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 Patriots' 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 front pressure/press coverage gameplan to have a chance against Brady, you should have said that. And then the debate could have began.
Blindsided the Pats? Really? They've been disrupted by this gameplan how many times now? Is it not possible that they were aware they might see it, but might not have all the answers yet for this kind of coverage coming from a good defensive unit?
Several things:
1.) Yes, I was rude to the original poster and I apologize to him/her. The whole "Blueprint to stop the Pats' offense" discussion is a pet peeve of mine. But shouldn't have taken it out on the original poster.
2.)The Pats haven't been beaten by that scheme all that often. Just a handful of times. The Jets beat them in the playoffs last year by playing a different scheme (note I mispoke earlier on that). The Jets switched from their usual man coverage to a zone and played mostly zone. They beat them eariler in the year with a lot of blitzes and doubling of Moss, but not concerned with anyone else even Welker since Brady was forcing it to Moss. Cleveland last year threw bunch of things at the Pats. The only two games that really stand out in my mind was this past week and the Giants' Super Bowl. Other people mention the Ravens' game in 2007, but that game also had hurricane type winds which might have had effect on it.
3.) Of course you can blindside a team if you change your entire game plan against another team especially the Pats as long as you can execute. The Pats offense is very much a match up specific offense. The game plan for the Pats is always to exploit the other teams weaknesses. If the entire passing game game plan is to exploit certain zones in zone coverage and the other team runs near exclusively man to man which they rarely run, then it is much harder to adjust. If the Pats ran the same offense week after week, then it would make it easier for them.
4.) While on this point, just because teams run the same defense and/or use the same game plan as another tem that was successful, it doesn't mean both teams have the same strengths and weaknesses. That means even if it is a legitimate blueprint to stop the Pats offense, it doesn't mean that Brady can't find weakness in certain teams (or most teams) that run it. For example, for this particular "blueprint" to be successful, being able to generate a strong pass rush with only three or four pass rushers is a mandatory or Brady will kill you.
5.) On that point, two of Brady's biggest strengths are his preparedness and ability to read defenses before the snap. So if the Steelers come out with formations that no one has seen them run before, that takes away those strengths of Brady because it is harder for him to figure out the presnap reads and for that matter the rest of the offense.
6.) One of the most overlooked story of last week was the awful play by Vollmer. It looks like they rushed him back too quickly. They should have kept Solder at RT full time. Too many times you saw him push off rushers trying to knock them off their patterns rather than engage them to stop them. It is probably because he cannot handle the push with his back.
7.) The Pats have ways to exploit this "blueprint", but they didn't use any of them. First, they gave up on the run. Second, they didn't send Welker in motion all that much. Third, Brady seemed to focused on Faulk and not focused on the one guy in the receiving corp who excels against man coverage - Hernandez. If they corrected several of those things this past Sunday and they would have been more successful.
8.) Even though the Pats didn't perform particularly well on offense, Brady did complete 68.6% of his passes (his third best completion rate of the season) for 198 yards and 2 TDs (no INTs). If Gostkowski didn't miss a field goal, they would have scored on half their possessions. The biggest problem is that the Pats didn't have the ball that long because the Steelers held onto the ball for 31:47 in just 5 of their 9 drives. So they controlled the time of possession so well that they held onto the ball for more than half the game with 55.6% of their possessions. The Steelers found the best way to shutdown the Pats' offense and that is keep them off the field for most of the game.