Super Bowl Preview

I sat on this for a while before actually starting to write, but now it’s been nearly two weeks and it appears that—despite the ceaseless whining from Saints fans—the NFL isn’t going to do anything about the blown pass interference call at the end of the NFC Championship game. And so we are officially locked in with the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots facing off for the Super Bowl title.

There are a lot of angles to break this one down through, and I’m going to focus once again on a select handful of matchups. There are certain matchups that give the Patriots a clear advantage, and certain that favor the Rams, as well as a few that could swing either way. I’ve pulled out six in particular that are the most fascinating to me, and that will go the farthest towards deciding Sunday’s big game.

New England’s Edge

Coaching

The past two years have been a nonstop love affair with Sean McVay. He’s young and handsome, and he has led one of the most remarkable turnarounds in NFL history. After a decade and a half floundering in no man’s land of the NFL, the Rams became an elite team the moment McVay arrived, bolstered by an offensive scheme that combined old school, under center play action with more wide open spread concepts to exploit teams sideline to sideline. He made Jared Goff, rescued Todd Gurley, and provided a blueprint every team in the league is now trying to duplicate with other young offensive minds.

And he is going to be thoroughly outmatched against the Patriots.

This isn’t entirely a knock on McVay. Just about anyone will be outmatched by Bill Belichick, arguably the greatest coach in football history. He is now in his ninth Super Bowl as a head coach, and if you include the two he won as a defensive coordinator with the Giants, more than 20% of all Super Bowls have been played with Belichick on the sideline. The first Super Bowl Belichick coached in was a day after McVay’s first birthday. No one is more accustomed to or better prepared for this stage than Belichick.

That said, I do have some issues with the way McVay has made decisions as a coach. Despite being young and geared towards the offensive side of the ball—two factors normally associated with aggression—he is one of the most conservative coaches in the NFL. He regularly trots out the punt or field goal units when he should be playing for a touchdown, and in the NFC Championship Game his passiveness nearly cost his team a chance to go to the Super Bowl.

What the Rams can do to mitigate this:

It would be easy to say that McVay just needs to undergo a fundamental shift in his entire coaching philosophy. But assuming that doesn’t happen, they’re going to have to try to gain the edge in other ways. Fortunately, the one advantage McVay does have over Belichick is his knowledge of the offensive side of the football.

Belichick is a genius in all aspects of the game, but most of his experience has come defensively, and that side of the ball offers fewer opportunities for coaching to make a difference on a play by play basis. There are occasionally opportunities for well designed blitzes or disguised coverages, but for the most part defense is reactive, where offense gives more room for creativity and aggression.

McVay has a reputation as a genius play designer, and he had better show it off in the Super Bowl. Hopefully he has several clever plays sitting at the bottom of his playbook for just a time like this, plays that he’s been setting up all year to whip out when the stakes couldn’t be higher. Not all of them will work, but one or two big plays could be the deciding factor in a close game, or at least enough to make up for some other mistakes he is likely to make.

Running Backs

The Patriots have the ideal setup for a modern NFL offense. A lot of coaches like to talk about the importance of running the football, about making sure they get 20-30 plays on the ground every game. Others like to point out that this is a fallacy, that on average passing the football produces more yards and more expected points in just about any situation. The Patriots (and to some extent, the Rams) have figured out the ideal formula: do whatever works.

It seems obvious, but NFL coaches often miss obvious things. If an offense is having success running the ball, there is no reason to stop handing it off. And if they are struggling on the ground, they should be perfectly content to air things out the rest of the game.

New England has built a backfield perfectly suited to attacking in any way they want. If they want to grind things out on the ground, Sony Michel is capable of taking the ball between the tackles on every single play. If they want to spread the field and attack through the air, there are very few running backs as good out of the backfield as James White.

More so even than on the ground, the key to this game will be the damage New England’s running backs can do as receivers. The Rams fared well through most of the season against running backs coming out of the backfield, but two weeks ago was a sharp reversal of that trend. Alvin Kamara had 11 catches for 96 yards, and at times he was the only offense the Saints had, targeting him repeatedly out of the backfield in a way the Rams simply could not stop. The routes he ran both coming out of the backfield and aligned in the slot were impossible for their linebackers and safeties to defend, and I came away from the game feeling that the Saints actually should have gone to Kamara more.

Of course, Kamara is an athlete with few parallels in the NFL, and even White’s receiving ability falls short of that. But the Patriots will see this vulnerability in the Rams defense, and they will attack it even more relentlessly than the Saints did. White should have been the MVP of their victory over the Falcons two years ago, when he had 14 catches for 110 yards and three total touchdowns. I could see him putting up similar numbers this weekend, unless the Rams sell fully out to stop him.

What the Rams can do to mitigate this:

The Rams can take White away. It’s just a question of what they are going to have to sacrifice to do it. Will they put a cornerback on him when he lines up wide, knowing that takes away their options to defend New England’s actual wide receivers? Will they have two linebackers tracking him out of the backfield to eliminate the two way go routes, limiting their options for blitzing and double covering other receivers?

I’m not sure what the best answer is. The Chiefs went heavy against the Patriots and shut down their rushing attack in the second half, only to be chewed apart by quick hitting passes. The Chargers tried to play a small defense with a lot of coverage specialists on the field, only to be gashed by the rushing game. New England is capable of adapting their offense on the fly to whatever approach the defense tries to take, which is what makes them so impossible to stop.

Ultimately I think the best answer will be to play as aggressive as possible. Keep a nickel or a dime package in on every play, but cluster everyone tight to the line of scrimmage. Have a linebacker and a safety dedicated to watching the backfield, and keep at most one safety back deep in coverage. Tom Brady is still capable of hitting deep balls down the field, and he will likely beat this scheme a couple times for big plays during the game. But the Rams aren’t going to shut down the Patriots no matter what they do, and I would rather try to survive a couple big gashes than a thousand tiny cuts.

Los Angeles’s Edge

Offensive Line

New England doesn’t have a lot of big names along their defensive front, but they manage to generate consistent pressure nonetheless. Trey Flowers is their only reliable pass rushing threat, but the rest of their players are solid enough to fill their role, which in Bill Belichick’s scheme is enough to make a couple plays each in every game.

In the AFC Championship game against Kansas City they faced one of the best offensive lines in the NFL, and they will do so again versus the Rams on Sunday. The Rams have a pair of tackle in Andrew Whitworth and Rob Havenstein to match Kansas City’s, and they are even stronger on the interior with veterans Rodger Saffold and John Sullivan alongside developing youngster Austin Blythe.

Goff does a lot of things well as a quarterback, but handling pressure isn’t one of them. The Rams made building an offensive line in front of him a priority as soon as they brought McVay in, and it has been the true strength of an offense that gets all the attention for its weaponry.

Game in and game out, the Rams can usually count on their offensive line to win over the opposing defensive front. The few times it hasn’t—the regular season games against Philadelphia and Chicago come to mind—they have crumpled into nothing. Because their entire offensive scheme depends on them running the football, they don’t have the same flexibility to just abandon the run like New England does, which means they can’t afford to be beaten at the line of scrimmage.

What the Patriots can do to mitigate this:

The strategy the Patriots employed against Kansas City was simple. Attack the weak interior, and contain on the edges. They forced Patrick Mahomes into some bad decisions, and they kept him from making too many big plays out of the pocket.

They will need a different approach against the Rams. There is no weak spot on this line for them to assault, and they don’t have to worry about Goff making as many plays outside the pocket. This makes things a bit more challenging, but it also frees them to be more creative in their attack. Now they will have their full array of pressure packages to bring to the table, against a quarterback who has not always been great at navigating pressure.

Doing so while also remaining stout against the run is the big challenge. The Rams control an opposing pass rush by employing more play action than any other team in football, and even if the running game isn’t working for them the Patriots still have to honor their ability to hit them with Gurley and CJ Anderson.

Bringing an extra safety into the box is the obvious counter, making them stout against the run while also freeing them to be creative with their pressure. But that leaves them vulnerable on the back end in a way I’m not sure they’re comfortable with. With the Rams above I mentioned that I was comfortable asking the Patriots to beat them with big plays. That same tradeoff is not one that I think I would make on the other side of the ball.

Pass Coverage

The Rams invested heavily in their secondary this offseason, and while it didn’t necessarily pay off during the regular season, it’s left them with a clear edge on paper heading into this game. Both Marcus Peters and Aqib Talib were hindered by injuries this year, but they are healthy now and ready to contribute on the outside, a week after locking down Michael Thomas and the rest of the Saints receiving corps. And despite the infamy of his last minute non-penalty against the Saints, Nickell Robey-Coleman remains a genuine weapon as a slot cornerback.

The Patriots receivers are not as impressive. Julian Edelman remains an obnoxious weapon on quick hitting timing routes, but he no longer has the quickness to make plays in the open field, and his questionable hands are more a detriment now than ever. Phillip Dorsett and Chris Hogan flash on deep routes every now and then only to disappear for games on end, and the most they’ve gotten from Cordarrelle Patterson this year was during the games they moved him to play running back.

If it was just a simple matter of locking up on the outside man to man, I’d have no qualms about saying the Rams will erase New England’s receivers. Of course, it’s never that simple. The Patriots do a good job using motions and route combinations to engineer players open, and Brady’s precision as a passer makes even true blanket coverage somewhat ineffective. But any time the outside receivers do get matched up one on one against the Rams secondary, the matchup is clear in Los Angeles’s favor.

What the Patriots can do to mitigate this:

The simplest solution for the Patriots is to simply not put their wide receivers on the field. Throw out multiple tight ends, and a fullback, and even put both White and Michel on the field at the same time. Force the Rams to keep two or three linebackers on the field, and then exploit the matchups in the passing game presented there.

I expect to see a lot of heavy personnel from New England, and it will be interesting to watch how the Rams respond. Talib has experience going one on one against Rob Gronkowski, and he is one of the few cornerbacks in the league with the physical tools to outmuscle the mammoth tight end. It becomes trickier if the Patriots keep Gronkowski on the inside of the formation, and if they start splitting White out into a receiver position. Do the Rams send a cornerback out to deal with him, potentially leaving themselves more vulnerable to someone like Gronkowski or Edelman on the inside?

I discussed coaching at length above, but I didn’t mention either Josh McDaniels or Wade Phillips, two of the best assistants in the game going head to head with the Super Bowl on the line. The biggest key of this battle will be the personnel groups they throw at each other. Do the Patriots do as I expect and try to minimize the impact of the Rams secondary? Or do they have something else up their sleeve, something the Rams will be forced to adapt to as the game runs its course?

Tossups

Rams Wide Receivers vs Patriots Secondary

At the beginning of the season this would have seemed like a matchup with a clear edge for the Rams. The Patriots have a couple of excellent veterans in their secondary in Devin McCourty and Stephon Gilmore, but the Rams entered the season extremely deep on the outside, with a top three of receiving threats that could stack up against any in the league.

But the depth of these two units have gone in opposite directions since the start of the year. The Rams lost slot threat Cooper Kupp to a torn ACL, while the Patriots once again developed a couple young cornerbacks with no pedigree into quality starters. New England choked off a similar high powered passing game two weeks ago in Kansas City, and now they face another big challenge against a Rams team still working to figure some stuff out.

How the Patriots can win:

It will be fascinating to see how New England comes out playing in the secondary this week. It’s a bit overblown that Bill Belichick likes to take away the opponent’s top weapon, but in the AFC Championship game that was certainly the case. The Patriots spent the entire game bracketing Tyreek Hill over the top, erasing his ability to beat them deep and trusting that the Chiefs couldn’t consistently wear them out with their other receiving threats.

I could definitely see them trying a similar tactic in this game. Brandin Cooks is a similar vertical threat to Hill, and it would make sense to put their second or third cornerback on him with safety help over the top while leaving Gilmore on an island versus Robert Woods. The absence of Kupp means they have to worry less about the Rams attacking the slot, making it easier to play a pure man to man scheme across the field.

The challenge is that Cooks is a much more complete receiver than Hill, and he is able to threaten defenses with more than just his speed over the top. Leaving him matched up with a lesser cornerback underneath is just asking for him to pick them apart on in breaking routes across the middle of the field. And while it took until the second half for the Chiefs to realize they had Sammy Watkins in a favorable matchup on the side of the field opposite Hill, the Rams are much more willing to feed the ball to Woods from the first snap of the game.

I don’t think the Patriots will employ the same scheme they used with such success against Kansas City. I doubt they will have their cornerbacks tracking a specific receiver—especially with all the presnap motions the Rams run to muddle such schemes—and I expect them to play a lot more zone coverage, at least on the back end. This will limit their ability to blitz somewhat, but I expect them to have a few timely calls drawn up specifically to force Goff into mistakes. He isn’t nearly the threat when the play breaks down that Mahomes is, and if they can get pressure in his face they can bait him into throwing into a trap.

How the Rams can win:

The book on the Rams was extremely straightforward for most of the season. They used almost exclusively three receiver sets, they employed a lot of motion prior to the snap, and their passing game was built around a heavy play action attack. As the season wore on this became a bit predictable, and teams did have success holding them in check, but it was always expected that they would have something new up their sleeve once the playoffs came around. And they did in fact change it up against the Saints, putting two tight ends on the field far more often than they did during the regular season and switching to more of a pure dropback passing game.

Part of the change was due to the success they had running the ball with Anderson, a different style of running back than Gurley who demands different personnel and different types of play action. I expect they will get back to featuring Gurley in this game, but I still think they should keep some of these new variations in their offense. Josh Reynolds hasn’t been the weapon on the inside that Kupp was, and with two tight ends they can vary their formations and play designs in ways that stress a zone defense the Patriots will likely try to run.

New England’s secondary is strong, but their linebackers are extremely vulnerable in coverage. The key for the Rams in this game may be to mostly just ignore their wide receivers. Use Woods and Cooks mostly as decoys to draw the coverage deep, then hit the Patriots underneath and over the middle with running backs and tight ends. The Chiefs missed a couple opportunities for big plays to Damien Williams out of the backfield last week, and the Rams can design similar concepts to send Gurley streaking down the field against overmatched linebackers.

If they do feel the need to force the ball to their receivers, there are ways to get them space against even tight coverage. The Rams run more jet motion than any other team, and though that limits the ability of the motion receiver to attack down the field, it makes it easy for him to get separation against underneath coverage. A play action game that slows down the pass rush will also warp zone coverage and give time for receivers and Goff to find seams down the field. The Rams may not be able to win this matchup, but there are ways to downplay its importance.

Rams Defensive Line vs Patriots Offensive Line

This is the highest powered and the most fascinating matchup to be found in this game. Tom Brady has not yet been sacked this postseason despite facing all world pass rushers Joey Bosa, Melvin Ingram, Justin Houston, Dee Ford, and Chris Jones. The Rams don’t have that kind of depth and versatility up front, but they do have Aaron Donald, which presents a different challenge for a pass protection unit that has been flawless to this point.

How the Rams can win:

This one is straightforward, and it doesn’t require any schematic brilliance. The Rams win up front simply by being better than the team they’re facing. Obviously it starts with Donald, but they’ve done a good job supporting him with talent, bringing in players like Ndamukong Suh and Dante Fowler. Donald demands at least two blockers on every play, which means their secondary rushers are almost always left with only a single lineman between them and the quarterback.

Donald is going to get his, but this defense goes as their secondary rushers do. When Suh and Fowler are making plays like they did against the Saints, this unit is capable of holding even the best offenses in check. But when they can’t get pressure on the quarterback, the back seven of this unit can be exploited by a quality quarterback.

The Rams can force some of these winnable matchups based on their alignment. Typically teams align their three-technique defensive tackle on the same side as the tight end, shifting their defensive front in the direction of the extra blocker to make them stronger against the run. I think the Rams would be better suited going the opposite direction, aligning Donald between the guard and the tackle on the weak side. From there he has the freedom to either shoot upfield or attack across the gap towards the center, in either case drawing the guard’s attention and leaving the tackle man on man on the outside.

The obvious vulnerability here is against the run, and that is a major concern facing a Patriots team that likes to churn out yards on the ground. But Donald’s quickness up the field makes him even more dangerous on the backside, and it makes it just about impossible for the Patriots to pull the guard over top of him to lead the way on a strong side attack.

In the end though, this battle will come down to talent. Can Suh and Fowler disrupt Brady like they did Drew Brees? Can Donald win against the double team every single play, or will his flashes be too few and too infrequent?

How the Patriots can win:

Once again, there is only so much that scheme matters with a player like Donald. The Patriots will send two or even three blockers his way, and they just have to hope those blockers can hold up. Even the normal techniques to discourage a quick penetrating defensive tackle don’t work against Donald. The Saints tried to trap him and send a running back underneath, and he simply spun beneath the trap block and made the tackle at the line of scrimmage. His speed, power, and flexibility are just on another level from any other player in football, and there isn’t a recipe to stop him.

There are ways to mitigate his impact though. Running away from Donald can cause problems as he chases the play down from behind, but running directly at him can occasionally pay off. He is still undersized for a defensive tackle, and he can be driven back to the second level by a well placed double team. Forcing him to control a single gap can make life easier for the guy trying to block him, and when he does try to swim around the blocker he will sometimes run his way out of the play. Yes, there will be times where he blows off the ball and envelops the running back five yards deep in the backfield, but that could just as easily happen if you try running away from him as well.

The other strategy I would adopt would be to pack the middle of the field with big bodies. Bring in two or three tight ends, and a fullback as well. Maybe a tackle eligible, anything to load up on players in the box. This will give them the freedom to double team Donald while still getting chips on the edge rushers, which will buy Brady the extra half a second he needs to get rid of the football.

That is the other key to this game. Brady is notorious for getting the ball out of his hand before the pass rush can even breathe on him, but it’s a little more challenging against someone like Donald. He is so quick off the ball and into the backfield that quarterbacks often don’t even have a chance to hit the top of their drops before he is on them. Brady needs to understand that his normal strategy isn’t going to save him here, and that at times his best option might just be to risk a sack holding onto the football. Plays will open down the field eventually, and a couple drives killed by sacks could be worth the overall effectiveness of their offense.

Verdict

A year ago I picked the Patriots to blow past the Eagles for an easy victory. That obviously didn’t happen. And as much as I’m tempted to try to avoid repeating my mistake, I still have to stick to what my gut tells me and pick the Patriots.

Despite fielding two of the league’s top four offenses, I don’t expect this to be a high scoring game. I expect both teams to chip their way down the field on long touchdown drives powered by the running game and short passes. If things open up and the game becomes a back and forth affair of big plays, I think the Rams have a chance to keep up. But in the tight game I expect, I believe the Patriots are better suited to win. I don’t know what the difference will be—a last minute drive by Brady, a crucial turnover by Goff, a poor choice by McVay—but I know that at both the most important positions on the field, quarterback and head coach, the Patriots have the clear advantage. And in a game that will likely come down to a single score, that usually makes all the difference.

New England Patriots 27 – Los Angeles Rams 23