this is really inaccurate. other then the dolphins, most teams havent kept in extra blockers. the eagles went with just 5 lineman blocking virtually the entire game, and we get very little pressure, even when we blitzed. the same is true of the cleveland game and yestardays game. the colts also didnt use alot of extra blockers, although at least in that game we made them pay for it. the reason HBs have been killing us(or getting open so much) is because teams havent been concerned enough with our pass rush to be forced to leave those guys in to block. the defensive line play has been the most disappointing thing all season in my mind, outside of special teams
you absolutely can. you have 7 in the box in normal situations. instead of playing a standard 2 deep coverage, you bring 1 safety in the box to stack the box with 8, then you have the second safety double marshall that leaves no deep safety, but can fitz make you pay on deep throws? i dont know, and i doubt bellicheat would do that anyway i expect bill to play its pretty straight up, and make fitzpatrick make tight throws for 4 quarters.
we have to double gronk basically every play. just like what the colts did. just have to hope our dline gets more pressure and our corners do a better job on edelman and amendola
thats the beauty of having revis though. you can double gronk and get away with revis locking someone down, and then asking 4 guys to cover the other 3 recievers.
Making sound tackles is the best way to slow down the pats offense. So many plays go underneath to Edelmen (sp?) Lewis and Gronk and they eat you alive for yac. I watched Edelmen wiggle out of tackles all night and on punt returns the guy is as dangerous as anyone in the league. You let Dion Lewis slip a tackle and he tacks on an extra 20 yards, this is killer and can be stopped with wrapping up tackling. One player that no one is talking about is the te Scott Chandler. This dude is massive and will be a nightmare to cover in the redzone with him and gronk lining up. Add in Amendola and Edelmen underneath with Lewis as a running threat and this is a tall order to defend. While their defense is not spectacular Jabal Sheard and Dominque Easily are going to give our oline all they can handle. Luckily they are weak in run coverage up the middle which is the bread and butter for our offense. I expect ivory to continue putting up his pro bowl numbers on the ground and I expect to see a continuation of the screen game which worked to perfection against the skins. Devin Mccourty is one of the best safeties in the league and I expect him to be shadowing Marshall along with Butler all night long making it a difficult challenge to feed the machine. Decker should have the favorable looks as well as Devin Smith ( this would be the perfect time for him to have his first impact pro game ). If Fitz can connect to smith long that will add that vital 4th weapon to this game and we can operate how we want on offense. This will be crucial in the game as NE usually is able to make you play their game on both sides of the ball. If we can force them into our game style on the offensive side I expect us to put up points and have a chance to win it. Last but not least we need to win the coin toss. Sounds stupid but giving Brady back to back scoring chances ( happens every game ) at the end of the second and beginning of the third can put this team into too big of a hole to climb out of. Playing the TOP game with NE is a sure way to loose this next week, you have to match them step for step and force brady into a few mistakes. If we can do that we will have a chance to steal one in Gillette and take first place in the east.
Wow, nice breakdown, it seemed like they had more help on the line against the pass rush. Well the 3-4 is made for blitzing, maybe Bowles will try to generate more pressure by blitzing after all.
Here are the keys to this game: 1) special teams. i know there is brady and gronk and ivory and our D but really, we can EASILY lose this game on special teams. as it is, our field position game is awful. Kerley fair catches EVERYTHING (we already have allowed 9 punts of 55+ yards with no return). how many times have we stopped teams inside their 20, only to be take our first snap at our own 25? then the return game. edelman and amendola are deadly on returns. we can be going 75-80 yards all night with them going 60-65 yards all night. our special teams needs to have a good game 2) pressure from our front. this is obvious. but not just getting to brady, but forcing them to keep their HBs in to block. you dont think belicheck will notice that backs have killed us on those wheel routes? the only way to take their HBs out of the passing game is to force mcdaniels to keep them in to block. our dline has been good overall but extremely disappointing from a pass rush standpoint. we dont need them to get sacks, or even pressures, but if we cant force teams to keep more then 5 blockers in, then back 7 are in for a long day 3) cant play from behind. we know to win ivory has to be involved. they get up 14 or 17 early and that takes him out of the gameplan a bit. and if fitz is forced to make throws when they know we are passing it likely gets ugly.
nfl rewind is great. you can see all angles and it allows you to go back and see stuff like that. the difference in our coverage when the opposing back is forced to block is night and day. we need to force teams to keep that guy in. preferbly iwthout sending more then 5.
The colts kept in on most plays at least a te for pass protection. The only rb to kill us this year has been sproles and he's a great player. Him on our lbs is a massive mismatch. If an offensive game plan requires the QB to get rid of the ball within 2 or so seconds after the snap there's not much you can do, but your dbs don't have to defend very long. The jets defense is top 2 in pass defense and great at getting off the field on 3rd downs. The quick releases have also resulted in a lot of ints. The defensive line is doing a great job, you can't just look at sacks and pressures.
To be the best you have to beat the best. Our D-Line should definitely dominate their O-line and give Brady problems but their WRs might be too much on all those short passes. If Fitz plays like he did yesterday we have a chance.
after watching tonight's game, the Pats are very beatable. I know they switch up their offensive strategy week to week but delivering hard hits to their 5 what's the reason for the lack of pressure up the middle? The d-line hasn't been as dominate as I thought they would be.
sproles is the only hb that killed us. but mostly because we have faces alot of crap qbs. hbs have been wide open... even in that eagles game, they had 2 more walk in touchdowns but sproles dropped one and bradford badly missed matthews on the other. i dont expect brady to miss those if he gets the opportunity. teams are "getting rid of the ball in 2 seconds". specifically look at the cleveland/philly/skins game. 4+ seconds was commonplace. in philyl bradford had all day even when we heavily blitzed. our defense has been great overall. mostly due to stout run D, and elite secondary and playing a few awful qbs (manziel, cousins, tanny) our dline has been awful getting a pass rush. at somepoint one of them needs to start winning 1 on 1 matchups.
I think the best plan Rex ever had was in the playoff when he showed Brady a defense that called for the run and Brady kept running it. He did the same to Manning the week before. He preferred to deal with their running attacks as opposed to their passing games.
Fitz has been playing well and hopefully he won't be confused by Belichick's schemes. So if only one interception I think we have a chance to win. And our offense can move the ball on them. Marshall and Decker are better than their Dbs. And New England has been playing over their heads and are not as good as their record is so far. They are due to be flat. But the key against Brady will be our pass rush. I think we win by 3 and Revis gets a pick.
