Did PIT unleash the beast of Copy Cat D?

[JJDChE]

This blueprint garbage is so asinine. If any NFL coach can't watch a game film of the Patriots and see how to attack them on offense and defense, then they should be fired. Pittsburgh didn't do anything revolutionary, they just executed on the most obvious possible gameplan against us.

 

[Off The Grid]

Way to be smug.




And by the way you are wrong. Pitt has always had one of the top defenses in the league & Brady & co. have eaten them alive. It was only after they changed their defensive philosophy, as the poster has pointed out and you derisively dismiss, that they were able to disupt the Patriot offense.



Not sure what your doing here. After saying, the blueprint is to have a top defense, you now seem to have changed direction and now agree with the poster. If your point is that you need a great defense and the "press coveregae" gameplan to have a chance against Brady, you should have said that. And then the debate could have began.

Also, the common theme from both the Steelers' game this year and the Jets game last year was both teams blindsided the Pats coming into the game with completely different gameplans than what they usually run. The Jets were a man team that were blitz happy, but came into the game in a zone and only a 4 man rush. The Steelers are a zone team that is blitz happy and came into the game playing man and only rushing 4 players.

Well, I agree with this.

Rob had some good points, I think, but the OP presented this as a thoughtfull, well considered inquiry, and deserved more courtesy than Rob afforded him.

 

[Shockt327]

This blueprint garbage is so asinine. If any NFL coach can't watch a game film of the Patriots and see how to attack them on offense and defense, then they should be fired. Pittsburgh didn't do anything revolutionary, they just executed on the most obvious possible gameplan against us.

I don't think the job of formulating a game plan is nearly as obvious as you are making it out to be....

 

[mb6592]

As mentioned above, conventional wisdom was that the Giants gave the rest of the NFL the blueprint on how to stop the Patriots in 2007. Yet somehow the Pats offense has done okay since then. The reason for that is that almost nobody has the personnel to replicate the amount of pressure that the NYG front four of '07 NYG were able to do.

Steelers, Ravens, Bengals, Lions, Giants, and even the Jets can bring alot of pressure. And as far as nobody having the personnel to replicate the amount of pressure. Why'd they lose to the Jets? How about the Ravens in '09 - they sacked Brady 3 times in the first half, including Suggs sacking Brady to force a 3 and out on the Patriots 1st possession after Ravens scored on their first possession and Lewis sacking him on their 2nd possession after the Ravens scored on their 2nd possession - and then the game was over. Point being, come playoff time their are plenty of teams capable of adopting this front four pressure - press coverage scheme. For the homers to pretend, "there's nothing to see here move along" is beyond silly.

 

[BradyBranch39]

well if teams want to play man and take our route adjustments away, Ocho should be at an advantage, right?

right??

 

[mb6592]

Looking short term, the Pats should be able to run the ball Sunday. The Giants rank 30th in rushing yards allowed per game (130.1) and 26th in yards per attempt (4.7); I would think the Pats could use Stevan Ridley quite a bit Sunday due to BJGE's turf toe.

Now your talking, run, run, run it down their throats. There might even be an ancillary benefit to this approach. It appears the offensive line has lost some toughness of late. As offensive lineman love to run block, maybe this could bring back some of their mojo.

 

[RIpats88]

well if teams want to play man and take our route adjustments away, Ocho should be at an advantage, right?

right??

he shouold be, but he cant run his routes right and beat his man in coverage...I think thats whats hurting us against these sort of teams. when they are clogging the middle you are daring the QB to go deep and burn them. one deep pass and theyll play more conservatively..against the steelers last year, Brady hit Tate on a deep route because he beat his man

another way to beat those kind of defenses is to run it down their throats like we did to the Jets

 

[Jangles]

Seriously, why is it whenever the Pats' offense has a bad game, people start with this "the <insert defense> has given the rest of the league a blueprint on how to stop Brady".

They've had 3 bad games in a row, and I didn't think they looked all that impressive against Oakland.

How many rough games does it take before people are allowed to notice a trend and comment on it?

 

[jays52]

I'm a bit worried. Not from the loss mind you. You can't win them all, or look good all the time, so that's no biggie. It's from the resounding success of the tight man-2-man and press coverage PIT sprung on us.

Hey, it's a good strategy when you break it down. Our outside guys are small, shifty, and use their smarts for route adjustments to pick apart ANY zone or soft man. Now, if the opposition has decent CB/S athletes, semi-decent rush, they can really cause us problems with this scheme. You press our guys early, use your altheticsm to jam and then cover us to every direction. You take away our advantage (including Bradys pre-snap reads) and play into your strengths.

My fear.. It works, and the other team's DCs smell blood. We know it's a copy cap league. We will see this again, and again, and again until we solve it. I'm afraid with our semi-aging WR's and Oline (too much age or youth), it won't even take an elite D to implement this scheme anymore like in the past.

So the big questions is.. HOW do we stop it? Deep threat. None. Run it. Maybe. But their safties are playing up without that deep threat, and I assume man D is better against the run anyway. I'm not really sure about all the X's ad O's. I would imagine Gronk and maybe Hernandez are part of the solution if we can afford to take them off pass protection or run blocking. Maybe fight fire with fire and jam the ball down their throats, and go for home run pass hot routes.

Still I'm kind of amazed this hasn't been tried against us before actually. It had to, and must have been unsuccessful most times. Look at our W-L over last 5 yrs, ha! Just by the law of averages we had to have crushed this or similar D more than once or twice. So what did PIT or NE do differently?

Anwyay that's the thought I keep coming back to. I'd be curious to hear what my fellow PFs think on the matter. Especially solutions from and X and O and/or strategic personnel perspective. --NO OLD RANTS PLZ. However threads #999.#975, #1055 and #1033 among several others, are still open and available for such dialog--

It's not a coverage blueprint. It's not a confusion blueprint. It's not a press blueprint. Really, Pitt did nothing spectacular or particularly noteworthy. What happened is that NE played into their hand and were restricted because of personnel. It all comes down to one thing: spacing. Pittsburgh is at their best between the hashes, and their aging, slower defense isn't geared towards pursuit. They are best beaten by spreading them out, creating large spaces and win off of quickness tempered with spread concept runs for big interior gashes when you get the look. The Patriots simply don't have the receivers needed to spread a defense out and put them into pursuit situations. Ultimately, offense comes down to balance and the numbers of looks you can give a defense. The tight ends are a great base set but without the ability to temper that with the spread you are going to run into matchup hell like Pittsburgh. They need either Price to show or Ocho to get it. Without that they will look great against good matchup teams and pretty bad against bad matchup teams.

 

[JJDChE]

I don't think the job of formulating a game plan is nearly as obvious as you are making it out to be....

I do. This is football, not particle physics.

 

[condon84]

It was actually Baltimore that exposed us in 2007 (The G-Men did their thing and it exploited us further) We must look at the 27-24 W over Baltimore (week 11 I think?) In any event both are heavy blitzing teams... Baltimore had the 1st shot and the Giants finished us off w/ their 2nd attempt in the SB.

I don't get why people do not remember that Raven Game? That game was

I remember that game. I was there!!

But going back to the Giants, after the game, they credited watching the Browns/Pats game earlier during the year which gave them ideas on how to slow Brady down.

 

[Guts]

They've had 3 bad games in a row, and I didn't think they looked all that impressive against Oakland.

How many rough games does it take before people are allowed to notice a trend and comment on it?

"Doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile winning is winning" ( Exception against Steelers of course lol)

 

[zoostation]

I really think Taylor Price is a big key to help this offense to open up again. I know C-Jack and Tate never developed, but call me crazy...for some reason I have a feeling Price can become a legitimate deep threat.

 

[mb6592]

I remember that game. I was there!!

But going back to the Giants, after the game, they credited watching the Browns/Pats game earlier during the year which gave them ideas on how to slow Brady down.

Did the coaches leave the film room and say lets hope we can coach up our defense to be as good as the Browns defense or did they say lets try to duplicate the scheme the Browns used? We all remember the Browns frustrating the hell out of the Pats that day. Did the Browns have a great defense?

Bottom line is there is no shame in admitting that there is a way to play defense against the Pats that slows down the Pats' offense. The problem is that the Pats' defense cannot overcome this diminished output by the offense.

 

[tuckeverlasting]

Did the coaches leave the film room and say lets hope we can coach up our defense to be as good as the Browns defense or did they say lets try to duplicate the scheme the Browns used? We all remember the Browns frustrating the hell out of the Pats that day. Did the Browns have a great defense?

Bottom line is there is no shame in admitting that there is a way to play defense against the Pats that slows down the Pats' offense. The problem is that the Pats' defense cannot overcome this diminished output by the offense.

you know the pats offense changes every week, right ?

 

[TheSolderKing]

Actually, according to Giants defensive backs coach Peter Giunta, it wasn't Balt or Phi who set the "blueprint," it was Cleveland.....

How we stopped the greatest offense ever Giants assistant reveals the game plan

One game that particularly caught the interest of the Giants coaches was not the game everyone probably would have predicted, like Philadelphia or Baltimore. It was the Patriots game against the Cleveland Browns, on Oct. 7. The Patriots won, 34-17, which seemed to fit in with all their previous blowout wins the first two months. But the win was a lot tougher than the stat sheet revealed. Two of the Patriots touchdowns followed interceptions in Browns territory (34- and 25-yard lines) and another came on a fourth quarter interception return (Randall Gay) for a touchdown. And while Brady had a very good quarterback rating, 105.7, he completed only 22 of 38 passes for 57.5 percent, his lowest until the Ravens game eight weeks later.

"We learned the most from watching this game. Romeo knew the (Patriots) group," he said of Cleveland head coach Romeo Crennel, the former Patriots defensive coordinator. "The Browns played a two-deep (safety) scheme, mixing them up on third down, especially. Their players always put their hands on receivers at the line of scrimmage, especially on third down. It was the best we saw. "Romeo didn't want to get beat giving up the deep pass. It was similar to what you saw the Eagles and Ravens do," said Giunta. "But the Browns did it better." The Browns were the first team that decided Moss, who had averaged 7.8 receptions for 126.3 yards and 1.8 TDs the first four games, was not going to beat them. Moss finished the Cleveland game with three catches for 46 yards and no scores. "They also got a little pressure on Brady," said Giunta. "It was really the game that showed us the most." He really means the second most, because the Giants-Pats game to end the regular season was their barometer, and specifically those notes.

And the defensive game plan was born.

so in the end it was Romeo who PHUCKED us.


2 ex-assistants in 1 year The RAT and Romeo. The Romeo thing pisses me off... He knew us the BEST... he used what worked against us and knew first hand what things gave us trouble. 2007 should have been glorious, but many mistakes occurred, but Romeo exploiting us was huge. I had no idea he was the causation of all of this. He had the RIGHT to do so, it is ironic how an ex-assistant was used for a new basis of planning against BB. It led to the 2007 let down and the exploitation of Tom Brady.

 

[Jackson 2]

The "Blue Print" sh!t makes me crazy, or crazier than I already am. Even Golic of Mangirl and Meatball, aka Mike and Mike, started with it Friday and I wanted to scream. It's second only to "system quarterback" nonsense. Can anyone tell me if a Catholic is prohibited from joining a Buddhist monastary in the Himalayas? Because I'm becoming very interested...

 

[JoeSixPat]

Knowing what to do, having the players to execute the plan, and actually executing are all very different things.

Pitt proved that the Patriots have a long way to go to be considered an elite team in 2012 - though Brady et al will keep them in most games, and they should still be able to dominate lesser opponents.

But the season isn't over yet. I have reasonable expectations for the D to bend but not break. If Brady can find a deep threat that will take pressure off of the O Line and he'll have enough time to rack up enough points to beat most teams.

 

[Ring 6]

Absolutely! Just like the Giants in the Super Bowl and the Jets in the playoffs last year "unleashed the beast" that have allowed teams to totally shutdown Brady and the offense since, the Steelers have given the rest of the league the blueprint to stop Brady. Any remember when Brady was good? It has been four years since he has had a good game.

Seriously, why is it whenever the Pats' offense has a bad game, people start with this "the <insert defense> has given the rest of the league a blueprint on how to stop Brady". The blueprint is simple. Have one of the top defenses in the league and you have a shot at stopping or at least slowing down the Pats' offense. If you don't, you probably have little shot.

Thank you for introducing some factual thinking into this.
The 'blueprint' the Steelers showed the league is:
DO SOMETHING TOTALLY OUT OF CHARACTED WITH THE WAY YOU PLAY DEFENSE AND HOPE THAT YOUR OFFENSE ONLY PUNTS ONCE AND THAT THE CONFUSION OF YOUR ODD GAMEPLAN GETS YOU A COUPLE OF STOPS.
That will work once in a great while, however since once was the last game, people think it will be every game.
With the frequency that this team wins, the biyatching on this board is equaivalent to take every loss, turning it into Larry Bird missing a free throw and concluding that Larry Bird now shoots free throws like Shaq.

The blueprint to stop the Pats' offense hasn't changed much since the Giants Super Bowl and is exactly the same since the Jets played them in the playoffs last season. Most teams just don't have the defense to implement that plan.

There is no blueprint unless you consider "Play excellent defense against a great offense" to be a decision each team can flippantly make each week.

Also, the common theme from both the Steelers' game this year and the Jets game last year was both teams blindsided the Pats coming into the game with completely different gameplans than what they usually run. The Jets were a man team that were blitz happy, but came into the game in a zone and only a 4 man rush. The Steelers are a zone team that is blitz happy and came into the game playing man and only rushing 4 players.

We have already shown how we answer what the Jets did, with 455 yards and 30 points, yet somehow we still havent solved that one either.

 

[Ring 6]

They've had 3 bad games in a row, and I didn't think they looked all that impressive against Oakland.

How many rough games does it take before people are allowed to notice a trend and comment on it?

455 yards and 30 points vs the Jets is a bad game?
Dallas couldnt stop the offense that gained 371 yards despite 4 turnovers, except for the turnovers.
If you are saying the turnovers are an inherent problem then you might be able to say 2 bad games, with one being a win, sealed by a tremendous drive by the offense. I'll take that kind of bad.