Tag Archives: Super Bowl

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.