How to stymie the Patriots' offense in Super Bowl 52

What will the Patriots do to try to beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl?

Remember when many fans were mailing it in on the 2017 season after losing to the Seahawks, looking terrible in a victory over the Raiders, and watching the terrible Giants put up 434 yards and 29 points on us? 

In the playoff-victory jubilation, we've forgotten about that.

But the Patriots haven't.

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Brady and Belichick will be studying the games in which the Eagles didn't do so well--as well as the games in which they did--scouring the film for tendencies, strengths, weaknesses, and other clues about how to beat this team. 

Nobody's invincible. It's just a matter of finding those weaknesses, and being able to exploit them. And our team's weaknesses are there for anyone to see, including my favorite football analyst: Brett Kollmann.

In his most recent video, Kollmann breaks down how teams beat the Eagles' defense this season, and how Atlanta did a terrible job of taking advantage of our secondary's aggressiveness and tendency to rely on zone coverage in the red zone. Take a look for yourself: 

In the Super Bowl, I fully expect to see the Patriots employ a variety of short slants and quick outs from shotgun at the beginning of the game. Brady has demonstrated for over 15 years that he can hit those quick passes all day long, and he will do so on Feb. 4.

The Pats will be happy to dink-and-dunk down the field early on, in order to bludgeon the Eagles' defense with its own aggressiveness later on.

That is, when the corners and safeties get frustrated at surrendering all those short completions and methodical chain-moving drives, they'll start trying to jump the routes and intercept the ball. And that's when the Patriots will strike.

Their response will be to:

• Line up in the same formations that they've been using to throw the quick passes. This will probably be a shotgun formation with a single back and 3 receivers split out wide. 
• Then, send Brandin Cooks and Philip Dorsett deep on double-moves like the sluggo or in-n-up routes, while sending the third receiver (think Amendola) on a shallow crosser or in route. Possibly the tight end as well.
• If the Eagles show single coverage on Cooks or Dorsett, throw it up to one of them, and the result will probably be either a big completion, or a pass-interference flag that's just as good.
• Since our corners, especially Jalen Mills, aren't that fast, the only hope they have of stopping speedsters like Cooks and Dorsett is to hold them. And that'll draw flags every time, especially against New England.

That's game-planning at its finest, and you just know that Belichick and the Patriots will do everything they can to set up this kind of scenario!

I also expect to see some 'rub' concepts (in case you didn't know, this involves receivers almost running into one another on their routes, in the hope/expectation that defenders will collide and at least one receiver will get completely free of coverage). This will help the Patriots' offense determine whether the Eagles' defense has adjusted to address their weaknesses against rub routes and double-moves. And if the Eagles are still vulnerable to these concepts, expect to see them all. game. long.

Just watch the game. Look for it. It'll happen.

Guaranteed.

What's not guaranteed is whether the Eagles will be ready for it. Belichick, along with his trusted advisor and confidant Ernie Adams, may well be the best coach in history at spotting opponents' tendencies and taking advantage of them. Philly has put up plenty of tape over the past 2 years showcasing this vulnerability. It's too juicy NOT to exploit. 

Jim Schwartz and the defensive coaching staff absolutely must self-scout, identify these same weaknesses, and figure out how to combat them.

Easier said than done, but there are a couple solutions:

• One is to change these tendencies. Run a number of drills in practice that are designed to teach players to remain disciplined; defensive backs and linebackers must not be too quick to react to a receiver's moves, until the ball actually leaves Brady's hand! 
• Another is to show blitz, but then bail out into coverage. If Brady's focused on determining who's blitzing, that may throw him off just enough to delay his ability to read the coverage, or to make him throw a little quicker than he wants to. And if everyone drops into coverage, that might close a zone that Brady was expecting to be vacant.
  
  It's Brady, and he's seen everything at this point, so that's probably not going to affect him too much. But it's worth a shot, and a nice bonus is that doing this several times could set Brady up to think that we're not actually going to blitz (which would tie in nicely with Schwartz's philosophical opposition to blitzing, which--again--the Pats are definitely aware of!), so that we can actually get him with a blitz later.
• Other options include: play more press coverage to throw off the timing of the routes, and use coverages that mix zone and man, to make it harder for Brady and for the receivers to get a bead on what type of coverage the Eagles are using. Miscommunications like this may result in incompletions, or even interceptions!

The Eagles' defense will absolutely have to change something about their tendencies. If they continue to do exactly what they've done all year, Brady will carve up this defense like a Thanksgiving turkey!

If you let Brady play head games on his own terms, he will win...

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