This Sunday Super Bowl XLIX is set to kick off. The Seattle Seahawks will be looking for their second consecutive championship while the Patriots will be going for their fourth championship of this era. These two teams’ philosophies couldn’t be more different. Seattle is the kind of team that tells you what they’re going to do and dares you to stop them. The Patriots, on the other hand, are the kind of team that will come out and do the opposite of what you prepared for all week, making your game plan useless. It’s going to be a battle of wits, strength, and stamina for the entire 60 minutes.
The Patriots are going to have to work for every single yard on offense. This Seahawks defense is the fastest defense in the NFL and it isn’t even close. The Patriots’ first priority in attacking this Seahawks defense is to get tight end Rob Gronkowski the ball. Get it to him early and often. Gronkowski led all tight ends in Yards Per Route Run (PFF) at 2.53. He’s arguably the most important part of this offense. With Brandon LaFell and Julian Edelman likely having a tough time with the cornerbacks of the Seahawks, Gronkowski will be that much more important on Sunday. He’ll likely be covered by Bobby Wagner, K.J. Wright, or Bruce Irvin with Kam Chancellor helping over the top most of the time. Any of these matchups favor Gronkowski. He’s bigger, stronger, and an incredible athlete. If he gets going early, the Patriots will be able to set up their entire offense around him.
Someone who would benefit a great deal from Gronkowski having success in the pass game is running back LeGarrette Blount. If Gronkowski is having success, the Seahawks will almost be forced to double him, which means at least one linebacker out of the box and Chancellor in coverage as well. Chancellor had a PFF (subscription) Run Stop Percentage of 8.7% this season which not only led all starting safeties but it was the highest mark of any safety since PFF has started recording statistics. Getting Chancellor in coverage would be a tremendous help for the Patriots’ run game. However, the Patriots can’t run stretch plays against this Seattle defense, they’re entirely too fast. They will have to run the ball up the “A” gaps, Blount’s bread and butter and where the Seattle defense is weakest. Not to mention that since Blount has re-joined the Patriots he has averaged 3.2 yards after contact per carry including the playoffs, which leads the league for all backs with 60 or more carries (that includes Marshawn Lynch).
Once the Patriots get their run game going, Tom Brady will be able to have more success with his wide receivers. Of course against this secondary not many wide receivers are gonna have very big games, but on play action passes Brady has complete 101 of 151 passes for 1366 yards, eight touchdowns, and three interceptions.
On the other side of the ball the most important thing for the Patriots to do is to stop Lynch. Lynch is a bruising back that will absolutely wear down defenses. An easy solution on paper is to just say “gang tackle him.” Ask the Green Bay Packers, it’s not that cut and dry. The most important player in stopping Lynch is going to be Vince Wilfork. He has to control both “A” gaps. If Wilfork and Lynch meet in the hole, we’ll see what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Another key part to stopping the run is defensive tackle Sealver Siliga, who has been incorporated much more into the defense recently. Siliga has a PFF Run Stop percentage of 12.1%, which is second best for all defensive/nose tackles. If the Patriots want to really stack the box, they’ll be bringing safety Patrick Chung closer to the line of scrimmage to help out. Chung’s PFF Run Stop percentage was 6.7%, which put him in the top ten of all safeties this season.
If the Patriots can manage to limit Lynch’s yards, they’ll be able to exploit the matchup that favors them the most in this game: the Patriots’ cornerbacks against the Seahawks’ wide receivers. Since Week 12, Darrelle Revis and Logan Ryan have each allowed a catch rate of 44.1% (both top ten among cornerbacks in that time span) while Brandon Browner in that time span has allowed a low catch rate of 55.9%. Part of limiting Seattle’s pass game isn’t shutting down their wide receivers, it’s containing Russell Wilson in the pocket. If the Patriots allow him to scramble out of the pocket to extend the play while receivers scramble to get open, Seattle will be able to eat up large chunks of yards at a time. The key to containing Wilson is maintaining gap discipline. When rushing the passer, the defense must make sure everyone controls their respective gap and doesn’t get undisciplined.
For the Seahawks the plan is simple: give Lynch the ball and let him beat the defense into submission. Anyone watching the NFC Championship game could tell by the fourth quarter the Packers didn’t want to have anything to do with tackling Lynch. It was obvious. This is what he needs to do to the New England defense. Lynch led the NFL in broken tackles with 101. The next closest was DeMarco Murray with 85.
If Lynch can be effective on the ground it will make Russell Wilson’s day exponentially easier. However, even if the Patriots are bringing eight or nine guys into the box to stop Lynch, Wilson is going to have his work cut out for him. He won’t be able to sit in the pocket and wait for his receivers to get open, he’s going to have to run for first downs or extend plays long enough until his receivers can get open. Wilson is extremely effective on quick passes, completing 74.3% of his passes when he throws the ball in 2.5 seconds or less. However, he might not be so successful with those plays against this defense. The average defense gave up 286 yards on slant routes, but the Patriots defense only allowed 175 yards which is the lowest in the league. If Wilson is going to take this game over himself, it’s going to be with his legs. On quarterback scrambles Wilson has 12 missed tackles on him and led the league with 529 yards on scrambles.
On defense their main goal will be to get after Tom Brady. In both the Patriots’ losses in their last two Super Bowls the Giants pressured Brady, made him move his spot, and made him extremely uncomfortable all game. The Seahawks need to make sure they do the same thing. They have some of the best pass rushers in the game with Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril. Seattle brings five or more pass rushers 25% of the time. On those plays they get pressure half of the time. When they bring four or fewer rushers, they only get pressure 33% of the time. When Brady has been pressured this year, he has a 45.5% completion percentage, four touchdowns, six interceptions, and 21 sacks. The Seahawks are going to bring in their NASCAR package and make Brady beat the pressure.
The linebackers on the Seahawks will be assigned the tall task of covering Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski. The Seahawks have to be able to stop him. There are only two linebackers in the NFL who have a 1.0+ PFF coverage, run defense, pass rush, and penalty ratings and those two are Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright. Two of their linebackers might be the two most capable linebackers in the league at containing Gronkowski. However, they’ll still need help most of the game. In the intermediate part of the field they’ll get help from Kam Chancellor but if Gronkowski runs anything in the deep middle he’ll be roaming into Earl Thomas’ world. Thomas has gone 19 straight games only allowing two or fewer catches.
While the Seahawks have a distinct advantage when it comes to their secondary against the Patriots’ wide receivers, the defensive backs on Seattle will have to help tackling all over the field, something they do on a regular basis. If Blount is getting the ball up the middle, even the Seattle cornerbacks need to be coming in trying to make the tackle. With big bodies like Gronkowski and Blount getting the ball often for New England, Seattle will need all the helmets on the ball they can get. Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman has the second best PFF run defense grade out of all cornerbacks in the league. This is a team that gets solid tackling from every single position on defense and they’ll need it more than ever against the Patriots on Sunday.
This Super Bowl is looking more and more like it’s going to be a classic. The Seahawks are fairly predictable with their game plans and still extremely difficult to beat while the Patriots are incredibly unpredictable. Another thing the Patriots have going for them is the controversy surround the deflated footballs in the AFC Championship Game. Everyone has been calling the Patriots cheaters and while this would be a major distraction for a lot of teams and would negatively affect their play during the game, I feel like it will have the opposite affect on New England. From watching press conferences and interviews, they seem angry about these accusations and have a chip on their shoulder about it. They’re going to come out trying to prove to everything that they won because they’re the better team, not because they cheated. I think the Patriots end up winning this game by ten points, although I think the game will feel closer than that. Either way it should turn out to be a great game.