Well I was listening to the podcast and there was a unanimous agreement that Red Ryan would be very aggressive in coming after Brady in Sunday's game. Well that makes a sense for a lot of reasons. First it is what his first instinct are. Second blitzing and aggressive pass rushes are always going to be more effective when you are at home, where the crowd noise makes communications that much more difficult. It always gives the defensive rush an edge, since when it's loud enough, the OLmen are slower coming off the ball. Third, this is a VERY young OL, especially in the middle, and being aggressive is more likely to create mistakes. And last, you have a great front 7 which includes the league's leading sacker, and has Marcel Darieus coming back this week.
Well not so fast. It's a good rule to ALWAYS take a second look when the first answer seems too easy. So it got me to thinking about Rex Ryan's greatest victory of his coaching career, when he came into NE and shocked a heavily favored Pats team in that 2010 playoffs. Rex completely surprised that great offense when he consistently rushed only 3 or 4 while dropping back 7 or 8. In THAT way he was able to be very physical with Welker and double Gronk and Hernandez, who were our biggest threats. In the end he played a 5 under defense to choke off our short game, with 2-3 deep. It allowed the Jets to be physical with the Pats receivers off the LOS, yet still be in zone where they weren't subject to pick plays and wind up chasing receivers with their backs turned toward the LOS.
I also recall that, while the rush didn't get to Brady much, it still got him off his spot, while the tight coverage kept him from throwing to open receivers with any kind of rhythm. IIRC, lots of time I remember Brady holding the ball for what seemed to be forever, and eventually even the 3 man rushers got to him once in a while. It was a brilliant plan, which was compounded by the fact we didn't run the ball well, and Brady kept trying to fit the ball into tight spots while ignoring open RB's. After the 2007 Superbowl loss, I think this was the most difficult and painful loss of the BB era for fans to deal with. Well at least this one.
So here we are 6 years later. Rex is in a new job. Once again he has a good defensive team with 2 good CB's, a much better DL than he had in 2010, and fast LB's. So why WOULDN'T he go against expectations, and only rush 3 or 4 men against our weakest area, and max protect against our prolific passing attack, while being physical with our receivers and once again selectively double our plethora of receivers and force Brady to hold the ball waiting for guys to come open and get to him with that 3 or 4 man rush. But more importantly NOT allow Brady to throw quickly with any rhythm. Isn't that what the Steelers did with much lesser talent, and yet still caused some problems for our offense for about half the game. THEN on those 4 or 5 occasions when you DO decide to blitz they will have much more impact than if you are doing it all game.
So for all those reasons that is why I believe we are going to see more of the same of the basic Pittsburgh strategy this week. What do YOU think?
