Andy Benoit's SB Recap with McVay

BJ_McWild said:

That's an interesting point of view considering it took 2 heroic defensive plays to stop touchdowns to Cooks

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One was a blown coverage, the other an excellent PBU. The Pats left points on the field through Brady's horrible decision to throw the ball, a missed FG and a questionable fourth down call that should have been a FGA. Outside of the two plays you mention, when did you feel the Rams were in with a shot of scoring because I saw a team gobsmacked, confused and with no plan B?

patfanken said:

You can't blame Wade for THAT! Kind of hard to make an adjustment to a formation you have never seen all year, in the 4th quarter of the game.

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The Patriots have been running HOSS Y Juke since at LEAST the Charlie Weis days, if not the Erhardt days. The formations were different each time, but it was the same play, and a play the Patriots have run forever. I would be stunned if Phillips hadn't seen it before.

ausbacker said:

Interesting reading stories as such and how they seem to forget the Patriots made some unusually boneheaded decisions/plays costing themselves at minimum, 10-13 points.

The Super Bowl never felt as close as people are attempting to frame. The Pats controlled that game and on both sides of the ball. For all the glitz and glamour, the Rams were outmatched and outplayed. Pats O doesn't self immolate, that's a three TD win.

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I mostly agree, but a failure to score can look like bad offense or good defense to the viewer.

In a similar vein, I hate when people say the "Falcons choked" in SB LI when it was clearly all brilliant football playing by the Patriots.

TommyD4207 said:

The Patriots have been running HOSS Y Juke since at LEAST the Charlie Weis days, if not the Erhardt days. The formations were different each time, but it was the same play, and a play the Patriots have run forever. I would be stunned if Phillips hadn't seen it before.

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They had run the personnel grouping before, but never with the spread they used that series. It was reported that not only had they never used this exact formation, they never practiced it.

The formation they ran was to get the Rams personnel on the field to play against the "heavy" formation personnel the Pats had on the field and then force that group to play them in space.

It got more space over the middle for Edelman, and a mismatch for Gronk. If you watch that series again, IIRC, Gronk was much more open the play before his catch than he was when he actually made it. I thought the Rams did a decent job in coverage on that play. But like I have said so many times before, you cannot cover a great throw or a great catch, and on this play it was both.

But if Brady had looked to Gronk the play before, Gronk would have walked in for the TD

As for McDaniel, I'm betting it took him until halftime to figure out exactly what the Rams were doing to be so successful against the Pats offense. He was likely making adjustment the entire 3rd quarter....with little or no success. I'm sure he was getting desperate. I can almost picture him on the sideline at the start of the 4th quarter going, "what if we spread out our heavy personnel against their "big" lineup and see what happens". Then after briefly explaining what he wanted to do the next offensive series he said to Bill, "I know we haven't practiced it, Bill, but I've tried everything else and we haven't done sh! I'll keep it simple, (he ran the same play 4 straight times) lets give it a shot. It SHOULD open up some stuff for us."

"************, Josh", Bill likely replied and stood there thinking about for a few moments, with one eye he watch the Pats defense throttling another Rams offensive series. He couldn't find anything behind the concept that was wrong, but he still didn't like the fact that they had never practiced this formation, not even in a walk thru.

"WTF", he muttered to Josh, but gave him a thumbs up, while Josh was already moving down the bench to where Brady and much of the offense were sitting.

......and the rest is history.

TommyD4207 said:

The Patriots have been running HOSS Y Juke since at LEAST the Charlie Weis days, if not the Erhardt days. The formations were different each time, but it was the same play, and a play the Patriots have run forever. I would be stunned if Phillips hadn't seen it before.

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Sure, but something I saw in Collision Low Crossers is that the challenge the Patriots present is that their myriad multiple formation and personnel packages are designed to put defensive players in situations they're not prepared for. By putting two TEs and two RBs in the game, then spreading it out wide, they forced the defense into base personnel, then made them cover. If they ran the same play with 3 wide, the defense would be better prepared and have more coverage options. In the book, a Jets coach recounts seeing the Patriots in a formation, and then knowing where the pass would go before the snap. But because it was Rob Gronkowski was split out wide and not a WR, an LB was in coverage and he would have not studied that coverage and a DB definitely would have. Thus, the Pats completed the pass. It goes to show the difference between a coach recognizing something and the players knowing what to do at any point.

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“They had a big tell on two-back alignments,” Brockers says, explaining that if Develin aligned on the strong side, he would trap-block the nose tackle. If Develin aligned on the weak side, he would wind back across the formation as a lead-blocker.

A broader, more obvious tell came from who the Patriots had at running back. When Sony Michel was in, it was often with the fullback Develin, and the likelihood of a run was very high. So, the Rams played their stouter base 4-3 defense. But if Burkhead or especially James White was in, the Patriots were likely to throw. So here the Rams played nickel, even if one of those back was in with the smashmouthing Develin.

DropKickFlutie said:

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“They had a big tell on two-back alignments,” Brockers says, explaining that if Develin aligned on the strong side, he would trap-block the nose tackle. If Develin aligned on the weak side, he would wind back across the formation as a lead-blocker.

A broader, more obvious tell came from who the Patriots had at running back. When Sony Michel was in, it was often with the fullback Develin, and the likelihood of a run was very high. So, the Rams played their stouter base 4-3 defense. But if Burkhead or especially James White was in, the Patriots were likely to throw. So here the Rams played nickel, even if one of those back was in with the smashmouthing Develin.

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EVERY team has tells or tendencies. Its the nature of the game. So while, I'm sure the Pats are among the best teams in the league in hiding their tells and going agaist tendencies, some are going to pop up.

As a fan of the Pats, I'd like to thank Michael Brockers for pointing out this particular tell and I'm sure the Pats coaching staff won't let it happen again.

DropKickFlutie said:

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“They had a big tell on two-back alignments,” Brockers says, explaining that if Develin aligned on the strong side, he would trap-block the nose tackle. If Develin aligned on the weak side, he would wind back across the formation as a lead-blocker.

A broader, more obvious tell came from who the Patriots had at running back. When Sony Michel was in, it was often with the fullback Develin, and the likelihood of a run was very high. So, the Rams played their stouter base 4-3 defense. But if Burkhead or especially James White was in, the Patriots were likely to throw. So here the Rams played nickel, even if one of those back was in with the smashmouthing Develin.

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That wasn't a big secret or anything, I don't think. We'd all seen running back predictability and none of us are professionals. The main issue was they still aren't comfortable with using Sony in receiving situations, and I suspect a large part of that was that he missed almost all of camp and was therefore playing catch-up throughout the year. He caught the ball well in college so hopefully he'll be able to spend camp this year getting on the same page with Brady in the passing game.

When is the last time the Pats had a RB who was both a strong runner AND a strong receiver? OF COURSE if you play the guy who can run but not catch the other team expects run. And that's when you play action pass. Just like with Blount and Ridley and BJGE and Dillion etc.

Or White/Vereen/Faulk "give away" that it's a pass, and sometimes they run the ball anyway.

sean10mm said:

When is the last time the Pats had a RB who was both a strong runner AND a strong receiver? OF COURSE if you play the guy who can run but not catch the other team expects run. And that's when you play action pass. Just like with Blount and Ridley and BJGE and Dillion etc.

Or White/Vereen/Faulk "give away" that it's a pass, and sometimes they run the ball anyway.

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To be fair, they almost certainly drafted Sony with the expectation he would be a dual-threat. You don't spend a 1st rounder on a running back who can't play in both phases, and Sony had over 60 catches in his college career so this isn't a Blount or Ridley who never caught the ball even in college. For comparison's sake, Michel had almost the identical number of catches to Todd Gurley in the same college offense, and only a handful fewer than James White. Receiving ability and pass protection were generally considered among his strengths as a prospect even if he wasn't the polished threat of a player like Saquon Barkley. They tried to get him involved more later in the year, but he never quite looked on the same page as Brady. Missing almost all of camp and the first few games of the season probably put him well behind the ball as a receiver since so much of it, particularly in the Patriots' offense, is related to feel and being on the same page as Brady, so hopefully he'll be able to make it up this offseason.

But also consider Gurley, who had a measly 21 catches his rookie year (higher than Michel, perhaps, but the Rams also lacked a James White) but averaged over 4 catches per game the last two seasons. Part of that was the transition from Fisher to McVay, certainly, but also the fact that they didn't trust him yet to be a receiver.

patfanken said:

EVERY team has tells or tendencies. Its the nature of the game. So while, I'm sure the Pats are among the best teams in the league in hiding their tells and going agaist tendencies, some are going to pop up.

As a fan of the Pats, I'd like to thank Michael Brockers for pointing out this particular tell and I'm sure the Pats coaching staff won't let it happen again.

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I'll add on that you can only manipulate tendencies if the other teams know they exist. If you're so amorphous that no one can ever get a read on you, then you also can't exploit their responses to your tells. There's definitely an art to controlling the flow of a game; setting (and breaking) expectations is one of the tools of the trade.

All the mind games aside, at some point you still have to execute and out-muscle the other team. It's a physical, violent game, not a chess match.

tasmlab said:

In a similar vein, I hate when people say the "Falcons choked" in SB LI when it was clearly all brilliant football playing by the Patriots.

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I cannot agree with you. There were Falcon chokes in that game outside of and independent from NE's play. However, it is true that NE had to play flawlessly to take advantage of those chokes.

A few easy examples:

• Snapping the ball over and over again with way too much time on the play clock. If they had just done the simple thing of snapping the ball with less time on the clock there would simply not have been enough time for NE to come back and tie.
• Not making getting the game-icing FG a priority after the insane Jones catch on the sideline. They could have taken a couple of minutes off the clock and highly likely would have gotten the FG just playing conservative there. That would have been a deathblow to NE's chances. There was no need to play aggressively there.
• The RB choking and not noticing Hightower on the strip sack. He wouldn't have even had to make a solid block. As it was, if HT was even a fraction of a second later it would at best have been an incomplete pass (and the subsequent punt and long field for NE would have made it much tougher on NE) or maybe even a TD, as Butler was totally burned on the play and Ryan was looking to throw to Butler's wide open man.

tasmlab said:

In a similar vein, I hate when people say the "Falcons choked" in SB LI when it was clearly all brilliant football playing by the Patriots.

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Even if you play your best you still need the bounces, 50/50 situations and sometimes ref decisions to go your way. Even more so if you are down 3-28. Saying one team choked or the other just played brilliantly is pretty black and white.

The reality is we essentially had the equivalent of 10-12 coin flips going our way with sequences going a certain way. That doesn't lessen what our team accomplished because they still had to play their asses off to seize the chance they were given.

robertweathers said:

Shes a freaking goddess. My god.

Russian model I believe. She met him when he was OC with the Skins. She was a student and George Mason. The web site said she was 29.

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would it be wrong to collude with her?

sean10mm said:

When is the last time the Pats had a RB who was both a strong runner AND a strong receiver? OF COURSE if you play the guy who can run but not catch the other team expects run. And that's when you play action pass. Just like with Blount and Ridley and BJGE and Dillion etc.

Or White/Vereen/Faulk "give away" that it's a pass, and sometimes they run the ball anyway.

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White is a better runner than many think. Not a power guy, but he's pretty good. Overall, a damn good player.

Jackson 2 said:

White is a better runner than many think. Not a power guy, but he's pretty good. Overall, a damn good player.

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He is slippery. Fairly effective when given the rock but still not someone you want as your runner 15 times a game.

SBLIII said:

He is slippery. Fairly effective when given the rock but still not someone you want as your runner 15 times a game.

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Agreed, and I wasn't saying that at all.

Jackson 2 said:

White is a better runner than many think. Not a power guy, but he's pretty good. Overall, a damn good player.

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NO he's not, though he has improved SOME over the last 2 years. The fact is that the first guy who touches him will most likely be the guy who brings him down. Not every time, but most of them. He is a great receiver and an adequate runner after the catch but as far as his running ability after taking a hand off, it is often cringe worthy. But with Harris, Burkhead and Michel ahead of him now, the only running we should see from JW is with an occasional draw play.

patfanken said:

NO he's not, though he has improved SOME over the last 2 years. The fact is that the first guy who touches him will most likely be the guy who brings him down. Not every time, but most of them. He is a great receiver and an adequate runner after the catch but as far as his running ability after taking a hand off, it is often cringe worthy. But with Harris, Burkhead and Michel ahead of him now, the only running we should see from JW is with an occasional draw play.

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Yeah, he doesn't break tackles.

SBLIII said:

Yeah, he doesn't break tackles.

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Correct, he specializes in breaking opponents' hearts.