The New England Patriots generally are prepared for anything, and we can boil down their Super Bowl approach to the Seattle Seahawks in two ways: Their attack if Seattle goes to man-to-man coverage, and their attack for the Seahawks’ “Cover 3” zone.
When we look at how the Patriots might try to beat Seattle's fantastic “Cover 3," we’ll see ways the Patriots can get tight end Rob Gronkowski open. It’s obvious Gronkowski is a huge part of this game.
Seattle’s foundation is the “Cover 3,” in which three defensive backs are responsible for a deep third of the field. But they’ve used a lot of man this season as well. They used man a lot against Green Bay in the NFC championship game, but that might have been because they were behind and needed to get a little more aggressive. Either way, New England will have a plan.
Against man-to-man coverage
The Patriots are really, really good in the pass game when it comes to shifts, motions, stack release and bunch concepts. They’ll move around a lot to get to routes that can beat man coverage. They put stress on a defense with all their pre-snap movement and formations.
You can get a good look at this from the AFC championship game. Julian Edelman is split wide, comes in motion, and you can see how that affects the Colts’ man-to-man coverage on him. It creates some confusion. Cornerbacks Greg Toler and Darius Butler communicate anticipating some kind of bunch/stack concept as Edelman comes in motion.
Edelman runs an initial inside stem as if he’s going to run a drive route with a natural rub element (theoretically picking off Edelman's defender with another Patriots receiver's route), and then was open when he cut outside. It’s a great concept against man.
The Patriots won’t just run isolation routes believing Edelman or any receiver will beat Richard Sherman. The Patriots don’t play offense that way.
It wouldn’t surprise me to see the Patriots use tight splits to get the Seahawks to back off or play zone. To get them in a predictable coverage. When you line receivers up close to each other before the snap, the defense has to back off. You can’t press against receivers with tight splits, so maybe that forces the Seahawks to play their “Cover 3.” The Patriots would have a plan to attack that, then.
Against “Cover 3” zone
The Seahawks might just feel that if the Patriots want to do a lot of formations and movement before the snap, they’ll let them do it and just sit back in their zone. The Seahawks are a very good defense, but they’re an execution defense. They don’t get very complicated. They could even squeeze the “Cover 3” toward the line of scrimmage because the Patriots don’t have a real deep threat. And if the Seahawks are in zone, the shifts and motions don’t matter because they’ll just match up when you come in their area of responsibility. That would take away from the Patriots what is theoretically a strength for them, the concepts to beat man coverage.
What then for the Patriots? Let’s look at two plays that beat the Seahawks’ “Cover 3” for touchdowns. Both touchdowns were by tight ends.
In Week 3 against Denver, (you might recall this one; I reviewed it after the game) the Broncos beat the “Cover 3” with a Demaryius Thomas post route followed by tight end Jacob Tamme’s out-and-up route.
Then in Week 14 against Philadelphia, Eagles tight end Zach Ertz ran a similar post-wheel route combination with Riley Cooper on the outside, got a one-on-one matchup against outside linebacker K.J. Wright and beat him for a 35-yard score.
The route combination concept is fairly simple. You put pressure on the cornerback and his deep third responsibility by running a post route at him and having another receiver run a route into the vacated space. It distorts the coverage responsibilities in the zone. It’s easy to imagine the Patriots running something similar with Gronkowski, at least to see how Seattle will play it.
This season the Patriots have done a lot more movement with Gronkowski. He aligns all over the formation, and that creates matchups for him and others. Maybe if Gronkowski lines up to Richard Sherman’s side, they’ll try to get a receiver like Brandon LaFell against Wright. The Patriots will surely probe early in the game to see how Seattle is playing them out of certain alignments and adjust accordingly.
The big question is how the Patriots will view this game. Will they try to run the ball, and commit to it with six offensive linemen sets and a lot of LeGarrette Blount? And how might they adjust as the game goes on? It’s hard to know for sure – the Patriots are never predictable – but there will be a lot of strategic elements between two great coaching staffs during this Super Bowl.
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NFL analyst and NFL Films senior producer Greg Cosell watches as much NFL game film as anyone. Throughout the season, Cosell will join Shutdown Corner to share his observations on the teams, schemes and personnel from around the league.
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