I’m fascinated by Josh McDaniels’ approach to this one. We all know the McOffense can shape-shift at will like Mystique. And you’d assume its at-rest, default setting (
its Rebecca Romijn/Jennifer Lawrence mode) would be the Rob Gronkowski/Martellus Bennett combination, create mismatches and chuck the ball all over the place. But in Pittsburgh, Gronk and Bennett rarely saw the field at the same time. And usually when they did, either one stayed in to block (the long catch by Gronk to set up the final touchdown) or was a running play (the three tight end look with James Develin they pounded LeGarrette Blount behind to kill the clock in the fourth). For the most part, McDaniels preferred a Posse look, with one running back, one tight end and three wideouts. It says everything about how stocked his toolbox is that he can use them the way he did and still put up four touchdowns despite the turnovers and drops.
— Of course, now that the battle station we call Gronk is fully operational, he alone is enough to make defenses suffer complete meltdowns. Consider his touchdown catch. The Pats ran a three man route combo I’ve seen called “Parachute,” where Danny Amendola ran a deep curl, Julian Edelman a shallow cross and Gronk ran the “chute,” a go route. The play side safety was Sean Davis, who left the seam to go help on Amendola and looked like he simply wanted no part of covering Gronk. Which makes zero sense football-wise, but perfect sense when it comes to self-preservation.
— More than anything, the gameplan seemed to be about pushing the Steelers front-seven around. And it succeeded. They used a lot of traps and zone blocks. Blount’s first touchdown was a stretch run where Nate Solder rode L.T. Walton into the interior of the line, Gronk came across the goal line to snowplow Mike Mitchell and Blount cut back against the grain for the score.
— The first touchdown was a perfectly blocked screen to James White, set up by David Andrews engaging Ricardo Mathews before slipping outside and Joe Thuney submarining Lawrence Timmons. All done with Gronk out of the play, split out as a wide-Y on the back side of the play.
