In approaching preview pieces I often try and place myself into the minds of the various coordinators in each game. What will keep me up at night? What are our assets? What are the other team’s weaknesses? What advantages can we press, and what would we need to do to shore up our liabilities? Almost crawling into the mind of Westley from “The Princess Bride.”
Some weeks that is harder than others, as when one must figure out how to stop the Chiefs’ offense:
Hell if I know. pic.twitter.com/VJPMj03l9X
— Mark Schofield (@MarkSchofield) September 30, 2020
On Wednesday morning, I tried to crawl into the mind of Bill Belichick. I drew up a rather standard formation and alignment from the Kansas City Chiefs on the whiteboard in my office and began to think.
Hours later I had yet to come up with an answer.
Yet that is the task that the game’s foremost defensive mind faces this week. How do you stop – or at least slow down – one of the game’s most dangerous offenses? An offense that has weapons everywhere, and still managed to throw touchdowns passes last week to a fullback and an offensive tackle?
After pouring through some of Belichick’s past game plans, including games against these Chiefs, I have some potential – potential – answers.
Dare them to run
Prior to Super Bowl XXV, the defensive coordinator of the New York Giants stood in front of his charges. A group of men who prided themselves on tough defensive football, and stopping the run. A group of defensive players who were proud when they limited opposing rushing attacks to less than 100 yards in a game.
That defensive coordinator told them that the only way to beat the Buffalo Bills was to let Thurman Thomas rush for over 100 yards.
He was met with incredulity.
“I thought it was a collective brain fart, like, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’” linebacker Carl Banks said a year later, via Michael Eisen of nyfootball.net. “I think because we were a team that prided itself defensively on not giving up hundred-yard rushers, not even giving up 100-yard games for a total offensive rush stat. But he said it, we are all in an uproar, and we’re thinking Bill is just conceding that Thurman is just this good of a football player that we won’t be able to stop him. And then he reeled us back in and kinda gave us a method to the madness.”
But Belichick’s game plan did have a method. As he said later:
Thurman Thomas is a great back. We knew he was going to get some yards. But I didn’t feel like we wanted to get into a game where they threw the ball 45 times. I knew if they had some success running the ball, they would stay with it. And I always felt when we needed to stop the run, we could stop it. And the more times they ran it, it was just one less time they could get it to [Andre] Reed or get it to [James] Lofton, or throw it to Thomas, who I thought was more dangerous as a receiver, because there’s more space than there was when he was a runner.
There indeed was a method to the madness. If the Bills kept the football on the ground, then they were not letting Jim Kelly carve them up in the passing game with quick throws, or hitting them over the top on deep shot plays for quick scoring drives. Better to grind the game out, and to do so dare them to run the football. Dare we call Belichick the grandfather of “running backs don’t matter…?”
That is the first step in Belichick’s thought process this week. Every time #15 turns to hand the football off is a win for the New England Patriots, because that is one less time that Patrick Mahomes has a chance to beat you over the top for a one-play scoring drive.
This is something that Belichick has done before when facing Andy Reid and the Mahomes-led Chiefs. How? By employing a 3-2-6 defensive package. Even in the red zone. Even on the goal line.
Even on 3rd and 1.
This play is from their regular season meeting a few years ago. Kansas City faces a 3rd and 1 and the Patriots come out with a 3-2-6 defensive package, using safety Patrick Chung as a joker-type player, dropping him down into a linebacker’s alignment. Up front they use a 4i-0-3 defensive formation, and they bring Kyle Van Noy down over the tight end. Once more, provided the players up front are disciplined, they can stop the run. Here, Van Noy strings out the toss play to Tyreek Hill and then gets help from the boundary player, and the run is stopped for no gain.
Dare them to run.
From that same game:
This is a 2nd and goal play. The Patriots employ a 3-3-5 package on this snap, even in the red zone, and they use a 4i-0-4i defensive front. You can see how the players up front attack their gaps and force Kareem Hunt to cut in the backfield, where he runs into Van Noy and Elandon Roberts. Van Noy keeps his outside leverage which forces Hunt back into the hole, and Roberts fills the hole for the stop.
Dare them to run.
The names may be different, but the premise is the same. Every time that #15 hands the ball off is a win for the defense. As Belichick said after Super Bowl XXV: “And I always felt when we needed to stop the run, we could stop it.”
Of course, Reid might not comply. So you better have an answer in the secondary.
Scheming the secondary
And the reason that Reid might not comply is because he has Mahomes. And Travis Kelce. And Hill, and Mecole Hardman and Sammy Watkins and Demarcus Robinson and yes Clyde Edwards-Helaire.
So when the Chiefs put the football in the air, how will Belichick try and slow down this passing game? With a combination of matchups and coverages.
The Patriots have built their defense in a way that enables them to play matchups in the secondary. Beyond Gilmore, one of the best cornerbacks in the league, they have players like Devin McCourty, J.C. Jackson, Jason McCourty, Jonathan Jones, Joejuan Williams, Adrian Phillips and Kyle Dugger. A lot of talent and a lot of ways to handle matchups in the secondary.
One common tool Belichick employs is a bit counter-intuitive, but it is something he has done for years: Take his best coverage player, put him on the offense’s second receiver, and leave him on an island. Last year when these teams squared off in the regular season that meant a lot of Gilmore on Watkins, left on an island, trusting that his top CB will handle the assignment.
When he does, that now gives you a big numbers advantage on the rest of the receivers. Even bigger if you are doing it out of a 3-2-6 or even a 1-3-7 package like the Patriots used at times.
This is an example of this in action. This is a 3rd and 9 from the first quarter of that regular season meeting last year. The Chiefs come out with Mahomes in the shotgun and the Patriots respond with that 1-3-7 package, and Gilmore on an island over Watkins.
Kansas City runs a crossing route concept, with Hill and Robinson racing by each other from opposite sides of the field, but it is J.C. Jackson who comes down with the interception:
How did this come about? The Patriots use that 1-3-7 package and leave Gilmore on an island at the top of the screen against Watkins. Then they implement a Belichick/Nick Saban coverage known as 1-Cross, which is a Cover 1 coverage that uses a safety as a robber right at the first down marker, in this case Devin McCourty:
What is the impact of this coverage on the play? When Mahomes drops he sees Hill racing across the field from right to left, towards Devin McCourty, with Jonathan Jones in coverage. He then assumes that Hill is going to run into a manufactured double-coverage, so his eyes come to Robinson in his crossing route working from the left, with Jackson in single-coverage:
There is one more twist coming. Because Jones, instead of running with Hill as Mahomes expects, simply passes him off to McCourty and peels back to become the robber. This creates the double-team, but not the one Mahomes expected:
Now, Jones stays over the top of Robinson, which allows Jackson to cut underneath the receiver and make the interception.
This works because Belichick trusts McCourty, as well as the rest of the secondary. Gilmore is stride-for-stride with Watkins on that vertical route, and Jones/Jackson execute their ends of the bargain to perfection.
Another common means of handling the Chiefs, at least on paper, is to play zone coverage and try to keep everything in front of you. That is what the Patriots did on this play, dropping into a Cover 2 look and forcing a checkdown to LeSean McCoy:
Now, with dedicated safety help to both sides of the field, Belichick is comfortable with whatever matchups are created. At the bottom of the screen you see Gilmore on Hill. Belichick might not rely on that matchup in man coverage situations, but he is okay with it provided there is safety help over the top.
We have not talked about defending the tight end too much, so I will highlight something on both of these clips. In the first example Kelce is in a wing to the right, and on this second example he is in a Y-Iso alignment on the left. On both plays, the Patriots jam him off the line, forcing him to delay his release downfield. This is something Belichick will do and do often, especially with Kelce. The first time that Mahomes faced Belichick, he threw a disasterous interception in the end zone right before halftime.
Here’s that play, and then how it happened:
If you notice on this play, Dont’a Hightower aligns on Kelce who is detached from the tackle and chips him on the TE’s release. Then, the Patriots bracket Kelce with Chung using outside leverage and Duron Harmon playing him to the inside. Mahomes is flushed from the pocket (in part by Hightower) and still looks for his tight end, and the pass is intercepted.
These little wrinkles are where that light front comes in to play against the pass. Not only do you dare the offense to run, but if they decide to throw, you have the numbers advantage to do things like this on the second- and third-levels of the defense. You can jam tight ends off the line. You can play Cover 2 or Cover 2 Man Under. You can keep the numbers in your favor, keep things in front of you, and force Mahomes to either sustain and execute on long drives.
Will it work?
This is the critical question.
Honestly, I do not know.
Now look, the Chiefs have been beaten before, including by these New England Patriots and Belichick. This is not an unstoppable offensive force. But in preparing for his piece I floated some potential means of stopping them by some people smarter than me in various Twitter group chats. Yes, even the football group chats are nerdy. Here’s the answer I came up with:
I mean if you can stop the run while playing a 3-2-6 or 4-1-6 you might have a shot. You need someone who can cover Kelce man to man, someone who can cover the RB out of the backfield, and still play potentially two-high looks in the secondary to help against Hill/Hardman on the vertical stuff.
The first response to that cut to the almost absurdity of the idea:
Big “we’re +2 in the box, +1 to the field, and +1 to the boundary” defensive coordinator energy on that one.
The response was a riff on a tweet from @alltwentytwo on Twitter, one of the best accounts on that website. But it does highlight how yeah, on paper you can structure something that gives you advantages at every level of the field, but it might be hard to implement in the real world.
Especially against this group.
So I return to how we started:
Hell if I know. pic.twitter.com/VJPMj03l9X
— Mark Schofield (@MarkSchofield) September 30, 2020
It seems too daunting, but for some amusing responses feel free to click through that thread.
Two teams that came close are the Los Angeles Chargers two weeks ago, and the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl. They got pressure with four, played zone coverage to keep things in front of them, and it worked.
But not for sixty minutes. Because the difficulty of playing against this offense is that you have to be perfect for sixty minutes. Not fifty, not fifty-five, but sixty. It takes just one mistake and they will make you pay.
It can be done, and Belichick will likely try by lightening up the box, playing sub packages, using Cover 1 Cross and Cover 2 and putting Gilmore on Watkins and jamming Kelce off the line, but it has to work for sixty minutes. Complicating things further is that you can do your darndest to lock down the receivers in the secondary, jam the tight end, and constrict the throwing lanes for Mahomes, only to see the quarterback simply hit Edwards-Helaire on a checkdown working against underneath zones or linebackers in coverage.
Because Reid has a weapon this season that the Patriots have not seen before. Perhaps Belichick uses the sub packages to keep athletes in coverage on the rookie running back, daring Reid to run the ball still, and maybe that gets his counterpart to take him up on that dare.
But the task is daunting, and there seem to be no good answers right now.
Unless…is there another Bosa brother he can sign to rush the passer before Sunday afternoon?
