NFL: Super Bowl LIII Preview

Rams offence vs. Patriots defence

The Rams will need to play big offensively

Unlike a lot of teams that revolve their defence around the Seattle-type cover-three, man-bail based scheme or play a lot of two-high safety looks that force opponents to go underneath, New England fields one of the most hybrid defensive units in the league.

They can change their base front, coverage principles and tendencies on a weekly basis, which is truly unique. Therefore, giving them two weeks to prepare can end up in a nightmare. Just ask the Chargers, who were basically done when they went into halftime down 35-7 and to a lesser degree the Chiefs last week, as they couldn’t put up a single point in the first half of that game.

A lot of teams are forced to change plans for the second period against a coach that is known for his brilliance at adjusting the gameplan. When you don’t come up with creative looks and attune your play-calls throughout games, you have a significant disadvantage. There is nothing easier for Belichick and his defensive staff to prepare for than repetitive passing concepts and formations that give away tendencies.

McVay's genius play-calling

McVay's play-calling on offence will be hugely important

What makes the Rams offence special, however, is the way they mask plays. Unlike the Chiefs a week ago, Sean McVay doesn’t use a multitude of formations and tries to keep you off balance with motions and different gimmicks. Los Angeles’ offence is built around being able to run a variety of plays from similar looks. Some of their staples revolve around running those jet sweeps one way and handing it one time and then going inside zone the opposite direction.

The Rams use their receiver more in the run game than any other team in the league, running jet and fly sweep, reverses and just different flips to them. It goes so far that they make you think a receiver is just a dummy on some fly motion to freeze defenders on the backside and then they hand it to Robert Woods at H-back going the way they originally faked it towards on some type of trap play.

Not only are those guys being used as ball-carriers however, but they also line up their tight-ends and receivers in tight splits to shield the backside. The engine that makes that Rams ground attack go is the offensive line. While they are based on different versions of inside and outside the zone, they can run different trap and wham schemes as well to take advantage of the flow of the opposing defence.

Those five men up front are very patient with their double-teams and basically, let the linebackers run into their hands. They also really like the zone split where they kick out the backside edge defender, setting up cutback opportunities for their backs. Even if the linebacker on that side stays balanced, there could be a lane for a guy like Todd Gurley to run away from anybody. All those things led them to 4.9 yards a carry during the regular season.

Pats' defensive scheme

For large stretches of the 2018 season, the Pats ran a bear-front, which basically puts five or six defenders at the line of scrimmage, and shut down opposing rushing attacks. Last weekend, on the other hand, they went the exact opposite, moving Trey Flowers inside together with one true defensive tackle and using four linebackers to go with an extra defensive back to counter all the Chiefs’ spread formations.

Andy Reid never made any adjustments in terms of using that lack of size against them by running it down their throat. New England has a multitude of big bodies to go with some bigger D-ends. So they have the size to make it complicated for the Rams to run on them, while also having the discipline to contain the edges against a home-run threat in Gurley or take away cutback lanes.

Last year when McVay first went up against a defensive expert in Mike Zimmer, the Vikings made very crafty adjustments with their defensive ends to take away bootleg opportunities for Goff by telling them to stay home and erase easy dump offs to receivers coming across the formation or tight-ends peeling off late.

Some of that might be repeated and then, when Kyle Van Noy is lined up on the backside of run plays as a Will linebacker, he shows discipline to defend the lanes that open up on the play-side.

LA's running game

Nevertheless, we can’t see how the Patriots will shut down Gurley and C.J. Anderson if they stay that conservative on the backside, because that will create too much space on the inside, no matter how big New England's front is. So as long as they get the defence to flow with the run a little bit, that opens the play-action back up.

The Rams will need a fully healthy Gurley, although Anderson's experience should not be dismissed

The Rams are built around the ground attack opening up easy opportunities with bootlegs the other way, which creates wide open targets because of how that freezes the entire defence. Off the zone game, they have types of waggle and flood-like concepts with crossers on different levels, giving Goff easy reads from high to low.

Even if the Patriots decide to be conservative with their backside D-end and linebackers, what can you really expect from them when you have Brandin Cooks come underneath the formation and run into the flats at full speed? So if McVay sees them do something like that, he might want Cooks to do some of the stuff they usually use Gerald Everett for.

He can also keep one of those guys in a tight split in protection to secure the edges when booting that way. On several occasions that is coupled with clear-out routes and a deep crosser towards the vacated area or having the play develop for so long that they get a linebacker to match up against a speedy receiver, giving them a tremendous matchup, especially when you see the size of their backers.

While the Patriots big guys on the edges could overpower tight-ends and especially much smaller receivers, Goff may not be the most athletic quarterback in the league, but last week when the Saints defensive ends hit him right away on those bootlegs, he still got the ball out to his tight-ends on two plays on the final drive in overtime.

Referring back to that 2017 game against the Vikings helps because the seven points the Rams scored in that matchup and the six points against a similar schematic Bears defence were by far the least during their two-year run under their current head coach. McVay never really adjusted to the cover-three scheme that included their top corner staying in man, even though the principles were very simple and plays were there to be drawn up.

Belichick's defensive planning

We could see Belichick and Brian Flores counter in a very similar way on base downs. Moreover, they have put a lot of pressure on opposing quarterbacks with the coverages demanding perfect throws, they also get after those guys. While the Patriots don’t have any elite pass rushers, even though Trey Flowers doesn’t nearly get the credit he deserves, what they do is they collapse the pocket from all angles and move quarterbacks off the spots.

A lot of times defences flush quarterbacks one way or force him to step up and create some space to get the throw off, but when guys stay disciplined in their rush lanes and they get interior pressure the only thing left is to back up and when they retreat, their throws become very inaccurate.

New England disguise their blitzes at the linebacker level better than pretty much any team in the NFL. They move their backers up to the line and drop them out before rushing at a different angle, they bring them on green-dog blitzes and all kinds of stuff.

While Kyle Van Noy and Elandon Roberts do have responsibilities in coverage, they want to rush their linebackers, for the most part, especially Dont’a Hightower, who basically turns into an edge rusher on a whole lot of their passing downs.

The difference between that game last year and this team right now is that as creative as McVay was as a play-caller in 2017, he has become much better at going away from his bread and butter. I don’t really put a whole lot of blame on the coach when they layed an egg in Chicago, because that was more on Goff’s unwillingness to go underneath with the ball and throwing four interceptions on forced passes.

Whenever a defence runs single-high coverages against them, there is space to be used on inside-breaking routes in-between the middle safety and the linebackers, especially when the linebackers get sucked up by play-action, and by running slot receivers down the seams that leaves the wideout with a ton of space on deep comeback and curl routes.

McVay is not a rookie himself anymore. He is a gifted tactician and he has gotten better at going off his initial plan and making in-game adjustments, unlike Andy Reid or Ken Whisenhunt, who saw their offence get suffocated in the first halves respectively. I have talked at length about the Rams zone run game and bootleg play-action off it, but the final element to it are the throwback screens to the backs.

New England gave up a 30+ yard touchdown on one of those to Kansas City off a zone-split type look, where Mahomes drew the attention of the entire defence his way. That is just one of the many layers to his balanced Rams attack.

The Patriots have become a man-centric defensive team that trusts their secondary to shut down the opposing passing attack and uses their front to shrink the pocket for the quarterback. What makes them special compared to a lot of other teams that just want to leave their guys on islands is what they do with their extra defensive backs.

New England does throw in some true cover-zero in spots to keep quarterbacks off balance, but for the most part, they run different types of cover-one. They use that single-high safety to shade towards the biggest vertical threat of the opposing team and then they often have another DB in some robber or underneath role to take away staples of that coach’s passing game, meaning dropping him into areas they know that team wants to attack.

Not only does that put pressure on the quarterback to go a different way because the go-to target is taken away, with the deep help over a guy like Tyreek Hill last week, for example, but you also can not even take a shot to the one guy you think can win purely based on speed.

New England's superstar on defence

Brady and Gilmore are the only Patriots elected to the Pro Bowl this year

Stephon Gilmore might be the best true man-corner in the league and he has been dominating most of his matchups, whether that is against number two receivers, to allow themselves to roll the coverage towards the primary guy, or – at a much higher rate than usually – also taking away the opponents top guy.

Versus the Chiefs, he was matched up with Sammy Watkins and did an excellent job outside of one deep shot that came off Mahomes buying time and the receiver turning his route upfield. J.C. Jackson has had an excellent season himself as a rookie, but had a rough week last Sunday night.

However, the Patriots asked him to cover Kelce one-on-one in some spots, leading to a touchdown surrendered and a pass interference call in the end-zone. Take that away (because the Rams offence doesn’t feature the best pass-catching tight-end) and add a veteran in Jason McCourty plus to a lesser degree, Jonathan Jones and you have three guys you can match up with the opposing guys.

New England is not afraid to leave their safeties one-on-one with slot receivers in man coverage, even if they motion across the field and keep on running after the snap, which might create opportunities for those guys to either simply outrun their defender to the edge or draw up screen passes to them by nailing that DB on the move.

In addition to that, the Rams use a lot of receiver stacks or bunches and different concepts out of those, such as a fade to open up space and a whip route to punish switches simply due to the leverage of the inside defender or to take advantage of the space underneath.

Something we mentioned a couple of weeks ago when we went back to watch the Steelers film on the Pats was how they did something similar to a rub-concept look. New England’s defensive backs are incredibly triggered by certain keys and in that game Pittsburgh used JuJu Smith-Schuster on one of those return (or whip) routes, which made it borderline impossible for the defender to stay with him since he is shooting for that open receiver if they did try to run the initial defender off.

That tendency won’t change, especially after Belichick just threw his tablet to the ground when he re-watched a pick-play open up Sammy Watkins for a big gain last week. Another thing the Rams can do if the Patriots kept their free safety in the middle of the field by having Cooks in a tighter split is to run him on a simple fade route from that type of look, which gives the speedster more space to operate when you let the second receiver come behind him towards the middle of the field.

I would like them to attack the Patriots that way instead of their typical spacing concepts from bunch sets, as the rhythm might be thrown off by the aggressiveness of the Patriots DBs at the line.