski only had nine field goal attempts all year of 30-39 yards, kicking ten of shorter distances than that.
Clearly, the Pats, often choosing to run up scores even late in the game, did not use Gostkowski much during the regular season and perhaps did not trust him to kick beyond 40 yards. 48 would have been a very long attempt for him, even indoors. And at a key moment in the game, without even being there, Vinatieri's legend grows.