Tag Archives: Super Bowl

AAF: Super Bowl

12 Sunday Feb 2017

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I like to go back and look at the coaching tape of the Super Bowl as I cling on to the final game we have to tie us over until preseason, but these days I have learnt painfully that you have to focus on something or you can spend so much time on every play as there is a huge amount to look at. I stuck with my original plan to cover the match up of the Atlanta Falcons league leading offence going up against the New England Patriots defence which conceded the fewest points in the league this regular season.

The first quarter was unexpectedly scoreless, with both offences getting off to slow starts. The Falcons are a team that are known to play a lot of traditional two running back personnel groupings and this was certainly the case in this game. Their opening drive got off to a great start when Devonta Freeman ran left for thirty-seven yards. This play also demonstrated the way that the Falcons like to attack a team with personnel and formations as they may have lined up in a standard offset I formation, but full back Patrick DiMarco motioned out to line up as a receiver. However that drive soon petered out with two short gains and a sack on third down when Trey Flowers simply overpowered left tackle Jake Mathews to get to Matt Ryan. The Falcons’ second drive followed a similar pattern with Tevin Coleman starting it off with a nice nine yard run, which was followed by a ten yard pass to DiMarco before the drive bogged down and Matt Ryan was sacked on third down. This was less of a pass rush than a coverage sack as Ryan looked to his right and moved up in the pocket, being brought down by Alan Branch as Ryan moved past him although it was only credited as half a sack. Looking at the coaching tape it does appear that Julio Jones did find a soft spot between corner and safety on the left of the offence but as we don’t know the play call or read progression it is hard to comment on whether Ryan should have seen this or not under the circumstances.

The second quarter was one where the Falcons offence leapt into life, remembering that they had Julio Jones and seeing a switch in personnel groupings moving to 12 and 11 personnel, with full back DiMarco not playing and them replacing him with a tight end or receiver. Their third drive started with a pass forced into Julio Jones who wrestled the ball away from the corner trailing him. He then followed this up with a toe tapping catch at the side line despite having both a corner and the deep safety track him across the formation as he motioned before the snap. Then Freeman took over the drive, running on three straight plays which resulting in the first score of the game. The fourth drive also started with a big pass play when Taylor Gabriel ran a deep in against what looks to be a two deep zone coverage with Malcolm Butler staying out wide whilst Gabriel cuts in underneath the two safeties and gaining the Falcons twenty-four yards. On a play action pass on the next play Julio Jones was able to get single coverage for about the only time in the game and Matt Ryan was able to find him down the side line whilst under pressure. After a running play by Tevin Coleman, Matt Ryan was able to find Austin Hooper in the end zone on the second time of asking when Hooper was matched up against Patrick Chung. On the previous play Chung was able to break up the pass, but this time Hooper was running round him and through the end zone to make the catch with fellow safety Devin McCourty doubled up on Julio Jones.

The Falcons offence would not get the ball back in the first half after Robert Alford took his interception of Tom Brady back eighty-two yards for a touchdown. The Patriots were noticeably doubling up on Julio Jones, but Malcolm Butler seemed to be playing left corner rather than following a receiver round the formation for a particular match up, although the Patriots did look to be playing man coverage mixed in with zone.

The third quarter saw the last points the Falcons were to score in the game, and they got off to a poor start with a three and out with Devonta Freeman getting stuffed in the backfield for a three yard loss and the drive never really recovering. However, their sixth drive was more reminiscent of the second quarter. The Falcons remained in predominantly 11 personnel, making use of a third receiver, opening the drive with a seventeen yard catch by Taylor Garbiel although they did bring back their full back for two plays. On one of these Garbiel ran past Malcom Butler as he fell down and caught the ball before the safety Duron Harmon could get across as he was shaded towards Julio Jones on the other side of the field. The Falcons were able to march down the field and scored a touchdown where they lined up with three receivers on the right of a shotgun formation and Tevin Coleman lined up to the left of Matt Ryan. They then brought Coleman across the formation whilst the receivers ran up and in patterns, which got Rob Ninkovich caught up enough that we was unable to get to the edge and stop Coleman getting into the end zone.

The problem for the Falcons then began here, which is why I am stepping away from the quarter by quarter break down. Not only did the Patriots find a formula on offence that began to move the ball, but their offence started having problems of their own. The next time the Falcons got the ball, their drive came to an end when Ryan Schraeder was over powered by two rushers and Matt Ryan was sacked. The following drive the Falcons had only given up a field goal on defence, but first Tevin Coleman went out of the game with an injury, and on the very next play Devonta Freeman could only bump Dont’a Hightower on his way to sack Matt Ryan who fumbled the ball and the Patriots recovered.

Even after these troubles the Falcons were ahead 28-20, and on the opening play of the drive ran a play action pass to Freeman who took the ball thirty-seven yards to midfield. After a nothing run play somehow whilst on the move Matt Ryan finds Julio Jones who makes another spectacular side line catch. At this point the Falcons are on the Patriots twenty-two yard line with around four minutes on the clock. There has been a lot of talk about second guessing the plays, and staying aggressive, but at some point you have to pay attention to the game flow. You are eight points up with four minutes left and a field goal makes this a two score game. I have a lot of sympathy with those who say run three times and kick the field goal, or run play action. But not only did Devonta Freeman get stuffed on first down for the loss of a yard, but Trey Flowers managed to bull his way past Alex Mack to bring down Matt Ryan for a loss of twelve yards. Whatever your thoughts on the play calls, Ryan has to get rid of the ball in this situation. The then Falcons nearly get themselves back into field goal range with a pass to Mohamed Sanu, but it gets wiped out by a second holding call of the game against Jake Mathews and Matt Ryan can’t get the pass complete to Taylor Gabriel.

The Patriots tie up the game, the Falcons have one last ditch to go ninety yards in fifty seconds, but fall way shot and the rest is overtime and Patriots folk lore. The clever thing is that the Patriots didn’t win with one thing, but on defence a combination of coverage and enough pass rush to end drives won them the game. Out of ten drives the Falcons were only able to score on three of them, and that is telling in that when the ball moved well for the Falcons they scored very quickly, but that was really only for a quarter and a half. Even then, with a little more attention paid to game flow they could have kicked a field goal and won the game. A Super Bowl loss will always generate a lot of what if type questions, but I have the feeling that the Falcons will have more than most.

And now we move onto the offseason and I’m taking a break for a couple of weeks, but it won’t be long before the itch to write about football returns. For now it is time to take a break from football and get to different writing and hobbies. Maybe that would be good for all of us.

Super Bowl Preview

05 Sunday Feb 2017

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The big day is here, and despite the myriad of coverage that comes with the Super Bowl, here comes my own thoughts on the season that the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots have had and what we might see in tonight’s/tomorrow morning’s final game of the season. And there will be no discussion of the colour of the team’s jerseys!

The Atlanta Falcons were seeded second in the NFC having won their division with an 11-5 record. Splitting the season into four game sections as the coaches do, we can see that after losing their first game the Falcons won the first quarter by winning the next three games, they then split the next eight games across the middle quarters, but won out through the final quarter of the season and carried that momentum through the playoffs to the Super Bowl.

Their offence has played well all season, reaping the benefits of the blossoming relationship between offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan and his quarterback Matt Ryan that led respectively to Shanahan being the expected head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and Ryan being named league MVP. Having focussed on what Ryan did and did not like from their first season together, the offence soared with Ryan throwing for just shy of five thousand yards, thirty-eight touchdowns and just seven interceptions. The offence scored thirty points or more in thirteen of their sixteen regular season games and both playoff games. This year they managed to balance the run game with the pass game, and that if defences focussed on stopping Julio Jones then Ryan was more than happy to distribute the ball with it not being unusual for five or more players to make catches during the game and thirteen different players caught touchdowns this year.

If the offence is what drives this Falcons team, then the defence has managed to do enough to win, which is impressive given the number of rookies and second year players that are contributing on this side of the ball. Their pass defence improved down the stretch despite losing Desmond Trufont to injury for most of the season, but their rush defence ranks only twenty-ninth by DVOA. They had a league leading fifteen and half sacks from Vic Beasley whilst one of their rookies Keanu Neal was second on the team in tackles as he drew comparisons with Seattle safety Kam Chancellor with his physical play. This is a unit that is a work in progress, but the profile of the players they are putting together is beginning to resemble the template of the defence in Seattle, which is hardly surprising given that this is where Head Coach Dan Quinn’s came from.

If the Falcons are melding their experienced offence with a young developing defence, then the Patriots are continuing their constant evolution in the relentless pursuit of excellence. This is the challenge that all NFL teams face, but few if any can match the success of Bill Belichik and Tom Brady, which is even more impressive given that it is taking place in a time of free agency and rules designed to enable all teams to be competitive.

The Patriots may have been missing Tom Brady for their first four games thanks to a dubious punishment from the deflate gate saga, from which I shall spare you a recap, but they still won three of those games including a 27-0 drubbing of the Houston Texans with their third string quarterback. Once Brady returned the offence hummed and the Patriots only lost one more game against the Seattle Seahawks as they went 14-2 and locked up the number one seed.

The Patriots offence is hard to generalise about as their approach changes from week to week depending on the opposition. It is perfectly possible for their incredible quarterback to be handing the ball off for the majority of the game if the plan demands it, or he could make fifty plus throws as the team pass their way to victory. What has been impressive is that they have achieved the results they have with Brady missing the games he did and Rob Gronkowski hardly playing this season thanks to injury. When he is on the field Gronkowski is putting together an argument to be considered one of the best tight ends to have played the game, but free agent pickup Martellus Bennett is a very good tight end in his own right and was second on the team in receiving yards this year and caught seven touchdowns. The other big free agent addition to the offence was receiver Chris Hogan, signed from the Buffalo Bills, who chipped in with nearly seven hundred receiving yards of his own and four touchdowns. It is worth noting that despite varying usage, running back LeGarrette Blount still ran for over a thousand yards this season and I haven’t even mentioned Julian Edelman who caught ninety-eight balls for eleven hundred yards himself.

If the offence was its usual supple and efficient self, the defence was less obviously excellent, but led the league in scoring defence and in the end it is points that really matter. The talk leading into the Super Bowl has been of Belichick’s ability to take away what the opposition does best, and certainly Belichick and defensive coordinator Matt Patricia are excellent coaches, but all coaches want to stop what the opposition does best. The question is usually how much of your resources are you prepared to commit to stopping that one thing as due to there only being eleven men on the field, by focussing on one thing you weaken the defence in other areas. One of the Patriots’ tactics that is often discussed has been the way they double the best receiver of the opposition with their second corner back and a safety, whilst placing their best corner man to man on the opposition second receiver to shut him down whilst the double team limits the number one receiver. However, even this is a simplification as what Belichick does so particularly well is place his players in a position to maximise their talent and so whilst Maclolm Butler is the most familiar name amongst the Patriots’ corners, thanks to his five foot eleven frame he tends not to be matched up against big physical receivers such as a Julio Jones.

This leading nicely into the Super Bowl matchup so let’s dive into that and I will start with the matchup I am most excited about, which is the Falcons’ offence versus the Patriots’ defence. The ability of the Patriots’ defence to force their opposition to play the game in a way they don’t want to will be tested by the flexibility of the Falcons’ offence approach. The Falcons are used to teams trying to take away Julio Jones, and with Matt Ryan’s ability to distribute the ball round his skill players and take advantage of both running backs’ ability to catch the ball coming out of the backfield they will feel confident in being able to move the ball. The Patriots run defence was ranked fourth in the league by DVOA and the injury to centre Alex Mack could hamper the interior of the Falcons’ offensive line, but if he gets time to throw the ball it is not hard to see Matt Ryan and his receivers ranked first by DVOA in passing attack take advantage of a Patriots defence that only ranked twenty-third against the pass. However, the Falcons will need to score points against a defence that may have given up yards, but their bend don’t break defence obviously limited their opponents effective, so as is so commonly the case red zone efficiency will be key. One last note on this matchup, this game pits the offence with the best yards after catch in the Falcons against the defence with the best yards allowed after the catch. Something may have to give.

The reason that the Falcons ability to score is so important is that for a lot of the time it has enabled their defence to play with a lead, and this has allowed the defence to rush the passer and do enough to win. However, unlike the Patriots’ disciplined front seven, the Falcons’ defence was twenty-ninth against the run, and what better way to counter act the Falcons high powered offence than for the Patriots to run the ball to control the clock and minimise the time the Falcons have the ball? There are some who are talking about how Belichick will put the ball in Brady’s hands to win the game, but I’m not so sure the ever pragmatic Belichick isn’t perfectly happy to muddy the game and win with defence like he did against the St Louis Rams and their legendary greatest show on turf offence. However, they have plenty of passing options to attack a young defence who might not have the experience to disguise their coverages and pass rushes, and if Brady goes to the line knowing what defence he is facing then he will simply excel. Although his approach is similar to the Seahawks, Dan Quinn and his staff have been more prepared to play man coverage with a single high safety mixed in with the trademark Seattle zone three coverage that also utilises a single high safety, but Brady will know what to look for to take advantage of this. The Patriots’ quarterback is also adept at stepping up in the pocket to avoid edge pass rushers such as Vic Beasley, and the return of line coach Dante Scarnecchia has seen a big improvement in the Patriots offensive line and much steadier play. In their playoff game against the Patriots, the Houston Texans were able to get pressure up the middle and rattle Brady, but whether the Falcons’ will be able to get an interior rush that can affect Brady will be a big question in this game.

Overall, it is hard to be definitive how this game will be played given it features two teams who have a lot of flexibility in their approach. There are a lot of narratives surrounding this game, the Falcons having the better players but the Patriots having the right team, Brady and Belichick’s excellence in the offseason, the supposed extra motivation for particular players which seems to be a bit of a nonsense given they are playing in a Super Bowl. Certainly more players on the Patriots have experience of playing in a Super Bowl, which might help, but this is not Dan Quinn’s first time coaching in a Super Bowl. I can see the Falcons running away with it, or the Patriots grinding out a convincing win, although I confess that with their experience I would favour the Patriots in a close game but not by much. The real x factor is the player we don’t know who will turn the game, Malcolm Butler made his name by his last second gaoling interception against the Seahawks, and you wouldn’t put it past the Patriots to have someone do this again with an unknown player, or for one of the first or second year players on the Falcons’ defence to really announce their arrival.

I for one am just looking forward to watching the game.

Do I have to watch the Pro Bowl?

29 Sunday Jan 2017

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With only one real game left, and the offseason already under way for most teams, it is a slightly strange time of year. I have deliberately stayed away from looking at the Super Bowl matchup as there is another week to go and so there’s plenty of time to start looking at the two teams facing off for the grand prize of the season.

It feels weird to me, that with the NFL’s focus on being a year round sport they don’t hold the start of the offseason program until after the end of the playoffs. The teams are rushing to fill their coaching staffs having already hired their new head coaches, whilst the best coordinators are likely having to either juggle their prep for the most important games of the season with interviewing when they can, or don’t get a look in. It is generally expected that the San Francisco 49ers are going to hire Kyle Shanahan as their new head coach, and if they do so  he will be the only Super Bowl bound coordinator to get a job, which means the other teams are not picking from the best staffs, which in of itself is odd. It also puts him at a disadvantage when filling his own coaching staff as teams have already been scrambling to make hires, and whilst I’m sure Shanahan would deny it, the situation has to be some kind of distraction whilst preparing for games although certainly the Falcons offence doesn’t look to have missed a beat.

It is only in recent years that I do occasionally watch the Pro Bowl because I’m in the habit of catching up with the games and I am not quite ready to head into the offseason yet. The blog will be quieter over the coming months, but much like football is a year round prospect, so is my writing. I’ll be focussing on publishing a sequel to the book that was published last year and as ever I’ll be self-scouting the blog and looking to see what I can do better next year. I follow the news like everyone else in the offseason, but as I have never found a way into the college game I’m not in a position to write from strength about the draft process and whilst I’ll pick up the preseason as ever, I’ll be taking the time to learn other things. That said, I’ll try to post things around key moments like free agency and the draft, I follow all year even if I don’t always write about them.

As for the NFL, most coaches are already preparing for the draft and the offseason, and it will soon be the season of hope for all fans. However, there is the minor matter of the Super Bowl to be played next week, and whilst we are always looking for the next thing, let’s take our time and savour what remains of the current season. We are offered an intriguing matchup of offence against defence, and what is sometimes called the evil empire up against a Falcons team whose owner is sending all of the team’s employees to Houston for the Super Bowl. This is not unheard of as both the Panthers and the Broncos did this last season, but it is a nice gesture and a not inexpensive one.

Still with all the hype and stories to come, I am looking forward to the game itself, and in particular looking at the coaching tape of the Falcons offence against the Patriots defence. Let’s just hope we get as good a game as we are all hoping for. Roll on Super Bowl LI!

Do I have to watch the Pro Bowl?

Fallen at the Final Hurdle

29 Sunday Jan 2017

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It’s that strange time of year when the excitement builds towards the Super Bowl and finding out who will be crowned champions, yet we are running out of games. Even sticking to my routine of watching coaching tape of the Super Bowl, there is still only one game left. For many their thoughts are turning to the offseason and the hope of training camp or the joy/worry of draft season. However, I will say goodbye to the two teams who fell just short of the Super Bowl in a pair of noncompetitive conference championship games.

The Green Bay Packers came into the conference championship on a scorching run of form, but sadly fell well short of the Atlanta Falcons, particularly when things fell apart for them in the first half. The Falcons game started the game strongly on offence, able to move the ball and scored on eight of their first nine drafts. However, things could have been different for the Packers if the usually reliable Mason Crosby hadn’t missed a field goal and Aaron Ripkowski hadn’t fumbled the ball as he rumbled towards the Falcons’ twenty yard down. Instead of tying the game, they Packers fell seventeen points behind and they simply were not able to stop falcons or get enough points to get themselves back in the game.

It was a tough way for the Packers to finish their season, which is how it goes for all but one team in the NFL, but this was your archetypal one game too far for them. Too many injuries and too much being asked of Aaron Rodgers. They will go into an offseason of discontent. I’m sure the questions around their defensive coordinator Dom Capers and GM Ted Thompson will resurface, and Rodgers himself has talked about the team needing more urgency next year. There are reasonable questions about whether the Packers are getting the most out of their super star quarterback with the team they are surrounding him with. It would not take a great defence to help get him to the Super Bowl, and improvements to the offensive scheme and the run game would also help. However, if it were not for the Patriots, the idea that a team could compete every year would not be so strong. The problem for the Packers whilst they focus on being a draft and develop team is that they will rarely get a high draft pick with their level of success. There are plenty of players to be found in the draft, but most teams need a high first round pick to acquire that top level of talent. I certainly would not advocate for a strong push in free agency either, but given the success of free agents like Julius Peppers and Jared Cook it would seem that Thompson could afford to add more players via this route if he is capable of finding them.

In the end you would expect the Packers to competitive next year, but there is plenty of work to be done in the offseason.

The Pittsburgh Steelers did what most teams do when the travel to Foxborough and lost to the New England Patriots. They never really got on terms with the Patriots with their offence hampered by the first quarter loss of Le’Veon Bell to a groin injury, whilst the defence played a zone scheme that Tom Brady picked apart as he threw for three hundred and eighty-four yards. There have been a lot of question about the game plan in the following days with players claiming they weren’t ready for the Patriots to play up-tempo or that the Pats hadn’t run a flea flicker this year when they did against Baltimore in week fourteen.

There are a lot of positives about the way the Steelers run their operation and they clearly have a talent for spotting receivers, but they have had more than their share of questionable character guys cause them problems recently. This season Martavis Bryant missed the year due to falling foul of the league’s drug policy, Le’Veon Bell missed three games at the start of the season due to missing drug tests, meanwhile the team had to answer question all week about Antonio Brown live streaming Mike Tomlin’s post game locker room speech. They go into the offseason with Ben Roethlisberger questioning if he will play next season, although most suspect the thirty-four year old quarterback will come back The Steelers will need to find Roethlisberger some more receivers to complement Brown, as there were too many dropped passes although if Bryant can get back on the field and stay there that would help. They also can’t allow them to be so reliant on Le’Veon Bell, as talented as he is if you look at the games missed through injury or suspension you cannot afford for him to account for such a large part of your offence. On defence you have to think that whilst James Harrison is coming back for another year, the Steelers will need a long term replacement for him to play on the other side to Bud Dupree.

It doesn’t feel like there is a huge overhaul needed, and the Steelers are one of the most stable franchises in the league, but I do wonder if at some point some of the questions around the locker room, and or coaching might lead to some kind of adjustment. It certainly won’t be anything spectacular, but it is worth keeping an eye on.

And Then There Were None

14 Sunday Feb 2016

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And so the season is done, and the Denver Broncos are the champions for the year. I know Dan and I really enjoyed the Super Bowl this, but this kind of defensive battle is not to everyone’s taste.

The aftermath has been dominated by discussions surrounding Cam Newton’s post game press conference and follow up comments, but I am reluctant to get too involved in this. He did not have a good game, Dan and I were commenting that he didn’t look right from the start of the game. The Super Bowl is a huge one-off game, and the Broncos played outstanding defence, which I will look at in a bit. The big talk is of Newton’s final fumble where he didn’t dive for the ball. As ever, the cover up is worse than the original incident. It has to be said that I didn’t particularly notice him not going for it at the time, and in the replay I just saw a player hesitate, which is understandable given that an oval ball bounces in random ways and all I saw a wrong footed player. However, a lot has been made about him stating he was worried about his leg getting hurt as it was in an awkward position.

In this age of over the top praise and blame, Cam Newton is almost the perfect quarterback for the media. He was lauded before the game as a new breed despite us having seen running quarterbacks before, although not ones so large with the ability to run the ball with power so regularly. However, he also has his flaws and some of them came to the fore in this game. He is not a rhythm thrower, in fact his footwork bothers me quite a lot. The fact that is not pretty isn’t exactly the issue, but if you’re feet are not good then you can struggle with accuracy and this can certainly affect Newton. He also seems to have one speed of throw, fast. His arm strength can and does make up for his technique, and you will see him make throws from awkward positions that very few quarterbacks can make. However, this does mean that if you need short sharp throws to counter a defence then you are going to struggle. He holds onto the ball longer than most quarterbacks in the league, and when facing a defence like the Broncos that can cause all sorts of trouble, but let’s look at what the Broncos did so well to win the game.

The Broncos defence has been good to great all year, and a large part of that is there is no weakness at any level of this defence. Yes the pass rush is formidable, but part of that is that their secondary covers very well so it is hard to get the ball out quickly. This was particularly the case for the Panthers’ receivers who dropped a couple, and were open a couple of times and didn’t get balls thrown their way, but the plain fact is that they did not get open often enough in this game. However, a lot of the problems that the Panthers had were caused by their inability to get much of anything going on first down. The Broncos spent a lot of the game in their base 3-4 defence, even if the Panthers were running three receiver sets. Clearly Wade Philips did not want them to be able to get their running game going and they were largely successful at this, forcing the Panthers out of their preferred game plan, and too many times this meant long passing plays that allowed the Broncos to rush the passer. The other structural nuance was how the Broncos rushed the passer. The Panthers run a lot of passing plays where they send fewer receivers on routes, keeping extra blockers in. However, this created two problems for them as the Broncos’ secondary could cover the fewer receivers, and the players that were assigned to the running back or tight end who was blocking would cover the player until they realised they were blocking and then rush the passer on a delayed blitz. This could clearly be seen on the last play before the half when running back Fozzy Whittaker couldn’t help left tackle Michael Oher as Broncos Linebacker Danny Trevathan spotted that Whittaker was blocking and so followed Malik Jackson on the inside pass rush, which allowed DeMarcus Ware to go round Oher virtually untouched to get the sack.

This really was a team defensive performance, but the focus has been particularly on the MVP Von Miller who had 2.5 sacks for the game and forced two fumbles, including the one that led to the Broncos touchdown in the first half.

If the Broncos defence was great, the Panthers defence was really not very far behind. They limited the Broncos offence to fewer than two hundred total yards, generated two turnovers of their own from Peyton Manning, and if they had won the game had their own MVP candidate in Kony Ealy who finished the game with three sacks, a forced fumble, and an interception. After the first drive they bottled up the Broncos offence, stopping them from sustaining drives even when the Broncos broke the odd run for a decent gain. It was even more remarkable to see Thomas Davis flying round the defence with his broken arm, something that media has certainly been quick to comment on given Newton’s mention of worry about a potential injury. The problem however was that between offensive turnovers putting them in bad positions, and the longest punt return in Super Bowl history, they were given too many short fields to defend. Even then they held the opposition mainly to field goals, only giving up one touchdown, but there were too many mistakes by the team as a whole for their great play to overcome.

The punt return by Jordan Norwood deserves special mention as it so easily could have gone wrong. Norwood clearly doesn’t call for a fair catch, but was surrounded by Panthers and was even bumped by one. Yet somehow he escaped the coverage team and ran for a record breaking sixty-one yards. It was pretty impressive to see defensive end Mario Addison chase Norwood down to prevent any further gain or even a touchdown. The defence held the Broncos to a field goal, but this game was a slow death filled with these little losses that in the end did for the Panthers.

And so at the end of the game Peyton Manning got his second Super Bowl win, pretty much as a passenger, but this was still a feat of leadership. He came to recognise he didn’t have the tools any more, and contrary to earlier in the season where he was throwing interceptions far too frequently, in this playoff run he limited himself, handed the ball off, milked the clock, and used every bit of his experience to get the win. I really hope that this is the last we see of him in pads as impressive as this was, I can’t see him repeating it and there was very little fun in watching this great player performing in such a way other than hoping he can go out on top.

And so the season has come to an end. The offseason started weeks ago, but whilst I will be following all that is going on, I will be taking a break from the blog. I will be writing other things, and I’m sure it won’t be too long before I will be reading and learning more about football. This year I’ll be doing the odd offseason blog around things like the draft, or if particular things crop up during free agency, but for now it is time to take a rest. Roll on next season, just not for a little while.

Super Bowl 50

07 Sunday Feb 2016

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So here we are, one game left. The week has been full of build up and interviews. The Super Bowl has become one of the biggest sporting events of the year, now viewed around the world, although exact figures are hard to come by. The hype has been there, so has the analysis if you go looking for it.

There is always a tension in where to pitch the coverage of American Football, with twenty-two people carrying out two sets of complex coordinated actions on every single play, there is something going on everywhere. One of the reasons that the game is so fascinating also makes it hard to broadcast. It is pretty much impossible to cover every nuance, and so receivers appear wide open mid-play and the viewer needs a replay to see what happened. That is if the team obligingly is not running a hurry-up offence. The international feed has often featured a simplified commentary aimed at the new people who are drawn into the spectacle of the NFL for this one game that us obsessives have been following for months. You can’t blame the broadcasters, the NFL is not an intuitive game due to its tactical nature and stop start game flow. Plus not every fan is interested in what route concepts are used to attack single high man coverage as opposed to a two deep zone.

I am looking forward to watching the game live, and going through the coaching tape afterwards and then taking a break. I love writing about American Football, but what I like doing is looking at the games and writing about the approach and coaching. I will dip in an out a bit more this offseason, but I am ready for a break. The grind of covering the sport year round must be tough given the competition to deliver news ahead of each other, but we don’t actually know what the affects of the offseason will be until well into September. In fact it can take years for a coach to turn around a franchise, a draft can’t be evaluated properly until years afterwards. I love talking football as much as the next fan, and we all have instant opinions, but the truth is that things take time to develop, and what I enjoy is watching that happen over the long term.

However, today is very much about the here and now so let’s grab this last game and squeeze as much out of it as possible as I take a look at the match up for tonight.

The obvious place to start is the one that has garnered the most coverage in the build up to the game, which is the Broncos defence against the Panthers offence. This is because it is the best contest in the game, with everyone being wary of how effective the Broncos offence will be, but it is also a fascinating tactical encounter. The Broncos defence is strong at all three levels, but will be facing a unique offence. The Panthers run the ball more, and with greater complexity than any other team this season. They have built their offence around the dual threat of Cam Newton, but also use extra blocking players in conjunction with forcing the opposition to account for the quarterback. One of the reasons this causes problems for a defence is historically the quarterback was too valuable to expose to multiple hits and so was unlikely to move the ball himself unless scrambling. The read-option changed this in recent years, but there were still limits to how many hits you would want them to take. Cam Newton is built like a defensive end, and the Panthers are not afraid to repeatedly use him in power running situations. This will cause the Broncos defence issues as they have to account for him in their run defence, whilst being aware that the Panthers also use these run looks to create play-action passes to throw the ball deep. If your safety is stepping up to account for a running quarterback, and that same quarterback then pulls up and throws the ball you have big problems.

The good news for the Broncos is that they have a pair of outside pass rushers who are not only good at straight up getting round the edge of the offence, but run stunts by moving inside as their the tackle moves out. This can help to counter the read-option as it makes the read that the quarterback has to make more complex and can slow it down.  There are other ways you can play a running quarterback is by getting your edge defenders to play a specific player, i.e. they have responsibility for the outside man, forcing the play in towards the rest of the defence, or focussing inside whilst a linebacker scrapes over the top to cover the outside player. I expect to see all three from the Broncos talented front seven, and they also have two hard hitting safeties that will be able to help in run support. Their secondary should also be able to matchup against the Panthers skill players, and it will fascinating to see how they mix up man and zone coverage as they try to prevent the deep strikes that have served the Panthers so well all season.

The story of the Broncos offence all year has been Peyton Manning, but there have been other problems affecting them all year. The offseason saw some strange decisions in that the Broncos brought in a new coach whose zone run scheme was much different to what they had been running previously, meaning the offensive line had to learn a new scheme as well as protect an ageing quarterback. This offence has not been able to move the ball consistently on the ground or through the air, but they can get big runs here and there. More importantly perhaps, since coming back from his injury Peyton Manning seems to have embraced his new role and has not thrown an interception in the playoffs, which is in stark contrast to his play during the regular season. Also, when they are down in the red zone, his lack of arm strength is less of an issue and he still has the smarts to get touchdowns as demonstrated by the throws to tight end Owen Daniels last week.

However, they are facing a defence that has been playing well all year. They may not be as consistently good at all three levels as the Broncos defence, but the Panthers coaching staff have done a great job of making the best of the talent they have around theie super start players. In Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis they have one of the best pairings of linebackers in the league, although it will be interesting to see how Davis will play two weeks from breaking his forearm given that I have no idea how he is even contemplating it. The defence does not blitz much, but defensive tackles Kawann Short and Star Lotulelei are going to cause the Broncos offensive line problems all day, which a rotation of ends will apply pressure from the outside. The question will be if the Broncos secondary, which apart from stand out corner Josh Norman, is a little patchwork but plays their zone scheme very well.

The only team to beat the Panthers this year were the Atlanta Falcons, and they did this by running the ball consistently to bring up Davis and Kuechly, before attacking the defence deep. The problem for the Broncos is that Manning doesn’t have the arm for long balls any more, but it seems unlikely that they would be able to run a Patriots style short passing game either. They will have to commit to running the ball, which they have done under Gary Kubiak, and hope to generate play-action passing and enough long running plays to get into a position to score. I am looking forward to seeing how they try to do this, but I am not sure if they have the tools to be successful.

Overall I see this game as either being a close tight affair, with the Broncos hanging around and making it competitive as they have done all year, or the Panthers could really run away with it. However, with as good a defence as the Broncos have and two weeks for defensive coordinator Wade Phillips to prepare, I think it is more likely to be a close game. A lot will depend on what wrinkles the coaches prepare for this game and who executes their game plan more cleanly, but I hope it will be a good contest. I am not particularly invested in who wins as both results would have good stories, but it would be nice if Manning could have at least one last good performance to go out on.

Roll on Super Bow 50, let’s hope it lives up to the hype.

A Strange Week

31 Sunday Jan 2016

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It is a slightly strange time of year. We are down to the final two teams, and we are in the middle of a two week gap to the Super Bowl, which will fail to be filled by the Pro Bowl. It is easy to understand what the NFL is trying to do, they want the Super Bowl to provide the grand finish to the season, but with the stream of replacements and those unable to play because they are preparing for the big game the Pro Bowl feels somewhat odd. In fairness, it is a underwhelming spectacle anyway, it is football but not as we are used to. The NFL’s Pro Bowl suffers more than any other American sport’s all star game from the problem that if you take away the physicality and intensity from blocking and tackling then it just looks different. I find the best things to come out of Pro Bowl week are the videos of practice where you get to see the interaction between the leagues best available players.

Meanwhile, the rest of the league is preparing for the draft. I talked a little bit about the Senior Bowl on the podcast this week, and how in some ways it could be seen as more important that the scouting combine. The measuing of the players is the same, except they then spend a week getting NFL coaching, being interviewed, and giving teams a chance to take a look first hand to confirm what they had seen during the season, but perhaps more importantly how a player might cope with NFL coaching and what they will be expected to do at the next level. This is the place where teams can see if a college quarterback stands any chance of making the transition to receiver, or what position an offensive linemen might play at the NFL level. I find it hard to get excited about the underwear Olympics that is the scouting combine, the only thing that really excites me is the fact that I want one day to be able to carry out a 225Ibs bench press that is the standard strength test. I think I am about a year away from being able to complete that lift, but I don’t ever expect to be able to put up the reps that the strongest players can manage, they are NFL prospects for a reason. I enjoy listening to draft coverage, but as some one who doesn’t follow the college game closely; for me the benefit of the coverage is mainly listening to how scouts evaluate player. Particularly as I have yet to get excited about a player in pre-draft coverage and have him picked by my team.

The whole sequence of the post season is somewhat strange, given that coach searches start immediately after the end of week seventeen despite probably the best candidates to be new head coaches being tied up with their teams in deep playoff runs. Part of what might explain the three coordinators the Bengals have lost over the three seasons is their poor performance in the playoffs combined with the play that got them there in the first place. Availability can be as important as ability.

What I don’t understand is the competing interests that are allowed at this time of year, there is this swirl of activity going on, and I can’t help but wonder if the league would not be served better by trying to smooth out some of the timetable. The draft was delayed recently so why not hold the coaching search until after the season to make available all co-ordinators to teams.

It is also a funny time of the year to be writing a blog when you don’t have a huge investment in the Pro Bowl or draft. The things I like to write about are definitely wuieter at the moment, and whilst I am hugely excited about the Super Bowl, there is only so much analysis you can do with another week to go. I will be taking a look at both teams next week, and I am hoping that the Denver defence can make it a tight game, but either team winning would provide satisfying story lines to end the season.

In my other writer interests I have a book to edit, and whilst I am really looking forward to watching the big game, and writing my final blog of the season when I go through the coaching tape the week after the Super Bowl, I am also at that stage where I’m ready for the season to be over. I’ll take a couple of weeks off before I start evaluating what did and didn’t work on the blog throughout the season, and I will no doubt will be reading more football books over the break. However, I believe that having a balance of interests is important in life, and the endless treadmill of the NFL life for coaches can only appeal to a specific type of person. There has been barely a pause for coaches since training camp back in the summer, and preparation for next season starts virtually straight away. In some ways this might come as a relief, you can start the process of getting over the disappointments of the season with the preparation for the next one, but one of the reasons that I so respect Bruce Arians is his belief that there is only so much you can and should do. That you should be with your family and not buried in the office all the time, and if it is good enough for one of the league’s best coaches then maybe there is a lesson in there for all of us.

I’ll be looking at the coaching tape of the Broncos defence from last week as we prepare for the big game, I really can’t wait!

How the Super Bowl was Won

10 Tuesday Feb 2015

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The NFL media are already moving on to the offseason, but I wanted to go through the coaching tape of the Super Bowl and have some things to say before I take a little break and start preparing for the next year.

It might seem an odd place to start, given that one of the things I do as a writer is create narratives around games, but the first thing I want to look at is the narrative surrounding Tom Brady and complain. To me it seems reductive and absurd to place as much emphasis on how many Super Bowls a quarterback wins when weighing his career as has been done since Brady won his fourth. There is no doubt that Brady has had an amazing career, and deserves to be in the conversation with the very best who have played the game, but his legacy should not rest quite so heavily on whether an undrafted rookie corner back makes a great interception at the end of the game or not. The game of American football is one of teams and coaches, and whilst playing quarterback is one of the most complex tasks we ask of an athlete, and there is perhaps no more important single player on the field of play, the quarterback simply cannot win games on their own even if they can possibly lose them. Just look at what happened to Aaron Rodgers this year, or Dan Marino across his career for evidence of how outstanding quarterback play doesn’t guarantee you a Super Bowl ring, Peyton Manning would have a few more if it did.

The other frustration coming out of the Super Bowl was the narrative surrounding the Seahawks play call that led to Russell Wilson throwing an interception from the Patriots’ one yard line with twenty six seconds left on the clock. Now I don’t like the call, and running the ball would seem to be the answer in this situation when you have one of the great power backs in the game, but it was Pete Carroll’s aggressive nature that got them into the position to win this game, as how many coaches would have had the conversation he did with Russell Wilson with six seconds left in the first half and agree to throw the ball to try to get the touchdown and risk not getting any points, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when he makes another aggressive call. You can’t divorce the result from the call when evaluating a play, but given the sensationalist nature of society which seems to mean that everything is either the best or worst thing to have happened, ever… then call maybe wasn’t as bad as some would have you believe. Still, you run the ball there don’t you? I would.

So what did I learn from watching the game back on film? Well everybody is saying that this was an instant classic, and I agree. We had two well coached teams that played to very high standard, and who gave us an exciting close game that went back and forth. Either team could have won, and with a few different bounces of the ball could have done so.

The first big story of the game for me was health, and specifically that of the Seattle defence. As people have be tweeting and writing, it wasn’t so much the Legion of Boom as the Legion of Wound. We already knew that Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas were injured, and Kam Chancellor came into the game with a knee injury, but all three injuries were more serious than they were letting on and are facing various surgeries this offseason. In the actual game they all played very well, with perhaps a few occasions where Rob Gronkowski got away from Chancellor enough to make plays being the most obvious effect. However, it was the cumulative effect of the injuries on defence that got them in the end.

In the first quarter the Seahawks couldn’t get anything going on offence, and so their defence spent a lot of time on the field, holding true to Caroll’s bend don’t’ break philosophy and coming up with a huge end zone pick when Brady let fly with a pass vaguely intended for Julian Edleman. The pass was not a good one, but this play almost turned the game in the Patriots favour in a strange way. Jeremy Lane took a couple of steps back to drop into a zone coverage, and intercepted the ball, but on the ensuing run back he landed awkwardly, breaking both bones in his forearm and putting him out of the game.

As a result of this, Tharold Simon came into the game as the nickel corner, although it was Byron Maxwell who slid in to cover the slot receiver with Simon on the outside. This in of itself might not have been a problem, as he did well when matched up against Brandon LaFell going deep, but he did not have the lateral quickness to keep with the shifty Edleman. This being the well coached game that it was, Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels were not going to miss this opportunity, and you could frequently see Edleman coming across the field with Smith trailing behind him. This use of slot receiver style quick underneath routes both attacked the weak areas of the Seahawks scheme and played to the strength of Brady.

The other injury on the Seahawks defence that helped the Patriots offensive performance was the loss of Cliff Avril in the third quarter, slowing a pass rush that was already struggling to reach Brady. The Patriots o-line did enough to keep the passing game working, but it was the quick drops and passes by Brady that won this game. The Patriots couldn’t run the ball except occasionally when it was setup by the pass, but the accumulation of these injuries to the Seahawks defence helped enable it.

So if the defence of the Seahawks couldn’t stifle the Patriots enough to win, what happened on the other side of the ball? This year’s Patriots defence was the best they’ve had for years and their secondary was more than enough to cope with the Seahawks’ starters. In fact for most of the game, the Seahawks moved the ball in bursts. Their running game was pretty effective, although I was surprised that they didn’t run Rusell Wilson more, but they struggled to maintain drives. However, for a while it did look like the MVP was going to be a receiver who had never caught a pass in the NFL before this game.

The six foot five Chris Matthews announced himself in the biggest game of his career with a forty-four yard catch over the five foot ten Kyle Arrington, and this match up was such a problem that Arrington ended up coming out of the game for Malcolm Butler, and Brandon Browner begged for the assignment of covering the tall Seattle receiver. Matthews caught the touchdown that tied up the scores at half time, and finished the game with over one hundred yards receiving and that touchdown, but he did struggle once the Patriots adjusted. That said, the Seahawks really should have won this game, even if the Patriots did have the upper hand for arguably three quarters.

It will be interesting to see how Pete Carroll picks up the pieces of the aftermath of this game, and build a team next season having lost coaches and with everyone second guessing that play call.

The Patriots will probably roll on, but they have their own offseason moves to make, and at some point Tom Brady might stop being able to do this.

I am going to ease off a bit as we head into the offseason as I want to do a self scout of what I did with the blog this year and come up with ways to improve for next season.

I will leave you with three plays that jumped out on me as I watched the tape. I’ll begin with the first Juliain Edleman catch against Simons, where he started as the outside receiver, ran a drag route across the field, caught the ball and went for twenty-three yards. Second was a screen to Shane Vereen that caught my eye as I was generally unimpressed by the Patriots o-line in the run game, but centre Bryan Stork did a really good job of getting out to the linebacker on this play so Vereen could go down the sideline.

The final play that stands out, in a year of impossible catches, was Jermaine Kearse catching that deep ball, despite Butler making a good play on the ball and it bouncing off three parts of Kearse’s body before he was able to reel it in. It may not have been better than the Odell Beckham catch, but it’s a pretty good way to leave the 2014 season.

Super Bowl Preview

01 Sunday Feb 2015

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It has been a very strange build up to the Super Bowl, with the news dominated by the seemingly endless leaks regarding deflated footballs, except we don’t actually know yet if the balls were deliberately tampered with, just that they were under the regulated pressure. Right now I can’t bring myself to care too much about it as I want to be looking at the upcoming game which should be a fascinating contest. What I will say is that yet again the NFL is demonstrating that even though they are a billion dollar business, that regulation and investigation does not seem to be their forte. I cannot understand why this investigation is being allowed to go on for so long and overshadow the showcase game of the football season.

The Super Bowl will be fascinating contest between contrasting teams and coaches, who will approach the games in different ways, but there are also a number of similarities.

The Patriots are famously adaptable, and it would be foolish for anyone to attempt to pre-empt what Bill Belichick has planned for this game. The Patriots dynasty has been built on Belichick’s attention to detail and the way he prepares his team to do whatever it is that he believes will win the game that week. It was interesting to her Ross Tucker on his podcast talk about one of the ways that this attention to detail manifests itself, in that rather than talking about the need to say run the ball against a particular team, Belichick would say there were three key things to win a game such as stopping a particular receiver running crossing routes on third down. Not only would he identify these specific key battles, but the players would be drilled so that when this situation occurred in the game, the players knew precisely what they had to do.

If Belichick’s teams are defined by their adaptability and tactical ingenuity, then Pete Carroll deliberately keeps his system straight forward as he believes in keeping his players unencumbered by the system so they can play faster. That’s not to say that he isn’t running a modern playbook, but part of the philosophy that he believes is key to success is to limit the number of reads a player has to make so they can be free to play.

However, even though they have their philosophical differences, there are similarities between Belichick and Carroll as both are defensive minded coaches, who’ve worked through a similar era, and have failed as head coaches before they attained success. What’s more, discussing Pete Carroll made Bill Belichick unusually verbose during this year’s media day, as he said that looking at Carroll from afar had made him a better coach, a rare complement from the famously tight lipped Belichick.

This should be a tight game as we have two very closely matched teams, who both had slightly stuttering starts, but as their personnel coalesced and got healthy managed incredibly strong runs. They have differing personalities that reflect their coaches, with the Patriot players staying tight lipped on message, where as the Seahawks are given the freedom to be themselves and so are a much loser group as a result. Neither are necessarily fan favourites with the repeated wining and various pushing of the rules by the Patriots leading them to hated in a lot of quarters, whilst the brashness of some of the Seahawks can rub people the wrong way and there have been a number of PED suspensions for this team. However, both are undeniably well coached, and whilst the game may not be the offensive spectacle that some would desire, there should be some fascinating football to watch.

Perhaps the unit to discuss in this game is the Seahawks defence, who if you stop to listen to its players is the best of all time. It is so hard to compare units across the ages, and so I’m not sure I would go that far, but this unit is very, very good. They ended the season on top of the DVOA stats and led the league in both points and yards allowed through the regular season. The defining part of this unit is their secondary, the legion of boom, three of whom are as good as any player in their league if not the best. They are most know for their three deep zone coverage, with Earl Thomas roaming the field as the deep safety, both corners locking down their respective sides of the field and Kam Chancellor stalking the centre of the field looking for the big hit. The front seven do not blitz that often, but by default align as a 4-3 under defence, meaning that the lineman slide to the side so that the strong side linebacker can line up over the tight end. From this alignment they will be aggressive, with the majority of the front seven have one gap assignments, meaning they can push up the field to make the play, but they won’t be trying to trick the Patriots with complex pressure packages. They will trust their system to cope with what the Patriots will throw at them.

So what will the Patriots throw at them? If the Seahawks are defined by their defence, then the Patriots are characterised by their offence, and their quarterback who is playing to win his fourth Super Bow at his sixth attempt. The question is how will they attempt to attack this defence, and a couple of way have been suggested. One thing that they won’t do is challenge the Seahawks on the outside as they don’t have the explosive kind of receivers to do this. In fact, as good as both team’s secondarys are, they’re almost wasted on the receiving corps that they are facing in this game. One way to challenge a zone system is to attack the seams in between the zones, and with a tight end like Rob Gronkowski this would look like a definite possibility. The other thing I’ve repeatedly heard suggested is given that both Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas are carrying injuries, that the Patriots could use the short passing game to move the ball and test their ability to make tackles, this seems to be popular as last time these teams met the Patriots ran over fifty passing plays. That said, as much as Tom Brady loves running long drives of ten to fifteen plays, chipping away at the defence, this is not the team that you want to be trying this against as they are just too good. However, if there is one area that you can attack the Seahawks, it might be in the run game as since losing defensive tackle Brandon Mebane to injury, they don’t have that top level run stuffer in the middle of the defensive line. The truth is though, that perhaps more than any other team, we won’t know what the plan is until we see it, and even then it is very likely to change throughout the game. That is the flexibility that Belichick and Brady to the game.

The Seahawks however, are a lot more of a defined prospect on offence. Although Pete Carroll is not afraid to be aggressive and is fond of the odd trick play, the bread and butter of this team is the run game. This is partly out of necessity as the Seahawks’ receivers are not a dynamic unit, but mainly because the duel threat of Marshawn Lynch and Russell Wilson is so very hard to defend. In Lynch the Seahawks have an amazingly physical runner, whose yards after contact numbers are almost absurd compared to the rest of the league. The duel threat comes from the read-option that they run, and Wilson’s ability to make the right decision and challenge the edges of the run defence. Like any system, there are benefits and drawbacks to the read-option, and one that I particularly dislike is the punishment it leaves your quarterback open to if they keep the ball and take the hit. However, if you watch Wilson when he runs the ball, he very rarely takes a hit as he is brilliant at getting the yards available and getting down or out of bounds before the hit comes. In fact in general Russell Wilson’s decision making is excellent, and the Seahawks have done a brilliant job of making the most out of his skill set whilst working round his limitations, as given how tall Wilson is you could not make him a pocket passer.

The Patriots defence has been much improved this year despite losing Jerod Mayo for the year in week six and not getting a great year out of Vince Wilfork. They retooled their secondary in the off season, and have caused many teams a problem by using the newly acquired Brandon Browner and a safety to bracket the top receiver, and leaving their other free agent signing Darelle Revis to lock up the second receiver. This is the exact opposite approach to the Seahawk corners playing their sides, and one of the fascinating parts of this game will be watching how the Patriots’ secondary play. The cover two defence, was in part created to defend the read-option attack, but it is not something that the Patriots use, or many teams in the NFL these days so it will be interesting to see what Belichick and his staff come up with. One of the key players in run defence could be Jamie Collins, who runs as well as any linebacker in the league and could be used to spy Russell Wilson, and Collins actually has the athletic ability to chase him down Wilson if he does keep the ball. The problem is that the Patriots have been vulnerable to the run at times this season and this is not the team that you would want to face with that weakness, as Lynch could just keep ploughing the ball up the gut to see if the Patriots can stop it for the whole game.

I am really looking forward to this game as it should be a very competitive, and importantly well coached, that is too close to call. Whoever wins this game looks to secure a legacy with the Seahawks trying to win back to back Super Bowls, and the Patriots looking to get Belichick and Brady their fourth. Neither feat has been achieved for many years. I look forward to watching it live as a fan, and going through the coaching tape next week to write the final blog of the 2014 season.