Rooke Says, “Pats Will Win.” Not So Fast!
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
My colleague John Rooke claims the Patriots WILL win Sunday’s AFC Championship game against the Baltimore Ravens. Actually, I think they will win too. But I wouldn’t put it at 100%.
The Pats are 7 ½ point favorites over Baltimore Sunday, but that number means nothing. That’s just the number the wise guys in Vegas came up with to try to get an even amount of money bet on New England and Baltimore.
John was right in his column Monday that the NFL has evolved into a game of high-powered offense. Rule changes favoring offense over the past decade have certainly contributed to this change as have a plethora of great quarterbacks throughout the league.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTBut, as great as some of these high-powered offenses have been in recent years, history tells us that there is no guarantee of winning it all just because you have the most high-powered offense in the league.
Look at Green Bay and New Orleans. Neither team will be playing in this Sunday’s NFC title game despite their unbelievably high-powered offenses led by great quarterbacks.
And they’re not the only ones to fall short of going the distance with a prolific offense. The 2007 Patriots set all sorts of NFL records yet could muster just 14 points in a loss to the NY Giants in Super Bowl 42.
Remember the Peyton Manning-led Indianapolis Colts of last decade? Just two Super Bowl appearances and only one Super Bowl title for that great offensive juggernaut.
Which brings us to the Patriots and Sunday’s game against the Ravens. You couldn’t ask for a better match-up when it comes to strength vs. strength. The Patriots offense has been simply amazing this season scoring 30 or more points in 13 of their 17 games so far this year. Conversely, the Ravens defense has yielded 24 or more points only three times this season and has given up 16 or less points to their opponents in 6 of their last 7 contests.
We can look at number and stats until we’re blue in the face leading up to Sunday’s game, but the game will likely come down to a few key areas.
If Baltimore is to upset New England, here is what will need to happen:
First, the Ravens must win the turnover battle and they may have to do it convincingly. This means that the Ravens will have to not only take care of the ball themselves, they will have to force Tom Brady and the Patriots offense into coughing it up.
Second, Baltimore MUST be able to put quick pressure on Brady with just 3 or 4 pass rushers. There’s two reasons for this. First, they will need to drop as many defenders into coverage as possible to deal with the likes of Rob Gronkowski, Aaron Hernandez, Wes Welker and Deion Branch. The other reason being that Brady is fantastic at making a team pay for blitzing. He will get the ball to his hot read and thereby put the heat on the opposing defense.
Finally, the Ravens must be able to do a good job playing man coverage against Patriot receivers Sunday afternoon. This may seem like a difficult task given the extremely difficult match-up problems players like Gronkowski and Hernandez create, but it will be necessary for Baltimore. Tom Brady picks apart zone coverage so Baltimore must man-up! They will need to press Patriot receivers at the line of scrimmage and hope that their DB’s and LB’s can hold that coverage for long enough for their front 3 or 4 to get to Brady.
Can Baltimore execute this perfect defensive game plan against the Pats? We shall see. But it may be the only way that they can escape Foxboro with a win on Sunday.
