If you ask me the block Ben Watson made was among the most important, as it came just infront of Hobbs and if I remember correctly he ended up running through the area Ben cleared out for him?
Edit: I just rewatched the video and the block Ben Watson makes is the block that keeps two Jets defenders from tackling Hobbs. See, Hobbs was able to break the tackle of the other Jet defender but if not for Watson's block both Jet defenders would have hit Hobbs at the same time, and it's very unlikely he breaks the grasp of two defenders at once.
Watson makes a nice heads-up block on Rashad Washington, the playside kickoff safety, but his frontline blocking on Stacy Tutt left a little to be desired. Le Kevin Smith's block on Tutt blew that side of the field wide open, giving Hobbs space to cut up between Watson and David Bowens.
I never knew any of this stuff, not even the designations, nor the specific tasks.
And I played special teams in high school football (in a New England state, I will not mention where because I'm embarrassed). We had gunners, yes, but for the return side, we just established a wedge, and the other blockers picked our guy and had responsibility for him and only him. LOL.
Keep in mind I am no more privy to the New England and New York special teams schemes than you, this is just guesswork. Nomenclature, strategy and responsibilities vary wildly from coach to coach. I've been in schemes where busters are called spears, gunners are called spears, buster are called kamikazes, safeties are called linebackers, the frontline are called upbacks, the wedge is called the wall, the wall is called the seal, or the fence, and so forth. There are schemes where the coach just lines you up, 10 wide, and tells you to converge on the ball, and elaborate schemes involving all sorts of stacking, criss-crossing, responsibilities and reads.
One of the more interesting and obvious things to me about the Pats return was the TD block by Mitchell on the backside safety. I've never seen that before, and it's pretty clear on film. Most teams I've watched or played on leaves that safety alone and shifts one more blocker playside. The Pats seem to be going more for the home run ball than an extra 5 yards per runback.
P.S. It appears that there are interlacing artifacts in some of the images. Is there a way to use single fields instead of interlaced frames?
Nothing I can do, sorry. I think these are artifacts from the capturing process. Manually setting my video player (xine) to de-interlace did nothing.
