Fish squished. But how did they tame the Wildcat?
 

As someone who didn't get to see the game--what specifically did the Patriots do differently to stop the Wildcat? [Clearly, it wasn't by smacking the #%)#!@ out of Pennington.]

Re: Fish squished. But how did they tame the Wildcat?
 

OLB played a huge role . The sweep was snuffed by OLB rushing up field giving ricky to either trip and fall or stop and turn. Giving no change to get steam .As a matter fact the edge was good for all running plays. rush up field turing the runners into the Interior of the line.

By keeping the edge you saw less of DL running around chasing the ball carrier and vince sat inthe center and gobbled all the rb coming towards him.
seymour if the OLB wsa in coverage of split wide made sure he prevented the thrust .jake long got spanked by him.

ILB crashed the gaurds preventing a gap creation in the middle and sanders was in the box anyway covering fasono or martin .he was one of the unsung heros as he was solid in open field and blanketed the TE who had a huge game last time .

Up field pressure as last time they kept trying to charge the qb letting ricky get out or ILB sitting back and releasing a pulling gaurd.

Re: Fish squished. But how did they tame the Wildcat?
 

VW literally was a VW in the middle of the line. The best game he's played all year.

Re: Fish squished. But how did they tame the Wildcat?
 

The best defense against the Wildcat is simple. Do nothing and hesitate, then blitz em hard. You only have to cover ten.

Re: Fish squished. But how did they tame the Wildcat?
 

I DVR'd the game yesterday. When I get home tonight, I'll throw it on and look at the wildcat situations. I'll write something up afterwards. Wish I had a program I could pull screen shots off with...

Re: Fish squished. But how did they tame the Wildcat?
 

Simple, they tackled this time.

Re: Fish squished. But how did they tame the Wildcat?
 

They didn't bite much on the fakes. Ronnie Brown did most of the running out of the formation and the Pats closed on him quickly.

There were a couple of handoffs to Ricky and the Pats held firm.

There was one fake inside handoff to Ginn on an end-around that fooled the D a bit, allowing Miami their best run from the formation all day.

Regards,
Chris

Re: Fish squished. But how did they tame the Wildcat?
 

I thought that when the Pats went into Wildcat, I saw a lot of Vince Wilfork just punching through the line and getting into the backfield, versus his normal 2-gap responsibility.

I read Cowher's NFL.com piece about how he would stop the Wildcat, and that he said you need a player in the backfield at the mesh point (Where the handoff/fake handoff happens).

I think when the Pats saw Wildcat, one of the way their defense changed was to allow VW to just get into the backfield any way he could.

Re: Fish squished. But how did they tame the Wildcat?
 

Wilfork was a BEAST all day.
I think that had a lot to do with it.