Hi, I'm the one who argued with you earlier. I hope to do a more in-depth look at the Pats 2007 season with my own breakdown hopefully sometime this weekend or next weekend. But I’ll quickly take a look at what you wrote….
For right now, I’ll just say that I have quite a few objections with your stats. First off, you selectively picked your stats. You saw two games that didn’t fit your argument and simply chose to delete them. Anyone who is familiar with statistics or taken a course on the subject would tell you it’s a misleading way of presenting an argument, you might even call it “a crock.”
Also, after deleting the two “weather games” you didn’t even bother to include the 3 playoff games in your averages – you chose to treat those games separately. Therefore, you chose to compare a rather manipulated “final five” regular season games to the first half of the year. Again, you are picking and choosing your stats to fit the frame of your argument. It would’ve been much better to try and split the entire 19 game season in two halves, with the 10th game of the season (Philly) as the cutoff point since I previously claimed that it was pretty much the point where teams started mixing it up on D.
If you believe the two “weather games” were aberrations, or “outliers.” Then in statistics the proper way to diminish their affect is to also treat the two highest scoring games as outliers. I’ll point out that I personally believe an NFL season is far, far, far too small of a sample size to treat games as outliers – you simply factor in all the data. But we’ll do this for the sake of an argument. Therefore if you are going to delete the Baltimore and NYJ game, I will also delete the Steelers game and the wk 17 Giants game, because they were the two highest scoring affairs on the latter half of the season. When I do that,
the Patriots PPG average over the last 9 games goes down to a meager 25 PPG; which would’ve been 10th in the entire NFL.
What was it over the first 10 games? Well, like I did above; deleting the two aberrant high scoring games (Wash, Buf) and deleting the two outlying low scoring games (Indy, CLE)
NEs PPG over the first half skyrockets to a whopping 40.8; far and away #1 in the NFL. I believe this shows a pretty clear downward trend for the 2007 Patriots offense.
But I hope to take a deeper look sometime in the future, just not now...
My other point of contention was that you mocked the idea that the Giants benefited from seeing how other teams attacked the Pats D, and learning from their mistakes/ successes. This is what teams do. This isn't referring to "trickery" either; so I have no clue why you are using that word. There was a noticeable difference when it came to how defenses attacked the Patriots that year. Personally, I don’t really understand why you seem to object so vehemently. No one is saying that Patriots are going to flop in 2009. I said that I believe the 2009 team might even be better. I just don’t think the offense will be one of the greatest of all time like in 2007 - hardly an unreasonable argument. Anyway, I found a nice interview with Giants Defensive Back coach, Peter Giunta, specifically on how they beat the Patriots. He elaborates on a few of the points I made and you dismissed like the value of the Ravens/Eagles game - and the Browns game - which I didn't know. He also points out how vanilla the Jags were, which was something I also pointed out. Either way, it's pretty clear that teams gain a lot from proper film study and learn quite a bit from each other. Not that I think this is any sort of a revelation on my part; I just think it's awful that you choose to be so dismissive over such an important aspect of the game. Anyway, here's the article...
How we stopped the greatest offense ever Giants assistant reveals the game plan
They went through all of the other tapes from 2007 and realized one method of defending the Patriots didn't work. "The Jaguars basically rushed three guys the entire game and put the extra defenders in coverage," said Giunta. "As I think everyone saw, it didn't work. Tom Brady had all the time in the world. And every pass he threw was almost perfect. We realized that was not going to be us."
Eagles', Ravens' blueprint
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.
The plan was to defend the Patriots, on most plays, with four down linemen, five underneath defenders (three linebackers and two cornerbacks) and two deep safeties.
All eyes on Brady
It was the same defense the Ravens used against the Patriots. But the Giants were going to make one adjustment. "The five underneath guys can't all play with their backs to Brady, which is what the Ravens did," said Giunta. "Because there were a couple of times, one I believe was a fourth-and-6, and Brady took off for a first down because nobody was looking. I realize he's not a runner, but he will run if nobody is paying attention to him." The game could not have worked out any better, particularly on defense.
