Great responses, by the way. I mean, for Patriots fans. [grin] Thanks. I'll try to address them each.
Ben is extremely mobile, and what makes him even more dangerous as a roll-out QB is his size and strength. I've seen defenders lower their heads and cry because they thought they had him in the backfield for a 10-yard loss, he escaped, and threw a 20-yard strike to Hines Ward or Heath Miller.
He's been sacked so much because Bruce Arians, the aforementioned idiot/offesnive coordinator, opened up the season with a bunch a four and five receiver sets, empty backfield sets, that Ben in part designed.
Arians would rather be Ben's buddy than his coach, and Ben had a poor relationship with Ken Whisenhunt, the OC during our 2005 Super Bowl run. Whisenhunt gave Ben the game plan Sunday morning via fax, he was given a package for each play, and although he could make minor adjustments, he was the indian, not the chief.
Anyway, with our offense strung out all over the width of the field like a bunch of buoys in the North Atlantic, Ben was easy pickin's for enemy blitzes. I believe the Patriots only ran an empty backfield set ONCE against Baltimore, and it was a ******* disaster: Brady got clobbered off an end blitz. There's a reason the Houston Oilers were the last team to feature the run-n-shoot, like 20 years ago. LBs and safeties are too fast in the NFL not to bring in blockers.
Against Cincy last week, all that got chucked, and Pittsburgh's offense tightened in some toward the center. I might be wrong, but I don't believe Ben was sacked once. Of course, that was Cincinnati, who has one of the worst defenses in the league, but scheme-wise they're moving in the right direction.
I think the Ben is My Buddy I'll Let Him Coach the Team bull**** is finally waning. My hope is that he'll reach Brady's level of understanding: play your role well within a good system, you win. In football, it's better to serve in heaven than rule in hell, truly.
The other issue is the right side of our OL, as I mentioned above. The article I cited was a "blueprint," if you will, for how to collapse Pittsburgh's line and contain Ben at his strength: rolling out and throwing. Bunching in our offense will put us in a position to counter that if Belichik mimics Mangini's plan, but I'm afraid that Arians isn't smart enough to keep up with Belichik's in-game adjustments. I hope I'm wrong.
iam not much into football technique but i think this new OC of yours is the wild card for the pats. I always thought that as long as cowher was there he would run the ball on 1st and 2nd and then pass which made you guys predictable. The fact that bruce arians has introduced the passing game more makes them more dangerous IMO. And lets not forget, the steelers won in the playoffs and the SB because they started passing on 1st down. Had they stuck with the old cowher plan against indy they wouldve gotten stuffed and gone nowhere. I maybe wrong but the change in approach by the steelers makes them more of threat than the old run run run approach.