It's a rhetorical question. I'm still not sure why we'd pass the ball and run with Woodhead when they're flooding the field with defensive backs.
Well, one possibility that occurs to me is that neither BGE or Woody run the ball with consistent effectiveness up the middle without a 6th blocker. That more or less reduces Brady's passing targets to three, except for the occasional play action pass to Crumpler, Gronk or the RB. Either way, those sets instantly defines for the Jets some limits on what we can do. With our X and Z man-covered and them rushing 3-4, it still leaves them with 5 on 3 in the short/intermediate zones between the numbers.
So, Woody is better turning the corner than BGE on a stretch and is a much better receiver. The Pats maybe shift to a 4WR/Woody or 3WR/Gronk-or-Hernandez/Woody set, but that's more vulnerable to a blitz, run or pass and the Jets can probably limit Woody up-the-middle and on the stretch 90% of the time with 3-4 linemen and a bunch of DBs.
IDK. It just seems to me that with the forte of virtually all of Brady's pass-catchers being the ability to excel in the short/intermediate zones between the numbers, but not often along the sidelines or deep, PLUS not having an RB who's a threat to break through the LB level without that 6th blocker, it really limits what the Pats can present for a defense to cover. The Jets, with two very good man-coverage CBs and a bunch of DBs and LBs who can cover the middle well, as well as a D-Line that can get pressure with 3-4 guys, seem well-suited to counter our offensive strengths. They're at least sufficiently well-suited that, if they execute their defense to near-perfection and our offense is a wee bit off in execution .....
So, with the limits on what we can do running the ball, and what the does to limit our passing options, doing more of it might not have made much difference unless we executed everything to near-perfection. Clearly, we didn't.
