And Mr. Pace, and this large gentleman squashing you into the Meadowlands turf is Mr. Jenkins. They're all very glad to meet you! Bring the heat this week, Mangini. BRING THE HEAT!!!!! Seriously, I expect Cassel to be looking at the sky most of this game. Rhodes should be playing so close to line that he may have to get down into a stance. Stop Maroney, kill Cassel, and we won't even have to worry about Moss. Man, I just cannot WAIT until tomorrow @ 4:15.
They will need to put pressure up the middle. I expect a lot of quick passes. I would also expect them to mix up their coverages to see if Cassel can think on his feet.
The Jets should be blitzing early and often, but they'll come in the form of linebackers, not safeties. There's no way you leave anyone on an island with Randy Moss. Rhodes needs to shut the long-ball down on Sunday.
The only way to beat Brady is Pressure because he will pick you apart. The Jets will probably look to confuse Cassel unlike they could do with brady. I see multiple sacks and interceptions this game. The more I think about it, I really believe Cassel will be over his head. It's one thing coming in to a game midstream. He will be nervous as hell as he prepares for his first start since High School.
Some video for those who want to scout Cassel ... [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vaq3G4utKWE[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrROLWbtTzY[/youtube]
with all that game experience Matt Cassel has, he'll stay in the pocket and look down the gun barrel and throw a pass only Moss can catch for a TD 3 times.
Speaking of blitzing: I was getting intrigued by the defensive philosophy in vogue, namely the Fire zone. Apparently, Giants had fantastic success at the last SB against the mighty Tom Brady to say the very least. When I look at the Jets D, I see a D that has all the tools to be a very successful defense - and one of the most effective way would be to go at it with fire zone philosophy. Now that Jets finally have the down linemen that can successfully occupy 2 gaps (Ellis/Coleman/Jenkins) the next step would be to devise a plan to bring heat to the QB - Brady or no Brady. What do you guys think? I don't know how effective Revis/Lowery would be in blitzing situation, but I know Rhodes/Pace/Harris/Thomas/Gholston/Barton can be all very successful blitzing. I'm more of 4-3 person, and I can see how fire zone can work in 4-3 better but then fire zone was born in 3-4 environment (under the guidance of Dick LeBeau) so you never know. I just tend to think that the Jets have all the pieces to work with - and keep the pressure on the QB all game without exposing the secondary.
I think that the key to winning is going to be shutting down the Pats running game so that they are forced to pass. Without a running game, Cassell will crumble.
Obviously, not an easy concept to get used to; and harder concept to prepare for. Conventional blitz have a major weakness, in that when the defense is blitzing, that leaves the secondary - or specifically, cornerbacks - in 1 on 1 match. On top of that, blitzing linebackers leave a gaping hole behind them, which can be effectively exploited for quick outs or quick slants. Bombing on Moss while blitzing and stuff like that are all the side products of conventional blitzing philosophy. Now, what Blitzburg (and consequently, Spags in Giants) did differently is this: conventional blitzing scheme assumes that 4 down linemen (or 3, if you are in 3-4) are engaged, and the rush linebacker (or safety lurking at the line) comes in for the blitz. Now, what if some of the offensive linemen end up blocking air instead of some defender? For instance, consider a conventional base 4-3 cover 3 play. (I told you I am more of 4-3 person, right?) In a normal situation, 4 down linemen would rush, but instead of the right DE rushing, he falls back to his left for coverage - and Willie shifts to his left. Three linemen scoops to the left, and Mike hits the A gap, to the right. Sam flies in from the left. All of a sudden, LT and LG are blocking air, and needs to adjust to the right. (won't happen in time, just to remind you) In the meantime, the right side, where there are 3~4blockers (C/RG/RT - if RB is used for protection, 4) is suddenly overloaded by 2 extra blitzers. Quick hot route to the left is covered by DE, and deep areas are covered with 3 secondaries. Underneath route is not open if the coverage is good enough, (and should be, with willie and SS covering the middle) and if the QB doesn't figure out what to do (in about 1.5~2 sec after the snap) he's going to be sacked either by mike or sam. Much simpler example would be: 3 secondaries fall back, Willie plays right shallow. Right DE falls back, and Mike/Sam shifts a slot to their left. SS comes blazing from the edge, where the right side of the pocket is again overloaded by 1 extra man. If the offense is playing empty backfield or wrong alignment of RB, sack or extremely heavy pressure will be the result. (And the better part of this play is that it's but a simple 4 man rush and not even a blitz) It's just one simple example, (very rudimentary, if at all) and the permutation of blitzers is almost limitless - in 3-4, any 2 can come in for a simple 5 man rush, (8C2 = 28 combinations) and if 3 comes in, (8C3 = 56 combinations) now we have some hard core blitzing. (Of course, I don't think some combinations are worth consideration, like sending both CBs to blitz or something like that - but it's still too many of a possible combination to worry about in a given time of 40 second playclock) The better effect of this approach is that, once the QB starts getting hit on a regular basis, he starts looking down for his hot read even when there is no apparent blitz coming at him. That's what happened last year in GB vs Giants; Giants later ran a simple 4 man rush, but Favre expected the extra 5th man coming - or he was anticipating the blitz that wasn't coming. Quite possibly, he had an illusion that there was a 5th blitzer coming, from the defense he saw. He threw to his hot read, but the WR didn't see any blitz coming in (because it's a basic 4 man rush after all), and ended in incomplete. Same for Brady and Pats. Simply speaking, it looks like a innocuous, naive base defense, yet the QB has just no idea 1) where the blitz is coming, 2) how many is coming and finally 3) when it is coming (mike is extremely effective with delayed blitz in many cases) For this reason, beating fire zone would have to be through a simple smash mouth football, where the OL pounds D for 4-5 yards per carry and dictate the game flow from there. If the OL cannot dictate the game flow, this D will eat any QB alive all day. We've seen the vaunted Pats OL allowing 5 sacks in a SB game, after all. The intention of the this philosophy is to bring as much heat as possible to the opposing QB without exposing the secondary, and so far it looks like it's doing its job very well.
