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I have my own opinions of "defaltegate". I'm sure they mirror the great majority of us. The Pats have been done a great injustice at best. At worst they are guilty of the SMALLEST of misdemeanor that has been blown hugely out of proportion. The truth is now coming out slowly but surely, but the damage has been done.. The cold was a factor. The officials were a factor. Other QB's do it all the time, and the rule itself is pretty ridiculous and very randomly enforced. And finally.... it was 2 psi for Christ's sakes. Never has so much time been wasted on so little air. 
Well after agonizing for a couple of days (as you might have noticed from my first post this week ), I have come to look upon this this small contretemps as a blessing. I am proud to say I have not read a single post on the now 4500 odd submissions of the "deflategate thread", or any of the other related threads. (not to diminish anyone who did) I haven't spent a minute listening to talk radio, nor have spent any time on ESPN, NECN, or Comcast, except to watch a Bruins game. In the end, I was amazed at the amount of time that all freed up.
I decided not to care anymore. While I do fear that whatever punishment might come out of this will be left to the hand of a proven BUNGLER of situations like this. A man who we all know cares more about how HE looks than justice. But whatever happens It’s going to happen AFTER the game, so I have also put that out of my mind.
I am now fully focused on the 2 teams that will be playing this game and the very interesting matchup that is presented. And when you look at it, it is a crying shame that, because what shapes up to be a fantastic match up, has been forced to play a far distant second fiddle to the mediot hysteria that passes for sports journalism these days. So enough of the ancillary crap let’s get on to freakin’ game.
A CONFLICT OF STYLES
Right from the get go, we get a huge difference in styles in how the 2 teams prepare for games. Understand that this is a bit of an oversimplification, but in general Pete Carroll tends (on both O & D) to line up in what HIS team does best and dares you to beat him. While BB looks at each game individually and runs something new at you on both sides of e ball each and every week.
As their records have shown over a relatively long period of BOTH strategies work (btw-3 years IS a long period of time in the NFL). There is no right or wrong here. There is a lot to be said for NOT making multiple changes every week, or even within games. When players have less to think about, their execution improves. When players can line up in the same spot (especially DB's and LB's) and see the plays come at them from the same perspective all the time, their execution will improve as the game goes on.
Often times football is a game of NOT making mistakes as much as making plays. So instead of giving his team a mind numbing load of mental work, he can concentrate on his players’ techniques and execution, because he's a lot less worried about whether if they will be aligned correctly and using the right techniques. Tony Dungy was a big proponent of this style of coaching (as was I back in the day) Coaches often worry about "falling in love with their own schemes. I’s a constant battle of balancing schemes vs execution.. Every coach goes thru it.
Ever wonder why more teams don't follow the Pats strategy of a different game play for every week?. Because..... it’s HARD, very hard.. This doesn’t happen overnight. It’s taken years to put together the semantics to be able to communicate complex concepts with just a word or three. It takes time to develop and train a coaching staff who can teach this well. It, of course, most importantly takes time to put together a roster of players who have the intelligence, positional flexibility, and work ethic to pull this off this style off football game planning. Hard enough that even the great BB, with most of the infrastructure in place, can't do it every year. There are a lot of years that we haven't seen a lot of this, merely because BB hasn't had the players to do pull it off.
So if you choose to mimic what the Pats have done it takes a huge commitment in time and effort, and you STILL might not know if you can implement your grand design until after the season starts. It’s for these reasons and more why what the Pats do is so unique in the league. You really need to have a situation where you know you have the kind of long term support and commitment BB has here. That is rare, and so is how the Pats game plan.
At any rate this whole I find this whole "scheme vs execution" aspect of this game fascinating, and well worth of more discussion. Certainly more than the value of plus or minus 2psi.
MATCH UPS. PAT's D vs the Seattle O
Not only that, Hightower and Collins both can play all three LB positions if they have to, so the Pats can really load up with the beef on the front 4 and still be in a position to cover the Seahawk play action passing, and read option game. If the Pats can do reasonably well in playing the run while in a nickel D, they will be even more effective.
Well after agonizing for a couple of days (as you might have noticed from my first post this week
), I have come to look upon this this small contretemps as a blessing. I am proud to say I have not read a single post on the now 4500 odd submissions of the "deflategate thread", or any of the other related threads. (not to diminish anyone who did) I haven't spent a minute listening to talk radio, nor have spent any time on ESPN, NECN, or Comcast, except to watch a Bruins game. In the end, I was amazed at the amount of time that all freed up.I decided not to care anymore. While I do fear that whatever punishment might come out of this will be left to the hand of a proven BUNGLER of situations like this. A man who we all know cares more about how HE looks than justice. But whatever happens It’s going to happen AFTER the game, so I have also put that out of my mind.
I am now fully focused on the 2 teams that will be playing this game and the very interesting matchup that is presented. And when you look at it, it is a crying shame that, because what shapes up to be a fantastic match up, has been forced to play a far distant second fiddle to the mediot hysteria that passes for sports journalism these days. So enough of the ancillary crap let’s get on to freakin’ game.
A CONFLICT OF STYLES
Right from the get go, we get a huge difference in styles in how the 2 teams prepare for games. Understand that this is a bit of an oversimplification, but in general Pete Carroll tends (on both O & D) to line up in what HIS team does best and dares you to beat him. While BB looks at each game individually and runs something new at you on both sides of e ball each and every week.
As their records have shown over a relatively long period of BOTH strategies work (btw-3 years IS a long period of time in the NFL). There is no right or wrong here. There is a lot to be said for NOT making multiple changes every week, or even within games. When players have less to think about, their execution improves. When players can line up in the same spot (especially DB's and LB's) and see the plays come at them from the same perspective all the time, their execution will improve as the game goes on.
Often times football is a game of NOT making mistakes as much as making plays. So instead of giving his team a mind numbing load of mental work, he can concentrate on his players’ techniques and execution, because he's a lot less worried about whether if they will be aligned correctly and using the right techniques. Tony Dungy was a big proponent of this style of coaching (as was I back in the day) Coaches often worry about "falling in love with their own schemes. I’s a constant battle of balancing schemes vs execution.. Every coach goes thru it.
Ever wonder why more teams don't follow the Pats strategy of a different game play for every week?. Because..... it’s HARD, very hard.. This doesn’t happen overnight. It’s taken years to put together the semantics to be able to communicate complex concepts with just a word or three. It takes time to develop and train a coaching staff who can teach this well. It, of course, most importantly takes time to put together a roster of players who have the intelligence, positional flexibility, and work ethic to pull this off this style off football game planning. Hard enough that even the great BB, with most of the infrastructure in place, can't do it every year. There are a lot of years that we haven't seen a lot of this, merely because BB hasn't had the players to do pull it off.
So if you choose to mimic what the Pats have done it takes a huge commitment in time and effort, and you STILL might not know if you can implement your grand design until after the season starts. It’s for these reasons and more why what the Pats do is so unique in the league. You really need to have a situation where you know you have the kind of long term support and commitment BB has here. That is rare, and so is how the Pats game plan.
At any rate this whole I find this whole "scheme vs execution" aspect of this game fascinating, and well worth of more discussion. Certainly more than the value of plus or minus 2psi
.MATCH UPS. PAT's D vs the Seattle O
- To put it simply, the Pats have several match up problems that are going to be a nightmare for Seattle. These are problems that are relatively unique to the Pats. On the surface, the Pats secondary is more than a match for the Seattle receiving corp. Most people will recognize this as fairly obvious. But what REALLY makes the Pats a difficult problem are our LB's . It’s the combination of a 270 lb. ILB, to go along with a 6'5 250 LB who is faster than Wilson as well as any of their RB's or TE's
Not only that, Hightower and Collins both can play all three LB positions if they have to, so the Pats can really load up with the beef on the front 4 and still be in a position to cover the Seahawk play action passing, and read option game. If the Pats can do reasonably well in playing the run while in a nickel D, they will be even more effective.
- I think Seattle knows that their passing offense won’t be able to function if the Pats are allowed to play press man coverage. Their receivers simply aren’t good enough for Wilson to overcome his own issues in the passing game against the depth of the CB’s and S’s of the Pats. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Seahawks can effectively get the Pats out of press man by the use of the read option early in the game. As I pointed out in the “read option” thread, it’s virtually impossible for the Pats to be in press man against the “read option
- So what I think the Pats will have to do is run either some kind of combo coverage or tight zone coverage underneath with 2 deep S’s over the top.
a. An example of a combo coverage would be to put, say, Revis on Baldwin with no help and zone everyone else in that tight underneath zone.
b. 4-5-2 is the kind of coverage that really squeezes the Seahawk short game and forces Wilson to throw into very tight windows over the underneath coverage and infront of the S’s. It also allows for a spy on Wilson, like we saw last week vs Luck, and has everyone in great run support vs any “read option” looks. BTW – this is the kind of coverage Seattle uses most of the time. In fact it was what they were in 85% of the in last year’s superbowl.
- If you want to see the basics of what the Pats will be in in Feb, just re-watch what the Packers did for 55 minutes. It was a great game plan by Capers, and the Packers were masterful at executing it. Jamie Collins will be playing the Clay Matthews role, and perhaps even better. GB had no to match Hightower’s kill set, though the Pats have no one who matches Peppers’ ability. And we would all take our secondary over what GB put on the field and should have won with.
- There is no other RB, I’d want in a big game, than MLynch. No one runs better after contact than he does. Arm tackles are NOT an option, and pursuit has to be relentless without exception. We see ourselves as being a physical team. THIS will be a physical game. You don’t want to leave anything out on the field.
- All that being said. Baring pick sixes and massive turn overs, I find it difficult to believe that the Seahawks offense getting over 20 points against this team. As I mentioned in the my last post, the Seahawks have allowed only 14 points combined in the last 8 fourth quarters they have played. That’s impressive, but the Pats have allowed only THIRTEEN over the same period against much tougher opposition.
- Don’t get nervous early. Know that it is a GIVEN than whatever happens on defense, its going to get better and better as the game goes along. That is a pattern that has held true going back a long time this season.
