The Chargers defense did exactly what you don't do when playing Tom Brady

[petegz28]

The Chargers defense did exactly what you don't do when playing Tom Brady

The blueprint for slowing down Tom Brady isn’t a secret: Play tight man-to-man coverage and hope to get some semblance of pressure on him (without having to blitz, preferably).

The blueprint for allowing Brady to march through your defense ain’t exactly a secret, either, and the Chargers followed it to a tee during their 41-28 loss to the Patriots on Sunday. Los Angeles rarely came out of their favored Cover 3 zone — which Chargers defensive coordinator Gus Bradley has been running at a high rate since his days as Seahawks defensive coordinator — and just kind of hoped Brady and New England’s offense would screw up eventually.

It never happened. The Patriots did whatever they wanted offensively — at least in the first half, and it was good enough to all but win the game. The Chargers came out in dime defense early, and New England answered with base personnel (with sets featuring two backs or two tight ends, and sometimes both), which provided a size and strength advantage in the box and allowed the Pats to run for 155 yards on 34 carries. Bradley was praised for playing seven defensive backs at a time against the Ravens, but the strategy did not work at Gillette Stadium, and the Chargers were forced back into a more traditional look with two linebackers on the field.

But personnel wasn’t really the problem with the Chargers’ ill-fated gameplan. Sure, the Patriots ran the ball well, but the passing game was even more efficient. Brady threw for 348 yards on 44 attempts. The problem was Bradley’s insistence on staying in his basic zone coverages, which doomed his defense from the start. Just about everybody watching at home could see this, including Jets DB Jamal Adams, who has been in the league for only two years and already knows you can’t show Brady static zone coverages all game…


Jamal Adams
✔
@TheAdamsEra
· Jan 13, 2019
The Pats are in 21p & 22p... two backs 1 TE, or 2 backs 2 TE's! You can't have 6 DB's on the field! It just won't work bro! This is old school football!! Just my opinion! Alright I'm gone ✌🏽


Jamal Adams
✔
@TheAdamsEra
TB12 has been doing this since I was in diapers!! You sitting in zone all game, best believe he will tear you apart!! You have to wrinkle in man switch it up on him, & disguise!!

2,019
1:23 PM - Jan 13, 2019
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Making matters worse, the Chargers, who refused to blitz, could not get close to Brady in the pocket. Los Angeles most likely assumed it could get home with a straight four-man rush with Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram firing off the edges, but once it became apparent that such a strategy would not work, an adjustment was needed.


Mike Reiss
✔
@MikeReiss
From @ESPNStatsInfo: Chargers did not blitz Tom Brady a single time on his 14 dropbacks in 1st quarter In their wild-card round win over the Ravens, the Chargers blitzed Lamar Jackson only 1 time in 38 dropbacks. Overall, Chargers have pressured Brady just once on 19 dropbacks.

215
1:07 PM - Jan 13, 2019
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It never really came. The Chargers sent more pressure in the second half, but, by that point, the game was essentially over with the Pats taking a 35-7 lead into the half.

Now, blitzing Brady isn’t really a viable strategy. The 41-year-old has seen every front and blitz a defense can possibly throw at him, and the numbers show he is more effective when an opponent sends five or more rushers. According to Pro Football Focus, Brady’s passer rating jumped to 102.3 against the blitz in 2018 (from 97.7 overall). If the Chargers weren’t willing to blitz, playing man coverage could have helped put more pressure on the pocket. With defenders attached to receivers, the quarterback typically has to hold onto the ball a beat or two longer, which naturally leads to more pressure. And the numbers reflect that.

Via Sports Info Solutions:

“Across the league, Man Coverage has resulted in a 37.9% Pressure Rate compared to 31.2% in Zone.”

The Chargers did not play much man over the course of the season. Only the Colts played man-to-man at lower rather than Los Angeles did in 2018.



On one hand, the argument could be made that asking your players to do something they might not be comfortable doing isn’t the best strategy for the most important game of the season. On the other hand, trying to use your basic gameplan against a Bill Belichick-coached team is asking to be exploited.

So what should the Chargers have done differently? Playing more pattern matching coverages would have made a lot of sense. Pattern matching — which, ironically, was the brainchild of Belichick and some former assistant named Nick Saban — is a combination of man and zone defenses, where defenders are responsible for certain areas on the field (that’s the zone part) but end up matching up with receivers based on the routes they run (the man part).

More and more NFL teams are favoring pattern matching over traditional spot-dropping zones, which is the best way to deal with these spread offenses taking over the league. At the college level, where seemingly every team is running some form of the spread, you’ll rarely find a defense that isn’t playing some sort of match defense.


Seth Galina
@SethGalina
You have college teams playing press quarters, match cover 3, safeties coming down to be B-gap players, all sorts of front alignments... but in the NFL the only defense in the playbook is Cover 3 spot drop from an under front

77
1:54 PM - Jan 13, 2019
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Not the Chargers, though.

Whether it was playing more man, or blitzing, or pattern matching, the Chargers had to do something different to at least try to slow down Tom Brady. They didn’t, and the result should not have been a surprise.

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/01/nfl...dley-tom-brady