As a new captain I landed at Reno as the first flight at 0530 and found coming out of reverse I had no braking action at all so used full reverse to stop. Otherwise I would have gone off the end of the runway. The pilots always get blamed but sometimes it is the luck of the draw. Our reversers got us stopped, the brakes didn't. Thank God the reversers worked to stop us. If one had failed we would have been in the news.