Super Bowl Preview Part Two

On Wednesday I started off my Super Bowl preview by looking at the matchup between the offense of the Seahawks and the defense of the Patriots. Each side has different advantages and disadvantages over its opponent, but in the end I thought that Seattle’s strength and versatility in the running game would give them the edge. This will go a long way towards determining the winner of the Super Bowl, but it turns out there are a couple more units who will see the field on Sunday.

New England’s offense is not the historically dominant unit it was a couple years ago, but they are still a very dangerous and versatile attack, well coached with an intriguing blend of talent. Seattle’s defense is historically dominant, even though it’s fallen off a little from last year, when they shut down a better Broncos offense in this same game. If they are able to repeat that performance they can earn themselves another Championship, but New England's offense is not going to go quietly.

Seattle’s Advantage

Much has been made of Seattle’s historically great pass defense over the past few seasons, but over the course of this year they have actually been better against the run. The only running backs to gain 100 yards against them were Jamaal Charles and DeMarco Murray, and in only four other games did a running back eclipse 50 yards. The loss of Brandon Mebane and Bobby Wagner gave them some issues stopping the run during the middle of the season, but Wagner has returned and they have found a suitable replacement for Mebane in veteran Kevin Williams. Michael Bennett has been one of the best run stopping defensive ends in the league over the past few seasons, and the safety combination of Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor are devastating in run support.

New England’s running game should not scare them. The Patriots ranked in the middle of the league this year in running offense, but in many ways the statistics overstate how good they are. When things are going well, the Patriots are happy to hand the ball off play after play, as they did against the Colts both times they played this season. When things aren’t going well, they abandon the run altogether, as they did against Baltimore. This is not a team that can impose their will on the opposition, and I expect them to turn away from the running attack fairly early.

On Wednesday I wrote about how Seattle’s questionable corps of receivers match up poorly against New England’s fantastic secondary. Well the Seahawks secondary is even better, and the Patriots receivers may actually be worse. Julian Edelman would make an excellent number three receiver, but as a number one he is hopelessly mediocre. Brandon LaFell and Danny Amendola are with the Patriots solely because no one else in the league wanted them. They’ve been producing at a reasonable level over the past few weeks thanks to impressive play from their quarterback and mediocre opposing secondaries, but they can’t count on having their way with Seattle’s cornerbacks.

The Seahawks defensive scheme is built around an unusual type of Cover 3. In a traditional Cover 3, the deep section of the field is split into three zones that are handled either by a pair of safeties and a cornerback or a pair of cornerbacks and a safety. This is considered a safe defense, forcing teams to check down rather than risk throwing it over the top. But over the past few years Pete Carroll and his staff have added a wrinkle to this coverage, creating a hybrid man-zone scheme that allows their defenders to play more aggressive at the line of scrimmage.

Seattle’s cornerbacks are big, and they are very physical. They begin most plays by pressing the opposing receivers at the line of scrimmage to disrupt their timing and knock them off their routes. New England’s weakness as an offense is their inability to attack over the top. They are one of the worst teams in the league when it comes to throwing deep, and Seattle should be even less concerned than normal about receivers getting behind them. They can be as aggressive as they want in challenging receivers at the line, knowing the opposing quarterback isn’t capable of dropping the ball perfectly over their heads.

The underrated part of Seattle’s defense is the intelligence of their players. Their cornerbacks are experts at reading the play, bailing deep if someone is attempting to run behind them or staying tight to guard against a quick throw. This is a very tricky thing to ask of players, but when it succeeds it allows the upside of both press man coverage and the safety of a Cover 3.

 

The intelligence of Seattle’s defense gives them another edge over the teams that have played New England the past few weeks. Much has been made of New England’s use of eligible and ineligible receivers to confuse the defense, racing down the field with four offensive linemen against Baltimore then tearing Indianapolis apart using six. Against the Ravens they used a bit of underhanded trickery, having a receiver declare himself ineligible at the last possible second to make sure the Ravens had no time to adjust. They switched it up against Indianapolis, using a six linemen with Cameron Fleming declaring himself as an eligible receiver throughout the game, lulling the Colts into a routine before switching it up and declaring Nate Solder as the eligible target, leading to an easy touchdown pass.

They will likely try some of these same tricks against the Seahawks, but I don’t expect them to be as successful. Seattle’s defenders are among the smartest and the best coached in the league, and they are very rarely confused when on the field. An extra week of preparation will only help, giving them time to practice the simple diagnosis necessary to determine who is or isn’t eligible. As long as a team is ready for it, there is no advantage to New England’s strategy. They will just end up with an inferior player going out as a receiver, and Seattle’s defenders will have no trouble shutting it down. Trickeration will not work for New England this time around. If they are going to score against Seattle, they will have to do so through a standard passing attack.

New England’s Advantage

New England’s offensive line will not be able to open holes for the running game, but they should be able to protect their quarterback. Ever since their disastrous loss to Kansas City this has been one of the best pass blocking offensive lines in the league, and assuming center Brian Stork plays they should be set up to handle the Seahawks pass rush.

This offensive line has had vastly different performances in its two playoff games. Against Baltimore’s dangerous front seven they were torn to pieces, but Indianapolis’s mediocre unit couldn’t get near the quarterback. Seattle’s pass rush is somewhere in between. They have a couple excellent rushers in Bennett and Cliff Avril, but on the whole they aren’t a particularly dangerous unit. They don’t blitz very often, and their interior rush is nothing special. Bennett and Avril have both transitioned to full time roles after sharing time with Chris Clemons and Red Bryant last year, and they occasionally show signs of wearing down as the game goes on.

Seattle struggled on defense early in the year almost entirely because their pass rush wasn’t getting to the quarterback. Their coverage wasn’t as flawless as we’re used to seeing, and quarterbacks were able to wait to find the seams in their zone. The pass rush improved over the second half of the season, but they still have to be worried about what will happen if the Patriots can keep Brady untouched. Given time Brady can find a hole in any defense, and even though age has started to catch up with him he still has the timing and the precision to thread the ball through the tight windows between Seattle’s athletic defenders.

Assuming Brady can find time, there are ways they can exploit Seattle’s coverage down the field. Shane Vereen poses matchup problems, especially if teams continue to be stupid enough to put a linebacker on him. Seattle has some incredibly athletic players in their linebacker corps, but they can’t keep up with a player like Vereen, who is essentially a wide receiver at this point. Seattle may be smart enough to treat him as such, but I think there is a good chance that Brady will see his speedy “running back” matched up man on man with a linebacker, an easy opportunity for a shot downfield.

The other matchup advantage the Patriots have is, obviously, Rob Gronkowski. Whether split out, in the slot, or on the end of the line, Gronkowski poses a problem for any defender they put across from him. He’s too big for most of their defensive backs, too good a route runner for their linebackers, and strong enough on the ball to negate Seattle’s normal advantage on contested passes. Seattle has struggled at times against tight ends this year, and Gronkowski is a matchup like nothing they’ve faced.

Seattle will undoubtedly focus a lot of their efforts on stopping New England’s dominant tight end. The likely course seems to be using Chancellor to follow him across the field, the only player on their defense who can match him for size, strength, and athleticism. They will also likely have a lot of double teams sent his direction, either Earl Thomas playing over the top or one of their linebackers dropping to cut off a seam pass.

Gronkowski will have his opportunities, but he may be even more valuable as a decoy. Seattle’s coverage has been exploited a couple times this season on basic switches, two receivers on the same side crossing on deep routes. Byron Maxwell has been particularly vulnerable, occasionally following the outside receiver into Earl Thomas’s zone and letting a receiver from the slot run uncovered down the sideline. With Gronkowski drawing so much attention the Patriots could easily set up another such miscommunication. Line Gronkowski up split wide with either Edelman or Amendola in the slot, then have him run a post pattern towards Thomas while the inside receiver wheels up the sideline behind him. Thomas will easily be able to cut off the throw on the post, but there is a chance Maxwell could become confused and bite inside, giving New England a rare shot over the top.

Seattle’s pass coverage isn’t invulnerable, but the opportunities are going to be minimal. New England will need to play a mistake free game, avoiding turnovers and hitting on every available opportunity. Brady can certainly get hot and find his rhythm, but increasingly over the past few years he has suffered streaks of inaccuracy, especially on throws deep. He doesn’t have to be perfect for them to win this game, but they won’t be able to move the ball unless he plays at a high level.

X Factor

When I broke down the uncertain factor of the matchup between Seattle’s offense and New England’s defense, I ended up looking at a case of weakness against weakness. On this side of the ball, the part of the game that is up in the air is a case of strength against strength. If New England is going to be able to move the ball they are going to have to do it through the air, but against this Seahawks team they will have even more trouble than normal throwing deep. They are going to need to be incredibly successful on shorter, quicker throws, the part of their offense that has been consistently excellent throughout the season.

The Patriots have struggled all season when attempting to attack down the field, but they have found success in the passing game thanks to their dominance on short throws. This reached its peak during the second half of the divisional round matchup with Baltimore. After struggling early to stop the Ravens pass rush, New England switched to an attack almost exclusively consisting of quick, easy throws. Brady tore the Ravens to pieces on these throws, completing all 22 passes he attempted within two seconds of receiving the snap, totaling 209 yards and three touchdowns.

Seattle’s Cover 3 scheme works very well to stop completions down the field, but as I addressed above it also takes away many of the quicker throws normally given up by three deep schemes. Their cornerbacks are massive and strong, and they can wipe a receiver out of the play just by getting their hands on him at the line of scrimmage. Even if the receiver can elude them, the quarterback still has to worry about the linebackers dropping into underneath zones. Seattle has the longest and most athletic collection of linebackers in the league, and they squeeze the normally small windows on slant and hook patterns into essentially nothing.

Brady just so happens to be one of the few quarterbacks in the league capable of hitting these windows. Accuracy has always been the strongest part of his game, that and recognizing exactly where he needs to throw the ball before it is even snapped. He can see when a linebacker is cheating towards the line, opening a hole behind him for an easy dump off. He can recognize when one of his receivers has leverage on a press defender, and he can get the ball out of his hand as soon as it gets back to him. If there is a hole to exploit on Seattle’s defense, he will find it.

The bigger concern is again on the outside with the wide receivers. Physically speaking, it would be difficult to get a larger contrast in physical makeup than New England’s receivers and Seattle’s cornerbacks. LaFell is 6’2”, but every other Patriots wide receiver is below six feet in height. Seattle’s cornerbacks are all taller than that, and most outweigh New England’s receivers as well.

Whoever wins the matchup at the line will go a long way to determining who wins this game. Seattle’s cornerbacks have the strength to push around the opposing receivers, but New England’s players may be quick enough to slip away from the press coverage. If I had to make a prediction, I would go with the superior players on the Seahawks side of the ball. Edelman and Amendola are quick in tight spaces, but they aren’t used to facing defenders with the length and strength of Seattle’s.

I think Seattle has the ability to close off most of New England’s quick passing attack, and I think this will give them the ability to shut down the Patriots offense. They have the edge on this side of the ball, and they have a similar (if smaller) edge on the other side too. They are the more complete team from top to bottom, and they should repeat as Super Bowl Champions.

Super Bowl Preview Part One

As you may or may not be aware, there is a rather important football game occurring this weekend. Because it is so important (and because I have absolutely nothing better to do) I will be splitting my preview into two separate parts. First I will look at the less notable of the two matchups, Seattle’s offense going against New England’s defense.

These two units are very similar in that they are often overlooked and underrated by those focusing on the other sides of the ball. But both can control games in their own way, and both have been crucial in getting these teams to this point. To break them down I’ll start by listing all the ways in which New England has an advantage, followed by the areas in which Seattle should have the edge. At the very end I’ll talk about what I think the biggest X Factor is, the matchup that could go either way and will likely decide who comes out on top.

New England’s Advantage

New England’s greatest defensive strength is their pass coverage. After struggling to match up with Denver’s deep group of receivers last season, the Patriots went out and added Brandon Browner and Darrelle Revis in free agency, reshaping their secondary and giving them one of the best coverage units in the league. They had some issues against the Ravens in the divisional round, but they shut down Andrew Luck and the Colts in the championship game. Luck had absolutely nowhere to throw the ball, as talented receivers like TY Hilton and Coby Fleener struggled to create separation against this dominant secondary.

They will have an even greater than normal advantage against Seattle in the Super Bowl. Everyone has been debating Seattle’s receiving corps for the past two years, whether they are underrated, overrated, or properly rated. They certainly haven’t been a liability, and there is some logic behind Doug Baldwin’s claims that they are underappreciated because they are a bunch of undrafted players in a run heavy scheme. But the simple fact is that—while they do have their strengths—they do not excel at creating separation off the initial routes. They weren’t very good last year, and the losses of Percy Harvin and Golden Tate have not made them any better. Last week against Green Bay we saw just how much they can struggle against a secondary that is playing well. Until late in the game they were not able to give any space for Russell Wilson to throw the ball, and he was forced into uncharacteristic mistakes because of this.

New England’s cornerbacks and safeties are superior to Green Bay’s across the board, and they should be able to match Seattle’s receivers on their routes. If I had to guess, I would expect to see Revis shadowing Baldwin while Browner and the other cornerbacks switch off on the speedier but less technically impressive Jermaine Kearse. The depth in the Patriots secondary is far better than in Seattle’s receiving corps, and I expect the Seahawks will spend most of the game in two back or two tight end sets, keeping New England out of their nickel package.

If Seattle’s wide receivers cannot create separation, they will be forced to rely on their running backs and their tight ends in the passing game. Marshawn Lynch is serviceable as a receiver, but he isn’t a threat the Patriots have to worry about on every play. They will be better served sending their linebackers and their safeties after Seattle’s tight ends. In the matchup against the underneath receivers, New England again has the advantage. Jamie Collins and Devin McCourtey are two of the best coverage players in the league at their respective positions, and Dont’a Hightower is solid dropping into coverage as well. They should have no trouble running with Seattle’s interior receivers.

The depth of good coverage options among their linebackers and safeties gives them the versatility to counter Wilson’s scrambling ability. If they had only one linebacker who could match him athletically, they would be forced into using this player as a spy on every passing play, predictability that Wilson would be able to exploit. But because they can trust multiple linebackers and safeties to keep up with the tight ends and running backs, they can switch off who has the responsibility to spy the quarterback, leaving him uncertain before the snap whether his escape lane is to the right, the left, or up the middle. Wilson will still bust loose for a run or two, and he will still create problems behind the line of scrimmage. But the Patriots have players who can chase him from sideline to sideline, and with the coverage holding up behind them they will have the ability to be aggressive in going after the quarterback.

Seattle’s Advantage

The Seahawks will be able to run the ball against New England. They’ve been able to run the ball against pretty much everyone this season, ending up leading the league in rushing DVOA. This was despite an offensive line that struggled at times due to injuries to center Max Unger and left tackle Russell Okung. When both of them have been healthy this offensive line has had no trouble opening holes for their runners, not that they’ve needed it.

Lynch continues to just churn out running yards, as indifferent to the opposing defense as he is to media questions. He was spectacular against Green Bay last weekend, running for 157 yards on 25 carries when the rest of their offense looked incapable of doing anything remotely positive. New England’s run defense is better than Green Bay’s, and Lynch won’t be as dominant in the Super Bowl as he was during the NFC Championship Game. But he matches up well against New England’s athletic but undersized linebackers. They excel at chasing backs down from behind rather than stuffing them in the hole, and Lynch should be able to fight through contact for additional yards.

Wilson will play an even more crucial role than normal in the running game. The best running quarterback in the league this season, he was quiet for most of the game against the Packers before Seattle pulled out their read option package late in the game. I addressed above my concerns that he will have trouble gaining yards by scrambling against New England, and while this is the most effective part of his running game, he can still exploit a defense on designed carries. Seattle tried to minimize these throughout the regular season in order to protect their quarterback, but in the Super Bowl I expect them to go to the read option early and often.

The Patriots have not faced many opportunities against the read option this year. The only team they played that runs this scheme on a consistent basis is Miami, and the first time these two teams faced each other was in Week One, before the Dolphins instituted the read option as a heavy part of their playbook. In the second game Ryan Tannehill had three carries for 21 yards, an effective performance not entirely earned through read option plays. Bill Belichick is one of the best defensive minds in football, and I trust that he will have ideas on how to counter this scheme. But it is hard to know how the players on the field will react without having seen it in person.

The reason I think they will struggle against Seattle’s read option attack goes back to their game against Baltimore. The Ravens boast one of the league’s best zone running attacks, and they ran all over New England to the tune of 136 yards on 28 attempts. Seattle doesn’t run a zone scheme of the same style as Baltimore’s, but the defensive principals for stopping their attack are very similar. The running backs attack the line looking for a cutback crease, exploiting any slippage in a defense’s discipline. Any open lane is a hole for the runner, and any linebacker who doesn’t fill properly leaves a massive vulnerability in their defense.

Hightower is one of the best linebackers in the league when it comes to filling against the run, but the rest of New England’s defense cannot say the same. Justin Forsett had whatever cutbacks he wanted against them, and against the versatility of Seattle’s read option they will have to be even more disciplined. Many read option plays do in fact use a zone blocking scheme, leading to the often misused term “zone read” to describe non-zone read option plays. New England’s linebackers are very talented, but they are still young and inexperienced when it comes to erecting disciplined fronts against the run.

Seattle will be able to gain yards on the ground against New England, and with their defense this might be enough to win the game. But in all likelihood they will also need something from their passing attack, which could prove a problem as I discussed above. There is, however, reason to believe they can find success despite the Patriots secondary. Because as mediocre as Seattle’s receivers are at creating separation on normal routes, it is a completely different story when the play breaks down.

Common wisdom is that when a quarterback escapes the pocket, the receivers should move back towards him to present easy throws. But the best quarterbacks outside the pocket are those like Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisberger, who can deliver the ball accurately down the field while on the move. These two have receivers who understand their quarterback’s strengths and know that they can break down the field when their quarterback eludes the rush. Even though Seattle’s receivers aren’t on the level of Antonio Brown or Jordy Nelson, they do have the intelligence to break deep when Wilson escapes.

The most underrated part of Wilson’s game is his arm strength. Because he is so small, people seem to assume he doesn’t have the ability to launch the ball sixty yards in the air. He absolutely does, and he throws one of the prettier deep balls in the league while on the run. If he is able to elude the pass rush, he can draw the eyes of the safeties, trapping them in place while Baldwin or Kearse breaks deep. If the safeties remain disciplined he can take it and run, but if they don’t he can throw it over their heads, creating the big plays needed to break this game open.

X Factor

There is one matchup in this game I haven’t touched on yet, and that is because I’m not sure who has the advantage. That matchup is Seattle’s offensive line against New England’s pass rush, and whoever wins it will likely be the side that controls the game. For neither team is this area a particular strength, but both have shown enough flashes of competence to convince themselves that they have the edge.

Seattle’s line is very strong in the running game, but even when healthy they have struggled protecting their quarterback. The Seahawks rank in the bottom half of the league in adjusted sack rate, and Wilson was pressured on nearly half of his dropbacks this season. This wasn’t entirely on the offensive line. Wilson holds the ball a long time, knowing he has the ability to escape and not trusting his receivers to create quick separation. And at times the pass protection has looked competent, especially when they’re fully healthy as they are now.

Against a team with an elite pass rush I would be worried about the Seahawks, but New England is not equipped to take advantage of this weakness. Their pass rush is incredibly one dimensional, relying almost entirely on edge pressure from Chandler Jones. When he was injured during the middle of the season they struggled to get pressure on the opposing quarterback, and at times this year their pass rush has utterly vanished when he’s had a bad game. Collins and Hightower showed some flashes on interior blitzes over the second half of the season, but if they want to get sustained pressure on the quarterback they will need Jones to play the game of his life.

Even if this happens, they may be in trouble when it comes to containing Wilson. Bringing him down often requires multiple rushers to defeat their blockers, and if he eludes the first defender he can usually escape the pocket and give his receivers time to separate downfield. 

There are a couple of ways New England can counter this. The first would be to try to generate pressure on blitzes, trusting their secondary to hold up in one on one situations. The concern about blitzes would be that they may open up holes to be attacked in the running game, leaving their safeties matched up one on one with Lynch or Wilson in the open field. They will have to take care to only run blitzes that maintain gap integrity, limiting their ability to be creative going after the passer.

The other possibility would be to put even more responsibility on the defender responsible for spying Wilson. If they trust Jones to at least force Wilson out of the pocket, they can use this as a key to tell their spy to attack in the backfield. There is the risk that the spy could get out of position and end up caught in the wash, but if they can fight their way through they can work as a sort of delayed blitz, pinning Wilson against the sideline and cutting off his ability to attack downfield.

If I had to guess what will happen here, I would say that Seattle has the edge. Wilson is just too dynamic for New England’s pass rush to contain, and the Patriots don’t have enough threats along their front to truly bother Seattle’s protection. New England can still pull this one out with a great performance from Jones and clever strategy from their coaches, but in the end I think Seattle will control the line of scrimmage well enough to hit several shots downfield.

Prediction Review: What I Got Wrong

On Tuesday I looked back at the predictions I made prior to the season, identifying which of my expectations actually came to pass. It was a short and rather uninteresting post, digging through the scraps for anything remotely accurate. Today’s post was a lot easier to write, encompassing a small portion of the things I was wrong about this season.

Playoffs

I’m happy to say that I won’t have to spend much time on the AFC. I slipped up giving Denver the top overall seed and projecting them to make it to the Super Bowl, but until injuries derailed Peyton Manning this was very much a possibility. The only other glaring error I made was in choosing the Dolphins as the second wild card team over the Bengals. Miami disappointed down the stretch for the second year in a row, and Cincinnati managed to hold together better than I expected despite the loss of their two coordinators. Both teams are on opposite tracks however, and I wouldn’t be surprised if my prediction comes true a year down the road.

The NFC is a different story. I picked the Saints to finish in the top seed and to advance to the playoffs, a horrid error that I will address farther down. They were only one of the four teams that I predicted to make the playoffs that failed to do so. The other division winner I got wrong was Philadelphia, a ten win team that just missed out on the playoffs. I picked them over the other three teams in the NFC East because I thought they would have the best defense, a defense that turned out even better than I expected. But their offense was a major letdown, hurt by injuries along the line and at quarterback. Some early season luck kept them in the race, but by the end of the season it was very clear that they were the second best team in their division.

My two wild card picks were utter disasters in San Francisco and Chicago. Both teams were hurt early by injuries, and both teams were destroyed late by off the field turmoil. Neither team was as bad as their performance suggested, but they were still probably not playoff worthy teams. 

The two teams that made it in their place were two I expected to take a major step back this season. Arizona succeeded where I thought they would fail thanks to a brilliant coaching job by head coach Bruce Arians and defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, now the head coach of the Jets. Preseason injuries left me concerned that their defense wouldn’t be able to hold up, and this unit suffered only more injuries as the year went on. But they kept playing through, and even their disaster at quarterback couldn’t stop them from making it into the playoffs. Their season just goes to show how valuable coaching can be in the NFL. Teams like Chicago faced adversity and crumbled beneath it. The Cardinals seemed to grow stronger with each new obstacle thrown in front of them.

The final team to make the NFC playoffs was one I was really, really wrong about. I picked the Lions to finish last in the NFC North and to not even sniff the postseason. I expected their offense to fall off with the acquisition of head coach Jim Caldwell, and I wasn’t totally wrong. But their defense was a revelation, finally putting together the pieces of the dominant defensive line they’ve built over the past five seasons. How Teryl Austin isn’t a head coach is beyond me, but he’ll have his work cut out for him next year with the likely loss of Ndamukong Suh and the possible departure of Nick Fairley. He got excellent production out of the back seven, but it will be a different matter next season without the monsters controlling the game up front.

Coach Firings

Of the eight coaches I predicted would be fired, four remain with their teams. I touched on Marvin Lewis and Tom Coughlin earlier this week. They were risky choices that didn’t up panning out, but I wasn’t wrong in predicting anything other than how the people running the teams would respond. Both coaches could easily be out of a job now, and I don’t think either will hang around much longer.

The other two I missed were vastly different cases. I thought Jeff Fisher might lose his job in St Louis, but I wasn’t particularly surprised that they ended up sticking with him. His greatest skill is the ability to just hang around, miring in mediocrity not quite bad enough to earn the wrath of the fans or ownership. I don’t know when he’ll leave St Louis. I don’t know if he’ll leave St Louis. He’s like some unkillable movie monster, coming back year after year to lead his team to a 7-9 record.

The other coach I predicted would be fired was Jason Garrett, and I was not alone in this prediction. Everyone expected a miserable season from Dallas, and everyone expected Jerry Jones would let Garrett leave when his contract expired at the end of the year. But the Cowboys surprised everyone by winning the division on the strength of one of the best offenses in the league. The offensive success wasn’t a surprise, but the competence they found on defense was what I didn’t see coming. I expected this team to miss the playoffs thanks to a historically bad defense, and if I’d been told they would be just slightly below average I would have called them making the playoffs and Garrett keeping his job. The credit really goes to defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli, but Garrett deserves some recognition for making the smart decision to promote him this past offseason.

There were a few coach firings I didn’t see coming. John Fox caught everyone out of nowhere, and before the year no one expected Chicago and San Francisco to be as miserable as they were. Just missing the playoffs for these two teams probably wouldn’t have been enough to cost Marc Trestman and Jim Harbaugh their jobs. They needed true years from hell in order to justify these firings, and that was what they got. I still don’t agree with either decision, but I at least see the logic in them. That wasn’t something I would have expected at the beginning of the year.

Awards

Yeah, this was ugly. I predicted seven awards and didn’t come particularly close to getting any of them right. I did mention Aaron Rodgers as a contender for MVP and Offensive Player of the Year, including him among Drew Brees and Peyton Manning as the top contenders. Rodgers was the one I didn’t give the award to, choosing Brees as MVP and Manning as Offensive Player of the Year. Both of these quarterbacks had very good seasons, but the struggles of the Saints and Manning’s injury issues ruined any chance of them claiming these awards.

I was also wrong with my projection of Comeback Player of the Year. This is a difficult award to predict, requiring a lot of guesswork about how players will recover from injuries. I chose Geno Atkins over Julio Jones because I thought it would be easier to return at a position like defensive tackle than at wide receiver. I was wrong. Atkins was a shell of his former self for most of the season, while Jones was arguably the top receiver in the league.

There were a few other awards I got wrong, and they will be addressed later on. There is just one more I need to talk about here, and that is Defensive Rookie of the Year. I selected Ryan Shazier, a freak athlete who was slated to start in Pittsburgh from day one. He did, and he showed a lot of potential before suffering an injury in Week Three. When he came back late in the year he had trouble readjusting to a starting role, and his rookie year has to be considered a lost season. It would have been smarter to go with someone like Aaron Donald or Khalil Mack, both of whom I was high on prior to the season. But I thought that Shazier playing middle linebacker in Pittsburgh would draw more attention than those other two. Had he stayed healthy, this might have happened.

Team Specific

Tennessee: “(Bishop) Sankey is a reasonable pick for Offensive Rookie of the Year.”

I didn’t pick Sankey to win Offensive Rookie of the Year, but I thought he would be in the running. Coming out of college I saw an elusive and versatile running back with little in his way of claiming the starting role for the Titans. I expected him to contribute both as a runner and a receiver, and I expected him to pile up yards from scrimmage. But he never really found his way in Tennessee, stuck in a running back quagmire with Shonn Greene and Dexter McCluster. He ended up leading the team in rushing yards but still finished only twelfth among rookies in yards from scrimmage, never sniffing contention for the award.

Detroit: “(Eric) Ebron has the skills and the talent to make him a perfect fit for their offensive system.”

I still love Ebron’s talent, and I think he will eventually be a fantastic player. But his rookie year did very little to impress. Even as Detroit’s offense struggled he couldn’t find his way onto the field, and when he was on the field he had issues with blocking (as expected) and drops (less expected.) He ended the year with only 25 receptions for 248 yards and a single touchdown. Part of the blame has to go to head coach Jim Caldwell, who managed to kill one of the league’s most dangerous offenses even more effectively than he did Baltimore’s in 2013. It will take Ebron some time and possibly a coaching change, but his pure ability will emerge sooner or later.

New England: “Maybe the decline of age that everyone has been expecting from Peyton Manning has caught Tom Brady first.”

Right around Week Four this seemed like a good prediction. A few months later, Tom Brady is playing in his sixth Super Bowl while Peyton Manning is mulling retirement. Brady still isn’t putting up the earth shattering numbers he had three or four years ago, and I still think it has to do with something more than just the receiving talent that surrounds him. Age is slowly catching up with him, but he and the Patriots coaching staff are smart enough to know how to minimize his shortcomings, something the Broncos couldn’t figure out how to do when Manning suffered his injuries.

Baltimore: “Most of those players are gone now—Suggs and Ngata are still around, but they are shells of their former selves—and they’ve had little success finding their replacements up front.

By the end of the year Baltimore’s secondary was a disaster, but they still managed to make a short playoff run thanks to the strength of their front seven, which I thought would be the weakness of their defense. Both Suggs and Ngata had nice bounceback seasons, and they got better than expected contributions from young players like Pernell McPhee and CJ Mosley. But the best player in their front this year was Elvis Dumervil, someone I consistently underrate and occasionally even forget about. I didn’t think it was a huge deal when he escaped Denver and ended up in Baltimore a couple offseasons ago, but now I find myself wondering how the landscape of the league would be different if not for the bizarre technical difficulties that led to his release.

Seattle: “There have to be concerns about a running back in his late twenties who has taken as much of a pounding as (Marshawn) Lynch has.”

I thought Seattle’s running game would fall off this year like San Francisco’s did. Seattle had the best running offense in the league by DVOA. I’m so, so stupid.

The Saints

Now we come to it, the heart and soul of everything I was wrong about. When I made my prediction at the beginning of the year, I went all in on New Orleans. It wasn’t an actively conscious decision. I thought they would be very successful this year, and I thought that their success would lead to a playoff berth and awards recognition. When I got to the end of my predictions and looked over the choices I made, I realized that I had chosen the Saints for just about everything. I had no problem with this at the time.

Here is the list of everything I projected for the Saints, everything I got wrong: NFC South title, top overall seed in the NFC, berth in the Super Bowl, MVP for Drew Brees, Coach of the Year for Sean Payton, Offensive Rookie of the Year for Brandin Cooks, and—most wretchedly wrong of all—Defensive Player of the Year for Kenny Vaccaro.

Hindsight makes everyone look bad, but my prediction of the Saints season reached another level of idiocy and incompetence. The Saints finished the year 7-9, and none of their players or coaches will sniff an end of year award. It was a hellish season of misery for all their fans, but I think the greatest suffering was done by my predictions.

The dropoff in the team’s performance was shocking, but in retrospect it probably shouldn’t have been. The Saints have had a prolific offense ever since Brees and Payton arrived in town, and the issue over the years has always been on defense. Last season they put together a surprisingly strong performance on that side of the ball, and I expected them to only get better this year, an expectation I now realize was built on faulty logic. When units make as massive a jump as the Saints defense from 2012 to 2013, they usually regress the following year. And as I wrote about earlier this season, defensive performance is much less stable than offensive. The Saints defense was not as good as it looked last season, and it was not in position to take the next step I expected.

This led to the most glaring error among all my predictions. Defensive Player of the Year was one of the most difficult awards to predict, and in the end I made the completely wrong decision. I strongly considered going with JJ Watt but decided it was boring to just pick the league’s best defensive player to win the award. That’s mildly defendable, but the decision to choose Vaccaro over him is not. My profoundly stupid logic was that the award had been won the previous two seasons by a second year player taking a massive leap, and as I expected the Saints defense to improve drastically it seemed reasonable to choose Vaccaro as the player to do so this year. By the end of the season Vaccaro had been benched and Watt had run away with the award. When I make predictions next year, I’ll probably be smart enough just to choose the best player.

The other awards were bad as well, but they are at least slightly defensible. MVP is the one category that was somewhat close. If the rest of the team hadn’t been awful, Brees might have had a shot. He didn’t perform at the same high level he normally does, but his stats look worse than his performance because he was often forced to take risks he normally wouldn’t because of game situations. Better defensive performances would have allowed him to front run like other top quarterbacks, and his numbers would have come close to matching Rodgers’s

Sean Payton as Coach of the Year was kind of a throw in, an attempt to pick an award that can be pretty much random. The real mistake was choosing Brandin Cooks as Offensive Rookie of the Year. Everyone loved Cooks coming into this season, seeing his as the perfect situation for a rookie receiver. A great quarterback, a smart coach who has shown the ability to make the most out of unique players, and a skillset that transitions well to the league. But Cooks never really took off, struggling to find a role before going down to a season ending injury. The actual Offensive Rookie of the Year will likely be Odell Beckham, who I was plenty wrong about as well.

This is the incredible thing about sports. I know more about the NFL than any reasonable person should. I watch hundreds of hours of football every year, and I spend even more time reading other people’s commentary about it. Yet when I made my predictions for the upcoming season, the only thing they served to do was make me look stupid. I’m sure I’ll make more predictions next year, and I’m sure I’ll get plenty of them wrong as well. I can’t wait to see how the 2015 season proves that I have no idea what the hell I’m talking about.

Prediction Review: What I Got Right

It is still another twelve days before the Super Bowl, and I’ve got more time to kill than I have stuff to write about. So I figured this would be a good time to look backwards rather than forwards and to wrap up the season. Before the year I made a number of predictions about the upcoming season—playoff teams, award winners, anything I could really think of to write down. Because I have still not yet mastered time travel, many of my predictions did not come true. I’ll get to those later this week—they’re more fun to write about anyway—but for now here is the short list of things that actually went as I predicted.

Playoff Picture

I’ll start with the NFC, because this will be pretty quick. I correctly pegged the Packers as the two seed, but the only other playoff team I predicted was Seattle, who I had as the third seed. Neither of these division winners was a surprise to anyone, though Seattle came on stronger than I expected as the year went along, after struggling some early on as I predicted.

I did better on the AFC side of things. While I didn’t get any specific seed right, I did have both Denver and New England earning first round byes. I also had Pittsburgh and Indianapolis as the other two division winners and Baltimore as a wild card team. Picking the Broncos, Patriots, and Colts to win their division was fairly easy, but the Steelers were a bit of a stretch prior to the season and even as the year went on. I called them to win a tight three way race in the AFC North, which is exactly what happened. Though I probably still should have put Cincinnati into the playoffs as the second wild card team. But this is about what I got right. I’ll have a lot more to say about the other things in my next piece.

Guarantees

I made a lot of predictions, but there was only one place where I used the word “guarantee”. I chose three teams from each conference and guaranteed they would not make the playoffs. The year has come and gone, and let’s see how I did with these predictions.

The first team I predicted wouldn’t make the playoffs was the easiest. The Oakland Raiders were bad at the beginning of the year, and they were bad at the end of the year. At no point did they have any hope of making the postseason. The other two AFC teams gave me a bit of a run for my money. Buffalo surprised everyone by going 9-7, and Kansas City did enough that they would have made the postseason if Baltimore and Houston had each lost just one more game. But both teams were ultimately limited by mediocre quarterbacking, as I predicted.

In the NFC, I made what in retrospect seems like an obvious choice in Tampa Bay. But at the beginning of the year this was the toughest of my guarantees, and I stand by my uncertainty. They have several very interesting pieces on offense, and it is still a mystery how their defense can be so terrible with Gerald McCoy and Lavonte David playing under Lovie Smith. Their quarterback and offensive line were every bit as bad as I expected, but they still shouldn’t have been bad enough to get the first overall pick.

St Louis was exactly what I thought they’d be, which wasn’t that much of a stretch considering it’s the same exact thing every Jeff Fisher coached team is. And since they’re bringing Fisher back next year, I’ll give you an extra early 2015 prediction by saying that St Louis will miss the playoffs while winning six, seven, or eight games. Enjoy stagnation, St Louis. Still better than what you’ll have once the Rams move to LA.

The final guarantee was one I got wrong, but I’m still going to count it as a win. The Carolina Panthers lost more games than they won this year, and under normal circumstances they wouldn’t have even sniffed the playoffs. No one could have predicted that the NFC South would be this bad, and even though they mildly exceeded my expectations I’m not going to say that I was wrong about the Panthers.

Coach Firings

I predicted eight coach firings. I got three or four right, depending on your definition of a firing. I called Mike Smith in Atlanta and Rex Ryan in New York, as did everyone. Dennis Allen in Oakland didn’t even last half a season.

A couple I took risks on didn’t go my way. Tom Coughlin and Marvin Lewis are two of the longer tenured coaches in the league, and I thought another year of failure might convince their teams to move on. The Giants were certainly a disappointment, and there were more than a few people calling for Coughlin to retire as I said he would. The Bengals surprised me by making the playoffs, but a first round exit shouldn’t be that different from a narrow miss. It’s probably time for Lewis to move on, but it looks like they’re giving him another year of mediocrity.

There is one other that I’m not sure whether to count as a success or a failure. Doug Marrone wasn’t fired, but he isn’t going to be the head coach of the Bills next year either. He made use of an opt out clause in his contract to escape after a surprisingly good season, when the Bills would have been happy to retain him. I based my prediction before the season on reports of conflict between him and the front office of the team, the conflict that ultimately led to his departure. Even though the end came from a different direction, I think predicting the dissolution of this partnership needs to be considered a success for me.

Awards

Yeah…I think I’m just going to come back to this one when I cover the things I got wrong later in the week.

Team Specific

Prior to the season I also broke down every division team by team. For each team I listed a thing to be excited about, a thing to be nervous about, a rookie to watch, a veteran to keep your eye on, and an overall prediction. I’m not going to break down each and every thing I wrote for each and every team, but here are some of the things that stood out as I was looking over my predictions.

Atlanta: “Cornerback may be the most difficult position to transition from college to the NFL, and even with (Desmond) Trufant’s success as a rookie he likely still has a lot of room to improve this year.”

Trufant was one of the best rookie cornerbacks in the league in 2013. In 2014 he was one of the best cornerbacks in the league period. On the rare occasion Atlanta’s defense found success, they did it because Trufant was locking down the receiver across from him. He was the best player on their defense, and sometimes it seemed like he was the only player on their defense. He should probably be a Pro Bowler this season, but that isn’t a big deal. He will have plenty of opportunities over the next ten years.

Minnesota: “They have enough talent that they can weather one bust, but anything more than that will cripple this team’s future.”

When writing about the Vikings I focused almost all my attention on the seven players selected in the first round over the past three years. These were the reason to be excited for the season, and many lived up to expectations. Harrison Smith continued his development into one of the best safeties in the league. Anthony Barr and Teddy Bridgewater put together fantastic rookie years. Most significantly, Sharrif Floyd and Xavier Rhodes developed from questionmarks into legitimate stars. But the other two remain concerns. Both Matt Kalil and Cordarrelle Patterson regressed this year, and they are both one bad season away from being declared busts. Losing out on these investments would do serious damage to Minnesota’s future, and they have to hope that 2015 works out better for these high picks than 2014.

Denver: “Even if their offense doesn’t perform at the same absurd level this season, their defense is good enough to carry them deep into the playoffs on its own.”

This isn’t my best prediction given how the season ended, but I think the performance of Denver’s defense over the course of the regular season speaks for itself. After a record breaking offensive performance in 2013, Denver completely overhauled their defense and put together a defensive unit that was actually better than the offensive. Free agents like Aqib Talib and DeMarcus Ware played a role, but the biggest factors were actually the players who got healthy, Von Miller and Chris Harris returning from devastating injuries to put together All Pro seasons.

San Francisco: “They still have the talent to go deep into the playoffs, but they are going to need Kaepernick to live up to the promise he has showed in his early career.”

I won’t claim I saw San Francisco’s collapse coming, but there were plenty of concerning signs prior to the year. Their defense was going to spend much of the season missing Navarro Bowman and Aldon Smith. Justin Smith was getting up there in years, as was Frank Gore on the offensive side. I thought that any success they had would be due to the development of Kaepernick, development that I wasn’t confident would happen. If anything Kaepernick regressed, which along with injuries and poor offensive line play led to the disaster of a season that befell them.

St Louis: “I would be stunned to see (Aaron Donald) finish with fewer than seven sacks, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he reached double digits.”

Donald finished with nine sacks, one short of double digits. He led all rookies in sacks, and you can make a strong case that he was the best defensive tackle in the league over the second half of the season. He will be in tight contention for Defensive Rookie of the Year, and there are plenty of people making strong cases that he should have been the first overall selection last year. Donald was every bit as good as I expected, and with him next to Robert Quinn the Rams may actually have something to be excited about once they drop Jeff Fisher.

Dallas: “An offensive lineman will never win Rookie of the Year, but I think by the end of the year there is a good chance that (Zack) Martin will deserve to be in that conversation.”

I didn’t expect Martin to be this good, but no one did. He was the first offensive guard to be selected as an All Pro player since 1934, and he performed well enough that he will probably end up receiving a couple votes for Offensive Rookie of the Year even in a stacked season. The transition from college tackle to NFL guard can be a challenge, but Martin did well enough that I expect several similar players like Brandon Scherff and La’el Collins to make the same transition next year.

Championship Preview

Green Bay Packers @ Seattle Seahawks

Packers Defense vs Seahawks Offense

There are some parallels that can be drawn between these units. Both play second fiddle to a superior and more notorious side of the ball, and both are better than they are given credit for. Green Bay’s defense has a lot of holes, but they have been able to hold up well enough for most of the year thanks to their front seven. Seattle’s offense relies on the combo of Russell Wilson and Marshawn Lynch, but they have some intriguing playmakers on the outside as well. On their own no one would be particularly impressed with these two units, but as complementary pieces they can lift a team to a championship level.

Green Bay’s strength defensively is along the front. Tramon Williams can make an occasional play, Ha Ha Clinton-Dix put together a solid rookie season, and Sam Shields is highly paid, but on the whole their secondary is more of a liability than anything else. They have managed to put together an above average pass defense thanks to the pressure they can get on the quarterback.

Clay Matthews is the most crucial piece of this defensive front, but they have improved this year thanks to the addition of Julius Peppers and the growth of Mike Daniels. This newfound versatility allowed them to make the high profile move of Matthews to inside linebacker. This hasn’t had the results in the running game that many had hoped, but it has given them the ability to attack with a more diverse pass rush, calling for some interior blitzes during early down situations to disrupt the opposing quarterback’s timing. They still bounce Matthews outside in most passing situations, and he probably spends more time playing on the edge than the interior these days. But the expansion of his role has given their defense much needed variety over the second half the season.

Their front seven is stronger against the pass than the run, and this is where Green Bay’s defense gets into trouble. They were abysmal against the run early in the year, allowing this Seahawks team to rush for over 200 yards in the season opener. Their numbers improved some late in the year, but that was mostly a product of playing miserable rushing attacks or in games where they had a lead from start to finish. They started strong against Dallas last week, but by the second half the Cowboys could get just about anything they wanted on the ground.

Seattle’s offensive line isn’t as good as Dallas’s, but their offense is set up to exploit Green Bay’s greatest weakness—tackling. Even when Packers defenders are in position to make a play, they aren’t always able to convert it. This is absolute death against a running back like Lynch. He’s lost a bit of a step this year, and he is no longer the consistent churner he’s been in the past. But when he is able to get past the front line of the defense he wreaks havoc in an opposing secondary. If the Packers aren’t able to contain Lynch in the box on a play by play basis, he will tear his way through the poor tackling defensive backs.

This game could easily develop into a blowout, and the only way Green Bay keeps Seattle’s offense from running away is if they get a little lucky. The Seahawks occasionally will go through a dry spell on offense, going a quarter or even a half without being able to consistently move the ball. So far they have always managed to bounce back late in the game, thanks to an explosive run from Lynch or a dynamic play by Wilson.

The Packers have to hope that Seattle comes out cold early on, giving Green Bay’s offense a chance to put a couple scores on the board. If they can play with a lead, they can limit the damage of the running game and become aggressive about attacking Wilson. The Seahawks don’t make a lot of mistakes, but if Green Bay can force a turnover they might have a chance to keep this a low scoring game. However, if Seattle’s offense comes out rolling to start the game, this could get out of hand very quickly.

Packers Offense vs Seahawks Defense

These are the two marquee units on the field this weekend, and this is where I think Seattle will win the game. If the Seahawks offense can put up points this game is essentially over, and even if Green Bay manages to contain them it will be an uphill battle. Over the past two months Seattle has had the best defense in the NFL, and the Green Bay offense they are facing is not the same one that tore through the league during the middle of the season.

This conversation begins, as all conversations about the Packers offense do, with Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers was the best quarterback in the league this season, and he will likely take home the MVP Award when it is announced in a couple weeks. During the middle of the season there was a stretch where he and this offense looked unstoppable. He came back to Earth somewhat in December, but he was still playing at a high enough level to carry his team as far as they needed to go.

But that was before his calf injury. No one had any idea how serious it was when he hurt it in Week Sixteen against the Buccaneers, and that uncertainty remained through a strange game against the Lions up until the beginning of last week. It was only in the first half of the game against the Cowboys that we realized just how much the injury was affecting him. Rodgers was not himself in the first half against Dallas, and even during his effective play in the second half it was clear there was something wrong with him. He missed several throws towards the sideline that he normally puts within inches of his target. He struggled moving to the line of scrimmage from one play to the next, hindering the Packers ability to run any sort of hurry up to keep the defense of balance. Most critically, he showed absolutely no ability to escape the pocket to make the plays that turn him from a very good quarterback into the best in the game.

The Packers won last week because Dallas has one of the worst pass rushes in the league. Against even league average pressure, Rodgers would have been torn to pieces. In the first half Dallas managed to get to him several times, but as the game wore on their inability to challenge the quarterback gave Rodgers the time he needed to pick them apart in the back end. Even on one leg Rodgers remains an intelligent and accurate passer, but the loss of mobility drops him to a Matt Ryan style player, capable of exploiting a defense if given time but incapable of making plays on his own.

If there is one matchup that will decide this game, it would be Seattle’s pass rush against Green Bay’s pass protection. The Packers offensive line is better than most people realize, especially when it comes to protecting the quarterback. Rodgers’s mobility has helped them a lot this year, but they did a fine job standing up against admittedly mediocre competition last week. Seattle’s pass rush is a completely different monster. They don’t have the depth they did last year, but Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril have stepped up their game late in the season. Bruce Irvin adds another threat off the blitz, and with their coverage on the back end they have plenty of time to get after the quarterback. Rodgers will be a sitting duck in the pocket, and he will fold if any pressure gets remotely close to him.

The burden falls to Green Bay’s wide receivers. If they are going to be able to pass the ball, the receivers need to create separation on their own. This is easier said than done against the best secondary in the league. We all know about Richard Sherman, but Byron Maxwell on the other side is an above average cornerback as well. He missed most of the game against the Panthers due to an illness, but he should return for the matchup with the Packers. This covers the one weakness exploited by Carolina, the mediocre play of Tharold Simon. The Panthers wide receivers were able to beat him repeatedly, and if he was forced to start again it’s a sure thing the Packers would have done the same. Now they will have to attack him as a nickel man in the slot, a position he is much more comfortable playing.

The only hope the Packers have is that they might be able to run the ball. Jonathan Stewart found some success against Seattle’s run defense, and he has a similar physical style to Eddie Lacy’s. Even with Rodgers hobbled the Seahawks will likely keep only six or seven players in the box, and their linebackers are built more for speed than for strength. Lacy won’t bust any big runs, but he may be able to chew out for or five yards consistently if Green Bay’s line can hold up against Seattle’s front.

The best case scenario for the Packers requires a dominant performance from their offensive line, some hard running from Lacy, and a disappearing act from Seattle’s offense. While not out of the question, it’s a bit hard to picture at this point. Fully healthy this would be a great matchup of the NFL’s best offense against the NFL’s best defense, but unless Rodgers makes a miraculous recovery I struggle to see the Packers reaching 20 points.

Indianapolis Colts @ New England Patriots

Colts Offense vs Patriots Defense

After seemingly years of pleading from fans and the media, it seems the Colts have finally given up on their running game. Over the past few seasons they have been stubbornly committed to the idea of a balanced offense, even though they have the best young quarterback in the league and a running back corps that could politely be called flotsam. But despite holding a lead for most of their two playoff games they’ve called passes on 92 of their 141 plays, a ratio that would have ranked as the fourth most pass heavy in the league this year.

The weight of scoring will fall onto Andrew Luck, and he will have his work cut out for him against one of the best secondaries in the league. In their two games against New England over the past two seasons the Colts scored a total of 42 points. Luck threw four interceptions against the Patriots in the playoffs last year, and he threw another during their regular season meeting earlier this year.

New England has managed to stifle Luck without being able to get much pressure on him. They sacked him three times in their victory last year but only once earlier this season, and I don’t expect they’ll have much more success this week. The Patriots pass rush has improved since the return of Chandler Jones from injury, but this is still a below average unit going against an offensive line that has played very well when fully healthy.

In order to stop the Colts the Patriots will need to match up with them on the outside. It will be very interesting to watch how they manage the matchups. Over the course of the season—most notably against the Colts themselves—the Patriots have played their cornerbacks based on matchups. But rather than matching their best against the opponent’s best, they will usually put Darelle Revis on the second best receiver and double team the top target. Revis followed Reggie Wayne the first time these teams played this season, while the combination of a second cornerback and a safety over the top contained TY Hilton.

This is the ideal matchup against a pair of wide receivers like those in Indianapolis. Revis might not have the physical skills to chase Hilton anymore, but his mastery of technique can match a clever veteran like Wayne. This worked very well for them the first time around, but I’m not convinced they’ll do it again. Wayne’s production has fallen off as the season has gone along, and he had only a single reception over their two playoff games. Luck has begun utilizing his tight ends more, trusting Coby Fleener down the field and Dwayne Allen as a dumpoff option. Allen missed most of the game the first time they played, and Fleener struggled with inconsistency until late in the year. Add in the development of Donte Moncrief, and this is a much deeper receiving corps than the last time these teams played.

If the Colts ever get Revis matched up in single coverage on Hilton, it is the perfect opportunity to hit a big play. They will need to take advantage of these opportunities when they present themselves, and Luck can’t afford to make any mistakes. Interceptions have been an issue throughout his career, and even last week against the Broncos he threw a pair of ill advised deep passes that turned into picks. The interceptions haven’t proven costly yet this season, but the Patriots will make him pay if he does this against them. He has to walk a fine line between being aggressive and being smart, and he has to hope to get a little lucky. If he can play at the level he was at early in the season, when he torched opposing defenses without surrendering the ball, the Colts can absolutely score enough points to win this game.

Colts Defense vs Patriots Offense

The Colts offense has had some struggles against the Patriots the past two times these teams faced each other. Their defense has been simply terrible. In both games the Patriots went over 40 points, and in both games they had a running back eclipse 150 yards. Last year in the playoffs it was LeGarrette Blount, running for 166 yards and four touchdowns. Earlier this year Jonas Gray matched that touchdown number and made it all the way to 200 yards.

Stopping the run has been the biggest problem for the Colts against the Patriots, and you have to assume that’s how New England will try to attack them. The Patriots did not hand off the ball a single time in the second half against the Ravens, but it would shock no one if they reversed that and went run heavy this week. The one problem will be the possible absence of starting center Bryan Stork. If he is unable to play, they will not just have to shuffle around players on the rest of their line. They will also be limited in their ability to play with six offensive linemen as they did so effectively against the Colts the past two years. Last week against Baltimore they ran several high profile plays with only four linemen on the field, but these were gimmicks that the Colts should be able to adjust to this week. More likely than not, the Patriots will be forced to work with just the standard five man line.

There is another reason for the Colts to be optimistic. After their disastrous playoff performance against New England last season, the Colts went out in free agency and brought in run stuffing defensive lineman Arthur Jones from Baltimore to bolster their front. Jones didn’t play in the first game between these teams, and it is fair to wonder how his presence might have affected Jonas Gray’s production. Going against a banged up offensive line for a team that has been inconsistent running the ball this season, I don’t think we’ll see a repeat of these performances from Indianapolis’s run defense.

It is difficult to know what to expect from the Colts pass defense against the Patriots if they can stop the run, because we simply haven’t seen it over the past two years. Brady’s combined statistics don’t look great—32/55 for 455 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions—but he hasn’t been asked to shoulder much of a load against them. He also played last year’s game without his most dangerous weapon Rob Gronkowski, who absolutely shredded the Colts in their game earlier this year.

There is reason to think that Indianapolis might be able to pose problems for New England’s defense. I expected Baltimore to present issues last week thanks to the pressure created by their front seven, and that was absolutely the case in the first half. But in the second half New England adjusted, turning to a bunch of quick passes to beat the dangerous pass rush. On passes thrown in under two seconds Brady was an insane 22/22 for 209 yards and three touchdowns. These quick timing routes have always been the strength of his game, and against Baltimore’s brutal secondary they were all he needed to get his team over the top.

In a lot of ways the Colts defense is a complete opposite of Baltimore’s. They don’t generate much pressure on the quarterback, but their secondary plays excellent coverage across the field, led in particular by cornerback Vontae Davis. They shut down the Broncos offense last week by playing press man coverage across the board, daring Peyton Manning to beat them deep. A similar strategy would be smart against New England in this game. Brady isn’t suffering from injuries as Manning was, but the deep pass has been the weakness of the Patriots offense all season long. If the Colts can disrupt the timing throws and get Brady off rhythm, they can stymie New England’s attack.

This game will be closer than most people expect, and it is not absurd to imagine the Colts pulling off the upset. They have the better quarterback, and they have a defense that could cause problems if they manage to stop the run. But I still think the Patriots will win, thanks to their major advantage in coaching. Chuck Pagano is a good motivator who gets his players to give their best, but he isn’t an innovator in the way Belichick is. The Patriots will come out and do something we don’t expect, and the Colts will always be a step behind when it comes time to adjust. This doesn’t mean that Indianapolis can’t win. It just means they have to do a lot on the field in order to make up for this disadvantage.