Somehow, the “fans” who don’t understand the game and the writers and the podcasters all agree Super Bowl 53 was boring. It was one of the most exciting I’ve seen, and I’m old. It was a low scoring game, which meant a single play could have been huge, which is EXCITING – dare I say, RIVETING. For an example of a recent boring Super Bowl, see Super Bowl 48. It wasn’t competitive. Super Bowl 53 was incredibly competitive, and you could argue it featured not just two of the greatest defensive game plans in Super Bowl history, but two of the greatest executed defensive game plans in Super Bowl history.
The only boring part of Super Bowl 53 was Sean McVay showing an incredibly limited playbook. It seemed until this game he had a great strategy, showing defenses the “same things” and running seemingly infinite variations off those concepts. But apparently 90% of McVay’s playbook is compressed formations with Jet/Fly action and/or zone run action with boot action and when faced with a defense aligned to stop those things, McVay either doesn’t think he should run anything else, or worse, doesn’t know anything else to run. Which is especially bizarre because NFL Films captured McVay before the game complimenting Bill Belichick on his unique game plans. Yet somehow, McVay didn’t think Belichick would have a unique game plan in the Super Bowl?!
The most obvious thing to learn from the previous year’s Super Bowl 52 was the value of running something your opponent hasn’t seen. A unique motion (the RB motioning across the ball and to a side with Trips) led to the game-winning TD for the Eagles by getting the Patriots defense (by having to match the unpredictable motion) from a Cover 1 into a Cover 0 with one on one on the TE Ertz. I reckon McVay was too busy bragging about waking up at 4 am to ever get around to watching Super Bowl 52. To quote Cersei Lannister, “Shame! Shame!”.
It seems everyone is calling the Patriots defense a 6-1 while I’d call it a 4-3 with the OLBs (SS Chung as the SLB and LB Van Noy as the WLB, later LB Hightower as the SLB and LB Van Noy as the WLB after Chung’s injury) on the line. It was often a 6 man surface, with a DT, DE, LB/SS to each side of the ball. They had the 6 players on the line control the run game and boot action, with the off-the-line MLB (Hightower, later Roberts after Chung’s injury) able to play less aggressively, so he was in great position to play the underneath middle.
Note: I’ve heard at least one person call it a “Landry 4-3”) so I’m not the only old man raging that it was a 4-3 but that’s beside the point.
The Patriots ran Hoss Juke 3 consecutive plays, which wasn’t earth-shattering as they proved years ago they’ll run it on consecutive plays, but they did it from 22 personnel against a Base defense, which helped the Patriots have pass game mismatches. They disguised it a bit with motion but on all 3 snaps, at the snap, to the Field, the Patriots aligned FB Develin at #1, TE Allen at #2, WR Edelman at #3 and to the Boundary, the Patriots aligned HB Burkhead at #1, TE Gronk at #2. The first play was the Juke to Edelman, the second play was the Hitch to Burkhead, the third play was the Seam to Gronk. This led to the ONLY red zone snap of the entire game, a TD run by Michel on what seemed to be the Patriots beloved Slant 34/35 Ace with the FB leading Michel to the left side from a Jumbo formation.
Note: People keep calling it “Hoss Y Juke” but it’s “Hoss Y Juke” when a TE runs the Juke, and this was a WR, Edelman. The terminology changes, so I just call it Hoss Juke. There’s a YouTube video of Bill O’Brien explaining it. It seems other teams would know about it, but they often seem surprised, even though it’s the Patriots favorite Empty concept.
Both defenses did a great job of showing one coverage and often playing something different. The Patriots often used a Cover 4 shell, sometimes having one safety closer to the LOS showing a possible Cover 3, then playing anything from Cover 4, Cover 3, or man (usually rushing 5 and playing Cover 1). The Rams used a one high Cover 1 look and played some man (sometimes with a double on Gronk or Edelman) and sometimes played zone. The Patriots’ first pass was intercepted, as it looked like Cover 1 Robber (man) but was actually Cover 3 Buzz zone.
The Patriots know the value of showing the opponent something new, and they’d played the most man coverage in the league, often out of a 1 high look. the 2 high look with CBs way off was new, and it looked even stranger because CB Jonathan Jones played one of the “Safety” spots, which helped the Patriots match up better when they decided to play man, as the Rams usually had 3 WRs on the field.
The Patriots rush strategy was mostly based on pass rush games aimed at Rams RG. But they had success across the board, against the highest paid offensive line in the NFL (insert laughter). They hit Goff often, which further through him off, although some of the biggest hits were his fault for holding the ball too long (one sack by Van Noy and a play near the sidelines). The Patriots rushed 4 or 5 on most plays. When they rushed 5, the Rams had lots of trouble with the Patriots games. One one sack, Hightower beat the RG through the A gap and then Van Noy looped into the same gap, while Clayborn got past LT Whitworth on the other side. The Patriots did a great job of getting one on one blocking by their alignment. Even in Sub, they’d sometimes run a 3-2 personnel 4-2 front with Devin McCourty as an off the line LB, including on the Cover 0 which led to the INT.
In McVay’s defense, there should have been two TDs to Cooks which both hit Cooks in the hands, and the first would have made the game 7-3 and the second would have tied it at 10 (or made it 14-10 if the first was completed). Maybe McVay would have been praised for being true to himself or some other bullshit, but with two weeks to prepare, I expected all sorts of spread concepts, empty sets, maybe some unique backfields. At times during the year McVay used a few interesting game-planned wrinkles (especially against the Vikings and Chiefs, both Rams wins), but for the SUPER BOWL he had nothing the Patriots didn’t expect.
Jared Goff will probably never live this game down. The sack by Kyle Van Noy on 3rd and 2 where Goff seemed to have no idea he had held the ball too long or that Van Noy was running full speed at him was the worst play other than the interception. But the interception was a product of McVay’s sight adjustment being a Fade instead of a Slant or Hitch which would have been an easy completion as Gilmore was way off, only playing the Fade. BUT Jared Goff made a few great throws, and was always (until the last possession) one play from a tie or lead, so he could have been much worse.
The Patriots seemed to understand that Goff was confused and that McVay wouldn’t run anything new, so after the early INT they decided to not be stupid on offense. That’s great! Their run game was fascinating, with Power O, Counter Trey, Wham, Iso, Duo, Draw, Zone and more all run as Dante Scarnecchia proved again he’s the greatest offensive line coach in the NFL. Their pass protection was great, much of it dependent on Brady getting rid of the ball so as not to risk Donald and Suh blowing up the game. People criticizing the Patriots offense are not paying attention to the context of what the Patriots were doing. Brady held the ball too long one time and it was a sack fumble that the Patriots were fortunate to recover. Joe Thuney handled Aaron Donald one on one for much of the game.
Later, I’ll post my insanely long play by play analysis of the game (it’s currently 20 pages), but since nobody will read it, I’ll try to insert some images to make it even longer.
Clowns in the Booth notes:
It was CBS, so we were saddled with Jim “Hello Nasty” Nantz and Tony Romo. Nantz was awful as always, demonstrating why we don’t need a play-by-play announcer in the era of large high-definition TVs. Romo didn’t seem to try and guess as many plays, which was nice because he’s often wrong, but he did lots of yelling and while he recognized Hoss Juke, he didn’t seem to know the name of it, which is strange, as football nuts have been talking about it for a decade. Romo didn’t seem to understand the Patriots defense, which they played on almost half the snaps. Romo seemed to think the first would-be TD to Cooks was Goff just seeing everything too late, when it was actually a great defensive call which took advantage of two Rams tendencies: 1) to use hard play action with Goff turning his back to the defense and 2) to use max protection which limited the number of routes. The Patriots showed Cover 3, and that’s what Goff expected to see when he turned around and he then, seeing it WASN’T Cover 3, had to take the time to realize it was a Cover 4. Jason McCourty was able to get over to make the play partly because the throw was late (which the Patriots anticipated would happen due to them confusing Goff with the pre-snap look) AND because there were only 3 routes on that play (there was 7 man protection) with no pass route on McCourty’s outside fourth of the field (which NFL Films showed the Patriots anticipated, after seeing the play earlier, they made a coverage change for the next time, assigning McCourty to get over to play the Post route from the opposite side, atypical for Quarters coverage). Romo didn’t seem to realize Cooks had dropped the second would-be TD before Harmon got over there to “break it up”. The worst thing Romo did was refer to McVay as “brilliant” when McVay started going slower, not realizing that this helped the Patriots defense just as much as it helped the Rams offense. The Patriots were changing the call when Goff would change the play, so it didn’t matter how fast or slow he went, he was gonna be confused either way, especially with the compressed formations (which allowed the defense to disguise more). At least if going fast and spreading out and running quick screens or draw plays the Rams could have forced the Patriots out of their base 6-1 Quarters alignment. I’ll never understand why Romo thought McVay’s decision was “brilliant” especially when the Rams were doing so poorly, punting on almost every possession (their first 8!). If that’s “brilliant”, what’s stupid?
Just in case you, dear reader, think I’m hating on Sean McVay, I wanna emphasize that he’s only 33 years old and is already one of the best coaches in the NFL, and that as proven by his having one of the 32 hardest to get jobs in the world AND his girlfriend’s spectacular instagram account, he’s already won at all that matters in life. He’s got 30-40 years of being a head coach in front of him if he wants, and I bet next time he’ll expect the other head coach to have game-planned. Just like in Super Bowl 49, NFL Films captured Belichick explaining that the opponent wasn’t doing anything new, all the Patriots had to do to win was not make mistakes.
Whiskey Over Milk 