With their size and ability how do you cover them? We know Branch will most likely get Revis so he can be forgotten.... But Smith played a good game this week but the TE and Slot receiver still had decent games. Of course Garcon burned us but How do we go about covering them?
Pool and Lowrey need to play good. Also at points Bart Scott was taken off the field in the Colts game and they put Eric Smith in and it worked great. I say put Eric in some times for Bart.
Safety play has been getting better, except that Pool is always late giving help on deep routes, and needs to continue to be solid. They are going to get their catches the key will be limiting YAC like they did all last night.
we need revis to stay on 1 wr this game. last game he was all over the fucking place. or atleast alternate him on 2 dudes. dont spread him around. also this is going to be the game where cromartie has to play.
Tight Ends The problem isn't just Hernadez and Gronkowski. It's Hernandez, Gronkowski, Branch, Welker and BJGE all at once. If the Patriots spread the field, there will be a match up problem somewhere. If all your best cover guys are on the field trying to match up in pass defense, both tight ends will say in close, and you'll see a power running game. A two tight end personnel package where the tight ends and running back can all do pretty good imitations of wide receivers has presented a lot of teams with severe problems. For years Belichick has been spending high draft picks on tight ends, looking for the next Mark Bavaro, a tight end who can run block, pass block, run routes and catch the ball. Until this year, I never understood why he kept spending perfectly good draft picks on tight ends. On the Patriots forums, it was something of a joke. When doing a Patriots mock draft, you had to take the best available tight end in the early rounds. This year, after a good number of failures, Belichick got two well rounded TEs at once. The result has been interesting, to say the least. The offensive statistics for the Patriots this year are nearly as good as the 2007 offense, but this year's power and horizontal passing scheme seems much more robust than counting on the Brady to Moss connection. That worked very well indeed in early 2007, but at this point Moss has seen too many hits. Belichick had to try something different. As hard as it is to find a well rounded tight end, they are far easier to find than players like Moss. Besides, once the playoffs start, you want the option of a power running game.
Smith has shown that he can cover TEs. I would like to see Laury out on passing downs, fast and physical. Coleman and Lowery have been used but although playing tight coverage, they are just not big enough to stop them. If I were Rex/Pettine , I would be telling them to stick a hand in instead of going for the force fumble/tackle.
If you send all 5 out to receive, I guarantee that Brady will get sacked or at least hurried. This is why this game is going to be a great chess match. Brady will have to figure out who's coming and change the protection accordingly. A couple of rookie TE's to feast on in blitz packages... I think there's something we can do there.
I really don't have anything else, we did a decent job against Tamme this Sunday but these guys are on a different level..esp with 12 throwing them the ball
The key to stopping this NE offense, is to come up big on 1st downs, putting the Patriots in 2nd and 10/2nd and 8 types of situations. Tom Brady has way too many offensive weapons in Welker, Branch, Eddelman, Green-Ellis, these two talented TE's and lets not forget, we all know what Woodhead can do. It's silly to think we can just shut out Brady and this offense. #12 will get his, and the Patriots will move the ball; thats a given. The key to beating this Patriots offense is simple, just like we did to Manning and the Colts last night; we must turn potential TD drives into FG attempts. Manning is just about impossible to get to, Brady on the other hand? We can knock his ass around from time to time. We've done it before. We need to pressure Brady, in the same types of ways that we laid hits on his ass during week #2 of last year. This defense will bend next Sunday, but it's up to Rex Ryan and company to put us in position to where we dont break. I like our chances. We're built for the playoffs.
Only problem with putting Revis on Welker is that Welker runs inside and hes (Revis) not as effective, you might as well put Lowery or Coleman on him
Rex will prob use a very similar gameplan to what we saw last night. 6 or 7 DBs in coverage daring the patriots to run. Aside from that huge TD to Garçon on the blown coverage Manning was shut down.
Everyone knows what our defence is capable of or not capable of and one of those NOT capable things is a decent pass rush. We just dont have the personel to rush 3 or 4 D-linemen and get pressure, we have to create blitz schemes which just leads to us getting burned for a ton of yards. OP your asking the wrong question. Its imposible to defend all of their weapons, TE's are just a small piece when Woodhead is getting motioned out of the backfield plus Branch and Welker running precision routes with Brady throwing a well timed ball. The TE's are so pivotal due to the attention the WR's and Woodhead get. Best case scenario we have a replay of what we did to the colts in limiting their gains and stopping them on 3rd downs. But in the end its going to come down to us having to out score them, which means we need Sanchez to have a great game and to keep brady on the bench. Because they are GOING to score its just a matter of limiting their time on the field and capitalizing on easy completions to keep the drive alive.
