Yeah, but I think that Denver's corners played that far off because they had to respect the pure speed of Pittsburgh's receivers to get downfield, coupled with Ben's ability to get the ball downfield. That is, if you miss the press at the line of scrimmage against some of Pittsburgh's receivers, they are gone down the field, and you had a quarterback that can consistently hit the deep ball.
It's the exact opposite with the Patriots' receivers: we have no pure speedsters and the corners will not be afraid of any Patriots receivers blasting past them if they miss the bump at the line, nor is Brady's deep downfield ball a terrible concern. Obviously, it's the quickness of Edelman that they will be concerned with, and he is a different kind of problem that is hard to solve (and is Gronk).
As a result, I would expect a very different coverage style from the Denver corners than what we saw with Pittsburgh: I would expect a lot more man, a lot more press coverage and disruption at the line because (1) that will disrupt the 2-second Brady releases and the short passing game, and give the Denver pass rush a bit more time, and (2) the corners will be less worried about receivers speeding past them if they play tight man.
Again, that highlights the one core deficiency of our receiver set: the absence of a credible downfield threat to keep the coverage from crowding the short/middle routes in the way that teams like the Jets were able to do. I still wish we could have grabbed Emmanuel Sanders with a better tender: I think he would be spectacular in our offense.
), but just note that he was pretty fragile during his tenure with us....). Maybe we can send LaFell on a suicide missile crossing pattern, a la Welker.
