pdangle

I'm a bit worried. Not from the loss mind you. You can't win them all, or look good all the time, so that's no biggie. It's from the resounding success of the tight man-2-man and press coverage PIT sprung on us.

Hey, it's a good strategy when you break it down. Our outside guys are small, shifty, and use their smarts for route adjustments to pick apart ANY zone or soft man. Now, if the opposition has decent CB/S athletes, semi-decent rush, they can really cause us problems with this scheme. You press our guys early, use your altheticsm to jam and then cover us to every direction. You take away our advantage (including Bradys pre-snap reads) and play into your strengths.

My fear.. It works, and the other team's DCs smell blood. We know it's a copy cap league. We will see this again, and again, and again until we solve it. I'm afraid with our semi-aging WR's and Oline (too much age or youth), it won't even take an elite D to implement this scheme anymore like in the past.

So the big questions is.. HOW do we stop it? Deep threat. None. Run it. Maybe. But their safties are playing up without that deep threat, and I assume man D is better against the run anyway. I'm not really sure about all the X's ad O's. I would imagine Gronk and maybe Hernandez are part of the solution if we can afford to take them off pass protection or run blocking. Maybe fight fire with fire and jam the ball down their throats, and go for home run pass hot routes.

Still I'm kind of amazed this hasn't been tried against us before actually. It had to, and must have been unsuccessful most times. Look at our W-L over last 5 yrs, ha! Just by the law of averages we had to have crushed this or similar D more than once or twice. So what did PIT or NE do differently?

Anwyay that's the thought I keep coming back to. I'd be curious to hear what my fellow PFs think on the matter. Especially solutions from and X and O and/or strategic personnel perspective. --NO OLD RANTS PLZ. However threads #999.#975, #1055 and #1033 among several others, are still open and available for such dialog--

Rob0729

Absolutely! Just like the Giants in the Super Bowl and the Jets in the playoffs last year "unleashed the beast" that have allowed teams to totally shutdown Brady and the offense since, the Steelers have given the rest of the league the blueprint to stop Brady. Any remember when Brady was good? It has been four years since he has had a good game.

Seriously, why is it whenever the Pats' offense has a bad game, people start with this "the <insert defense> has given the rest of the league a blueprint on how to stop Brady". The blueprint is simple. Have one of the top defenses in the league and you have a shot at stopping or at least slowing down the Pats' offense. If you don't, you probably have little shot.

The blueprint to stop the Pats' offense hasn't changed much since the Giants Super Bowl and is exactly the same since the Jets played them in the playoffs last season. Most teams just don't have the defense to implement that plan.

Also, the common theme from both the Steelers' game this year and the Jets game last year was both teams blindsided the Pats coming into the game with completely different gameplans than what they usually run. The Jets were a man team that were blitz happy, but came into the game in a zone and only a 4 man rush. The Steelers are a zone team that is blitz happy and came into the game playing man and only rushing 4 players.

RelocatedPatFan

Also, that patriots offense thinks they figured out how to beat the defense by the end of the game. If only they had more time on the field. and points per minutes ranked in favor of the pats (though the interception had alot to do with that).

Let's wprry about it later and just sit back and enjoy the games (if you can't then count to ten). We're not suppose to win them all and maybe feel embarassed by a win once per season.

I just want to see improvement of the D from this point out. The offense will be just fine (if healthy).

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pdangle

Yes, you are correct, I had forgotten about those games as well, thank you. All similar style D's sprung on us game day and immensely effective. I assume you know football... your'e not worried that whenever some team wants to throw us a wrinkle in a high stakes game, all they need to do is spring this same style of D on us. You saw those games. Those were 3 perfect examples, of team surprising us with a similar Ds, and us unable to adapt. Yes, there are rants, and there are cliff dives, of which this post is not. I was hoping to discuss how we should attack it next time someone tries to surprise us with something all-to-similar and with even more regularity.

I guess teams are starting to use our game-planning against us. I'm asking, what works against this type of D, and hope BB has it ready every game next time one of these 0-10 teams come waltzing in against us, and we're not ready when they change up the the D to the one the last 2 out of 3 using it beat us with?

Rob0729

I'm sorry, but every time this offense is stopped or slowed down, these same exact threads pop up. The Steelers are the second ranked defense in the league in yards, first in pass defense, they lead the league in fewest passing plays over 20 yards, and third in points in allowed per game. They are a top defense in this league. That is why their scheme worked.

Just like teams trying unsuccessfully to copy the Giants' blueprint because they didn't have the d-line that the Giants had in 2007, teams will try to copy the Steelers' defense, but most will fail because they do not have the Steelers defense.

PatsWickedPissah

Beat me to it

Same old, same old.

Only a few teams can successfully implement this strategy. The bad news is that those are teams likely encountered in January.

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Off The Grid

"Their MO is...they're good."

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WhiZa

Pitt has the best pass D in the league so if the rest of the league can execute as well as these guys then you can consider it copy cat.

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jmt57

As mentioned above, conventional wisdom was that the Giants gave the rest of the NFL the blueprint on how to stop the Patriots in 2007. Yet somehow the Pats offense has done okay since then. The reason for that is that almost nobody has the personnel to replicate the amount of pressure that the NYG front four of '07 NYG were able to do.

I am sure Belichick and his staff have ideas on how to beat that type of man press coverage. I would think that some crossing routes where a defender gets lost in the wash after a bit of a rub would be in order. A running play followed by a play action with Taylor Price and or Matthew Slater running deep routes might be effective.

Looking short term, the Pats should be able to run the ball Sunday. The Giants rank 30th in rushing yards allowed per game (130.1) and 26th in yards per attempt (4.7); I would think the Pats could use Stevan Ridley quite a bit Sunday due to BJGE's turf toe. Aaron Ross, Corey Webster, Kenny Phillips and Antrel Rolle aren't bad - they have combined for eight picks - but they do not approach the Steelers quartet of Ike Taylor, William Gay, Troy Polamlu and Ryan Clark.

Observer

I really hope that all our success is not matter of a special scheme as the OP states because schemes will always be schemed against. No matter what the scheme, if you don't have the ability to beat your man, you are going to lose. To be a consistent winner you have to be able to say more often than not, "You know exactly what I am going to do but I am doing it anyway because I am good at it and you cannot stop me."