The_Riddler

Pats have to stay aggressive against Flacco. Rushing only four is playing right into his hands. His feet are slow and his ability to react is slow if you watch him. Interior ILB blitzes and other schemed 5 and 6 man rushes will be tremendous strategy to force him into quick decisions which he struggles with.

A basic four man rush plays right into his hands. He will find all the seam and soft parts of the zone with Pitta, Dickson and Boldin. It's critical for us to attack him with 5 and 6.

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Hey Rex have you met our new Tightends? Say Hi to Aaron and Gronk !

mayoclinic

Flacco gets flustered when he gets pressured. Then he gets out of rhythm, and starts rushing passes, even when he has open guys. It's key to get him out of his comfort zone. Denver never did that. They let him sit back and throw long bombs way too much. The Pats need to bloody him, beat him up, get him on the run, get him out of his rhythm. Then Flacco will do the rest of the work for us.

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"OVER Loading at ANY position can create a Fatal Advantage. THAT is what interests ME. Attacking With Concentrated Force. THAT is what WINS. In the words ~ more or less ~ of General Patton: 'I'm fighting a WAR, here. Let the B*****ES worry about their FLANKS.' " - Off the Grid

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Deus Irae

I did a bit of thinking about this, and....

Flacco is the perfect QB to defend by dropping back into a read/react, 2-gapping 3-4 defense. History has shown his struggles against the Patriots when they defend him like that.

This would be a good week to pull Ninkovitch off the line, in order to let the LBs pummel Pitta and help on Boldin, as long as they blitzed enough to keep Flacco nervous.



Thoughts?

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JPPT1974

Flacco is good in the clutch. And the best where he needs to be. As that is how the Pats need to attack him for their defense. Is to be in the clutch!

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NSPF

That's not really a... uh... strategy...

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Luke Skywelker

Without question the guys gets flustered when the pocket collapses - he makes bonehead decisions any time he feels heat, susceptible to the strip and cannot throw off the run at all. There is no more Jeckyll and Hyde QB in the league out there, other than maybe Eli Manning. If you can push Flacco into Hyde early, he often loses confidence for the whole game. When he's bad, he's bad. He was bad for a large part of the 2nd half of the season.

The problem is that this isn't the Pats strength and the Pats don't really force bad Flacco often.

supafly

I think at this point you could argue that we may need to apply more pressure than usual to disrupt him and take him out of his comfort zone, as others have said. Then again, you could also take away Rice and allow the mistakes to come to you as we've done with many others in the past.

I think that Pittsburgh rushed him as much as they could (not sure if it was game one or two), pretty much took away Rice, and played a strong physical man to man for the most part, and that limited Baltimore's effectiveness a lot. Unfortunately, the Steelers did not have Roethlisberger and they couldn't score any points themselves. The argument could be made as to whether we have the personnel for that, but this time around I think that we do.

As far as the 3-4 vs 4-3 argument, I would definitely think that the 3-4 would be better should we make it to the next game (assuming that it's vs SF) due to having more speed on the field. I think an argument could certainly be made for the Ravens game too, but my only concern would be that the 2 DT's in the 4-3 have been pretty effective in stopping the run lately, and we'd want to take Rice completely out of the game--at least as much as possible anyway. I still worry that Jones is somewhat of a liability vs the run on occasion, and wouldn't want to depend on him as much should he falter at all.

Just like anything there are pros and cons, but my knowledge of the schemes are nowhere near the level that some here have, including yourself.

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goheels22002

What did Houston do against the Ravens in October 2012?

Flacco threw two interceptions, was sacked in the end zone for a safety, went 21-43, and had a QBR of 42.5. They sacked Flacco four times. Oh, yeah, the Ravens got blown out 43-13.

Looks to me like you get after him early and often.

patsfan-1982

Leon Hall and Champ Bailey are two of the better CB's in the NFL and they could not cover Smith and Boldin one on one so way put the pats DB's in that situation Flacco is pretty much throwing up garbage that he's WR's are makeing great plays on... call me crazy but i think its time for the bend but dont brake defense let Flacco make 10 perfact passes to get into the endzone not one ugly one that he's WR makes a great play on

mayoclinic

I wouldn't call Champ Bailey "one of the better CB's in the NFL" based on his play last weekend. I'd call him over the hill. Sad, but he's pretty much done.

As for BBDB, the Broncos played that all game against Flacco, and it didn't work that well. You need to get at least some pressure to disrupt his rhythm. That's not to say that you leave guys completely exposed - safety coverage will be critical, and I expect McCourty to be a key.

Kevin Fishbain of ProFootballWeekly had this analysis of how Flacco shredded the Pats' secondary earlier this season:

ProFootballWeekly.com - Flacco to face far different Patriots' secondary

If the Pats can get Flacco rattled and confused, it's all over. He falls apart once that happens. It happens every time - the Houston and first Denver games this year, for example. The Jets game last year.

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"OVER Loading at ANY position can create a Fatal Advantage. THAT is what interests ME. Attacking With Concentrated Force. THAT is what WINS. In the words ~ more or less ~ of General Patton: 'I'm fighting a WAR, here. Let the B*****ES worry about their FLANKS.' " - Off the Grid

"The key to any successful organization is to anticipate things, not react to them." - Michael Lombardi