Let’s start with pressure, because that is of paramount importance. Even when you factor in the improvement in the second half of the season, Brady has completed just 62 of 141 passes under pressure this season for 791 yards, four touchdowns, five interceptions, and a passer rating of 56.8, When your passer rating under pressure is worse than that of Ben Roethlisberger, Kyler Murray, and Andy Dalton, that’s not ideal.
This season, the Saints rank third in the league in total pressures, behind the Steelers and Buccaneers, with 298. Per Sports Info Solutions, they also have nine sacks, 46 quarterback hits, 58 quarterback hurries, 21 knockdowns, and 80 total pressured from their defensive tackles. As has been the case throughout his career, interior pressure is Brady’s Kryptonite, so this is something to watch. The Bucs have a healthy Ali Marpet at left guard and Ryan Jensen at center, but right guard Alex Cappa is out for the rest of the postseason with a fractured ankle. Cappa hadn’t allowed a single sack all season, and he’ll be replaced by Aaron Stinnie, a third-year undrafted free agent who has 46 career regular-season snaps.
The other thing the Saints must do is to reverse their preferred coverage concepts. The Saints play a ton of man coverage, and they’re not that bad in coverage when they do it, but Brady has absolutely ripped man coverage to bits this season — 128 completions in 211 attempts for 1,591 yards, 1,019 air yards, 17 touchdowns, three interceptions, and a Total QBR of 119.4. More notably, only one of Brady’s five picks against the Saints this season came in man coverage — the other four were against zone.
This Janoris Jenkins pick-six in Week 1 against a Buccaneers speed-out concept the Saints were sitting on all day was a pretty good example.
“Well, we knew they hadn’t run it all game,” Jenkins recalled. “And as we were watching film earlier during the week, we noticed that they like to run it. And me and Latt [cornerback Marshon Lattimore] were on the sideline talking to each other, telling each other what was going to come out in the second half. And in the second half of the first drive, that’s what they did, ran double out.
“That was a Tampa play. Something Tampa ran a lot last year, speed outs. We just knew that they were going [to] add [that] in the second half. And that’s what they did coming out on the first drive. And I just read it and broke on it.”
There are variants of plays like this in which Arians will use stacks, trips, and bunches to take one receiver inside the formation, leaving another receiver open for the speed out. “Bunch Right 62 Split-Em Sink” is an example Arians had with the Cardinals as their head coach from 2013 through 2017. There isn’t motion to trips here as there was motion to stack on the Brady play, but the idea is pretty much the same — to split the secondary and give the quarterback one-on-one matchups. Here, the “Y” receiver at the top of trips takes the sink route inside or the outlet option, leaving the “Z” receiver ostensibly open for the quick out.
Problem was, Jenkins and Lattimore saw this stack variation, and read it all the way.
“Anticipation, communication, knowing what came early in the game, and what is coming late in the game,” Jenkins concluded. “You got to know that when playing defensive back. And me and Latt [Lattimore], we’re very experienced. We talked about it and communicated it on the sideline. And it came.”
Arians said after the game that this play was a screen pass with an outlet called, and while the coach blamed Brady’s first pick on receiver Mike Evans, he had the pick-six on Brady all the way.
“It speaks for itself,” Arians said, via the Tampa Bay Times. “If you’re throwing an out-route, you don’t throw it low and inside. And that hadn’t been the case up until that one. He was a little late on it and probably [a] better decision to go somewhere else with the ball.”
So, the Saints will have to face the Tom Brady they managed to avoid the first two times around this season. Not so much anymore, for multiple reasons. There are ways to mitigate the damage, but the margin for error — especially if the Saints have to engage in an offensive shootout — is far thinner than it was before.