I was wondering about how you would set up the secondary. Considering how dangerous Gates is (plus his size), do you think it would be a good move to put Dowling on Gates the whole game, Arrington covering the slot, with Bodden and McCourty on the outside?
I would continue to play in our soft vanilla zone defense, but I would line up a LBer over Gates everytime he lines up on the LOS and make Gates work hard enough to get into his pattern that the timing is disrupted on the play.
Can we shorten the window of time Rivers has to make a secondary or tertiary reads? If so we should do better than we did against Miami.
If not, then the offense needs to score 40 plus points.
I see little choice but to play lots of man-to-man and TRY to get some pressure on Rivers. I think the Chargers will be doing the same thing with their defense. Regardless, this looks to be a shootout that might come down to whoever has the ball last.
I would continue to play in our soft vanilla zone defense, but I would line up a LBer over Gates everytime he lines up on the LOS and make Gates work hard enough to get into his pattern that the timing is disrupted on the play.
Can we shorten the window of time Rivers has to make a secondary or tertiary reads? If so we should do better than we did against Miami.
If not, then the offense needs to score 40 plus points.
Modify this a bit for when it is an obvious passing down and Gates is inline --- push a big DE (Ellis, Pryor etc) to a 6 tech and have him jam Gates on any attempted release and then hand Gates off to Fletcher/Guyton/Barrett --- not quite Butching the Back (the Marshall Faulk defense) but in the same family. Yeah, the gapping gets a bit wide/unbalanced and the Pats lose some pass rush from the initial jam but this should begin to beat up on Gates.
i think bodden can take Gates, leave McCourty and Dowling outside, and have kyle take the nickel if we want to play more of a traditional D and not put as much stock into Gates....
nickel 2-4-5/4-2-5..... with Haynesworth, Wilfork--Carter, anderson, Mayo, Guyton---Rasidowling, Mccourty, Bodden, Chung, Arrington. 40 Front double a gap blitz with press man and make sure ends contain and force inside to blitz and make em throw in 1.5 secs or get sacked. Get a Jam and we never lose.
Rivers has amazing confidence in his arm, possibly to a fault. The key is disguise and forcing him to make as many difficult decisions as possible. How do you do this?
1) Safeties back. He has big receivers outside and looks to go downfield at even the hint of single coverage with no deep help. Discourage that with a straight zone or man under cover 2 and that takes away one of his easy looks.
2) Limit blitzing. Between Gates and the RBs (if Tolbert is out that is a big weapon missing), Rivers has quick/easy targets if he sees a blitz coming. If extra pressure does come, has to be effectively disguised.
3) Make Rivers "feel" pressure. You don't have to hit Rivers or even get particularly close to affect him. If his eyes aren't completely focused downfield, he quickly becomes erratic.
4) Lateral movement of LBs. Once Rivers loses his initial read, he will makes mistakes if the picture in front of him isn't static. While Spikes isn't a good chase-n-cover guy, he has good instinct in zone coverage. Ninkovich as well. While they may seem to be liabilities in this game, they could turn out to be unsung heroes if they are allowed to read-n-react.
I think we will play nickel as the base.
I think we play a lot of zone. I like the idea of playing up and jamming the receivers and dropping into cover 2 vs this team.
I'd stick Dowling/Bodden on Floyd and McCourty on Jackson. I'd tell McCourty to stop looking back so damned often. I'd have a linebacker knocking Gates at the line on pretty much every play.
And then I'd let Wilfork and Haynesworth/Pryor collapse the pocket, because Rivers really likes stepping up into the pocket, and taking that away from him will make him uncomfortable.
Oh, yeah, I'd also pray that the safeties find a small enough phone booth to allow them to actually cover someone in it.
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