if Im the chargers, i do this....

[Patriotic Fervor]

So San Diego is going to employ the same game plan as the Jags;

to wit:

• Establish ground game and eat up the clock;
• Hope (in any number of areas);
• Wing and a prayer

May work. Probably not....

 

[Ring 6]

What I said was, if you have a game of fewer possessions then those things I mentioned will have a greater influence. I never said those things limited the number of possessions.

However:
a. Turnovers halt a team's possession unexpectedly, getting your team the ball sooner, and they also can have a great effect on field position.

b. Field position can also be aided by the offense, if you're able to avoid 3 & outs, and at least mount drives that get close to midfield, giving your punter a chance to pin a team deep.
(Luckily, the Pats led the league, by a wide margin, in scoring drives over 80-yards)

BB & Brady are unlike many teams except for maybe the Colts, in that they don't get too conservative when backed up, as I think not only are they confident, but they realize how important it is not to go 3 & out when pinned inside your 20.

Basically, considering what the Chargers are facing, imho, the best they can hope for is an 8 or 9 possession game in which they generate 2-3 turnovers, get stellar special teams play, and get at least 10-14 points as a result of those things.

How is that different than hoping for a 13-14 possesion game, getting 2-3 turnovers, stellar special teams play, getting 10-14 points form that AND GIVING YOUR OFFENSE 5 MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO SCORE.
The flaw in your logic is that its a game plan that says the other team is better than us. If they have the ball we cant stop them, if we have the ball they can stop us. So lets just hope that we get lucky. It doesn't work.
With the ability of the Pats to put points on the board, any opponent that has any hope of winning needs to call every offense series from the perspective that they better score, not from the perspective of slowing down the game being more important than scoring, because there is no confidence we can score.

 

[neuronet]

Chewing up time with the offense is a good strategy for the Chargers, not only to limit the number of possessions (and points) of the Patriots, but the longer your offense is on the field, the more tired out the Pats defense becomes, which opens up even more chances for your running game. Since that is the Chargers strength, that seems their best bet.

 

[TomBrady'sGoat]

I hear this all the time and never understand it.

Teams take turns with the ball. You cannot keep a team off the field. You only delay its turn (and therefore your next turn). So the Chargers take ten mins. So what. Then they punt or kick off and we get the ball back.

All running the clock does is limit teh NUMBER of possessions EACH team has.

If they have a 14 min drive and kick a FG, and we have a 1 min drive and score a TD, they lost, no matter how much time they took off the clock.

You cannot beat a team with a long drive. You beat a team by scoring a TD on your drives, long or small.

Long drives are useful IF you have a lead, and therefore want to limit the chances the other team has to come from behind. And they are useful to give your D a rest.

But each team has the same number of possessions. It is how you score on your possession that matters, not how long you take on your turn.

Thank you for pointing something out that so few people seem to be able to grasp. Everyone promotes limiting possessions, when in reality winning the turnover battle is the goal. If you limit NE to 8 possessions but don't create turnovers you're limiting yourself to about 8 possessions. I trust NE's offense to be much more efficient at scoring points during their 8 possessions. This is exactly what happened to Jacksonville last week (plus a big first half turnover).