Some initial thoughts on Bucs O vs. Seattle D:
- - A lot of deep crossers designed to beat zone concepts
- - Some Cover 2 hole shots
- - Got Egbuka on a 50+ yard deep post starting from the left against single high safety where they moved the safety with deep routes to the right / Baker held him with his eyes
- - Late in the game a lot of scrambling to throw by Baker, found his TE checkdown wide open uncovered as play broke down on one play, then a 1v1 scramble drill TD deep off an initial go route. We may need to lean on this more heavily than even Baker in this game (Diggs will be big in this area), particularly in the red zone as Seattle is super stout in this area. Drake running the ball may work if they give us man looks but for the season Seattle has been much more zone heavy even on third down (but again, not against the Rams - however I think they will play zone against us as we have a weaker offensive line than the Rams - you plan Man either when you think the other teams' receivers are overmatched and/or you need to buy more time for the rush to get home and/or you need to blitz more to get pressure - none of which should apply to Patriots)
- - Some success in the screen game
- - Almost no success in the run game, but got two goal line TDs by motioning TE to right creating very strong look to the right then pitching to RB out to the left where they leaked Wirfs (all-pro LT) out as a lead blocker
- - Not a ton of underneath stuff relatively - most of the success was in the 10-20 yard throw area with some deeper shots mixed in
- - Reasonable dose of play action mixed in even though run game was going nowhere...but most of Baker's success was coming out of shotgun spread
- - Seattle played nickel looks even against base/bigger Bucs lineups and still stuffed the run pretty well. Seattle has big corners and safeties that tackle well so they can afford to do this
Do I think we can hang 38 on them? No - Baker was simply on fire in this game. But can we try to get to 20+ and hope we can pressure Darnold into mistakes? My initial thought is that is likely the game script we are aiming for. Drake can catch fire like Baker did but our offensive line likely won't hold up as well as the Bucs did (Wirfs was healthy). Go sling it Drake, let it rip and let the chips fall where they may. He's our best player and we should let him play free, mistakes be damned.
