ivanvamp

From Pete Prisco (yes, I know how much we all love him):

"You have Drew Brees breaking Dan Marino's single-season record for yards passing. You have Tom Brady just 190 yards behind him and you have Aaron Rodgers with 45 touchdown passes.

How do you stop these guys? Or at least slow them down?

"You have to beat up their receivers," one NFC personnel director said. "These quarterbacks are too good now. They will eat you alive if you play zone against them and let their receivers find the open spots. They are too smart. You have to mug their outside players, not let them get into their routes as easy as they can against zone."....

"Kansas City is a team with two good, physical corners who can play man-press coverage and knock your receivers off their routes. They did that to the Packers and to the Patriots in Week 11."
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Now, I'm not saying this *isn't* the way to play them. But let's see how KC did against New England in week 11.

Brady didn't throw for many yards (234), so maybe that's why Prisco thinks they did a great job against NE. But Brady threw only 27 times for an 8.7 y/a average. And he had 2 td and 0 int, for a 109.2 rating, which is *higher* than his season rating of 105.1. And the Patriots put up 34 points on KC (I know one TD was on a punt return).

Patriots last 7 drives:

6 plays, 85 yds, TD
8 plays, 51 yds, FG
9 plays, 85 yds, TD
1 play, 72 yds, TD (the punt return...doesn't really count as a "drive")
9 plays, 50 yds, FG
3 plays, 4 yds, punt
14 plays, 62 yds, TD

So not counting the punt return, over their last 6 drives, the Pats had 3 TD, 2 FG, and a punt. That's 27 points scored over 6 drives, for an average of 4.5 points per drive. In other words, pretty clearly, they had figured things out and were moving the ball at will against KC, even if KC was roughing up NE's receivers.

jays52

That strategy may work for teams like GB and NO which are receiver based offenses, but not a TE offense. If I'm BoB and I learn that the defensive gameplan is to take my receivers out I'm going to the hospital because it's gonna last longer than 4 hours.

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ivanvamp

What I love about the two TE offense (especially two TE as good as NE has) is that they line up, and if a DB is covering them, they can audible to a run and just have Gronk and Hernandez steamroll those guys and punish them. And if they put LB on them, they audible to a pass and no LB can keep up with them.

TommyBrady12

nothing new. it's the same old "blue print" to beat the patriots.

to counter good man to man coverage, pats have to be able to run the ball better along with the receivers running crossing routes, etc.

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"He’s the greatest quarterback to ever play the game. He goes from being a rookie that nobody is expecting anything from, to taking over with people saying he can’t do it, to winning three Super Bowls....It should already be obvious he’s the greatest quarterback to ever have played. "

- Steelers S Troy Polamalu on Tom Brady

patsfan-1982

if you cant keep Brady on he's back like the fish did in the first half of the game last week then Brady will rip you a new one, the same goes for any great QB and pass offense rush the passer on defense and run the football on offense so your pass rush stays fresh

Ice Cold Bruschi

If BoB identifies that they're playing a tight press on the outside the solution is to run more tight and bunch formations so 1 or 2 guys can run interference and the others can slip out into the flat or across the middle, have a clean release and get yards after the catch.

pherein

I agree its the same old blue print for beating any great QB play, nothing new.
Its also kind of simplistic, what he is proposing, and almost impossible for most of the NFL teams to implement on a regular basis.

Most NFL teams do not have brilliant and physical CB's and safeties in the secondary. Maybe one or two decent players. But not nearly the talent you see coming to the WR/TE position. Secondaries seem over matched as huge,fast, extremely athletic ball catchers are covered by 5ft -6ft speedy midgets,lol.

In fact teams like GB in 2010, ravens, giants ( when the DL plays well), denver, etc.. have used the pass rush talent on DL, to make the secondary look good, but in reality they are not. GB's DL is playing awful this year, and we are seeing that their CB/S are not as good as everyone thought, same with giants. But ravens DL is still playing well and forcing passes, and still look good in the secondary. I wonder if their secondary with reed really is that good or do they feed of the DL. Just a thought.

You hit the nail on the head though. A good run and screen game will keep the DL honest, and alleviate pass rush pressure. If you don't have one then your going to get into a trench war. IF you lose that war, your probably going to lose that game.
If you have the ability to do designed fake passes to screen ( draw the DL in ), pound the rock, speed runners to hit the edge, with a decent OL, then your going to wear out and confuse that elite DL, and find the mismatches in the secondary.
That are always there.

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patsfan13

The Jets of course had the 2 CB to stop the outside guys but they lost twice because they could handle the TE's also.

Also Welker is not easy to cover, using Bunch formations to get him clear (hide him behind Gronk), this can be countered.

The only way to stop this O is pressure up the middle without blitzing.

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D-Money

Playing alot of man coverage and ball possession with this defense.I am sure the steelers and ravens will throw the ball over 50 times until this defense stops it.,although the run defense has been very terrible lately.

Deus Irae

The blueprint's always the same, and there are two prongs to it.


1.) Blitz the hell out of the QB, especially up the middle, and get there.

2.) Have 2 talented CBs who can lock down the receivers, and a safety (or safety/LB duo) who can lock down a TE.

As a general rule, it works against every elite QB in the league except Manning. For Manning, the blueprint is to knock his receivers off their routes, generally rush only 3 or 4, and disguise the coverages.

The reason the Patriots, Packers and Saints are dodging this right now isn't the QBs, it's the surrounding personnel. None of these teams are designed around 2WR/1TE/1RB. The Packers have about a million wideouts who can all get open, and they've got Finley. The Saints have plenty of wideouts, Graham, and a stable of RBs who can get the job done. That allows both GB and NO to flood the field with more WRs than even excellent defenses can cover. It's not really surprising that the Chiefs were able to give the Packers a game, because they've got 2 very good corners AND a very good nickel, which allowed them to play even with the Packers wideouts.

The Patriots are different from those two in that they are really a 1WR/2TE/1RB team, which means that the second good corner is all but wasted and the pressure is put on the safeties in an era of weak safety play. The way to really slow the Patriots is to stick your CB1 on Welker and then double or shade coverage on Gronk and Hernandez with a good safety-LB combo. That's part of why a team like the Steelers could slow the Patriots down, and I bet it's one of the reasons Ryan's kicking himself for not getting a better safety than Smith in this past offseason.

The good news in this for the Patriots, from what I'm told, is that this year's safety crop looks weak.

My $.02.

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