New Slate/Deadspin: Coaching decisions and the Evolution of the Patriots O

Wednesday, 16 November 2011 , by : Chris

My second contribution for the Slate/Deadspin roundtable is now up:

Elite NFL teams tend to build around the virtues of their most problematic opponents, and since Rex Ryan took over the Jets and designed his defense around taking target practice at Tom Brady, Belichick has had his eye on the Jets. Going into the 2009 season, the Patriots—with Randy Moss on the outside, Welker on the inside, and the near-undefeated season fresh in their mind—had essentially become a pass-first spread-offense team in the style of some of the more prominent college teams. Brady made checks at the line and lined up primarily in shotgun, and the offense relied on quick passes and hot reads to defeat blitzes, with Moss the ever-present threat to burn the defense deep. Since they typically lined up with three receivers and only one running back to keep Wes Welker in the slot, Ryan was able to specifically attack Brady’s pass protection and take away the run along the way. He truly forced Belichick’s hand in terms of play-calling: New England’s spread-to-pass became predictable instead of fearsome, and it was up to Brady on almost every play to throw the ball before some unblocked rusher took him down again. So Belichick went out and drafted both Gronkowski and Hernandez.

Hernandez is more of a pure receiver, and his chief advantage is as a substitution/personnel problem: If he’s in the game, you don’t know if he’ll line up as a tight end or if he’ll split wide so that Welker can play the slot, forcing you to decide whether to put your cornerback on Welker or Hernandez, potentially creating advantages in both the run and passing game. But Gronkowski is a true triple-threat from the tight-end spot: He can block, he can go out for passes, and he can even block and then go out for delayed passes. Multiple defenders have to keep their eyes on him. And against such a threat, Ryan can’t sell out with the multifarious blitzes overloaded to one side or the other, simply in an all-out effort to get Tom Brady. The presence of the tight ends—where will they line up, what will they do—dictates terms back to Rex Ryan, who would much rather cut loose and go on carrying his father’s torch as the destroyer of pretty-boy quarterbacks.

Read the whole thing here or here.

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  • Mr.Murder

    The 46 playbook’s biggest problem was defending the third receiver to either side. Tight ends give you more ability to change the formation leverage and numbers on the move.

    Until they made the tight ends such an item teams finally found ways to bracket Welker and Faulk, those were who made the thing move.

    Guess now you would have to zone blitz and find a way of bracketing someone with one of those blitzer replacing coverage guys underneath, hard to find interior D linemen able to move laterally like that to be a coverage rotation.

  • Stan

    Used to talk with Homer Smith about this in the context of beating the zone blitz.  One of the things that made the Bears so tough was that both OLBs were great athletes who were great at both coverage and pass rush.  Homer noted that the same kind of dual threat athlete on offense presented matchup issues for the defense.  If a TE can block a def lineman, the defense still has to be prepared to cover him — he uses up 2 defenders.

  • Mr.Murder

    The 46 bracketed that tight end so he never got a clean release. It really hurt him trying to cross the formation from a start point with a hand on the ground. Plus he had someone playing him tight man coverage out of the two possible defender, and if they run under an outside route that is quick you don’t throw his way for fear of interception. It formationed the tight end as a hot receiver out of the way.

    That is why H backs could give them issues and they tried  other formationing adjustments(Jayhawk- safety lined up on the line inside of a wide tech defensive end) to try and get better matchups on receiving H backs. Sincehe can get off the line easier playing off the line, put a quicker coverage man on him. Line him up in a way to can read the edge easier to rally help or stunt on run calls and still get his coverage value on the matchup.

  • Mr.Murder

    The Will(Marshall) was lined up outside of  the Tight End on strong side as part of the bracket, and when they wanted to go Jayhawk there the SAM linebacker(Wilson) was more  a rush/force kind of player and went to outside/end man. That meant Marshall could drop back into coverage and if the blocker over his gap(strong tackle) stayed with him in a pass he blocked air while the blitzer come off the edge.

    If you stayed on Marshall he effectively shortened the edge, depending on where his pass drop went. If you didn’t block him they knew it was not a run play so it accelerated the force player’s read. Their Jayhawk adjustment relied on the skill of a great coverage backer, and he could switch that same duty with Singletary because he was also lined up to that side so the communication was easier to understand, and matched classic gap exchange football(shout out to Bud Carson).

    Their true Will(46) backer was actually a strong safety who was covered by the 46 front’s down linemen who could overload the weak side like a traditional ‘under’ front. If he did blitz each of the linemen were covered(Big on Big) so the ability to put blocking help on him was pretty limited. And if you simply tried to trap their run front there were two three techs and a nose tackle, that was hard to do when you needed to run inside of a defender who was let upfield to be run out of the way.

    Guess you’d down block the three tech and hope the backer could not fill. Still would have to pull a blocker and still would need to try and widen the play side backer or end on a switch or cover task(hit or peel, buzz) and end up needing someone like a Tim Tebow to be the run/pass threat on the edge in order to catch their guys in conflict on coverage duty?

    That’s right, you heard it here first. Tim Tebow would have been the one thing that could attack a 46 defense on every down and make them wrong on assignments. That combined with some good tunnel screens. Probably would need a receiver like McKinnon to do that(he was on their team).