Dusting off the legendary script
Your eyes are not deceiving you. This is Thurman Thomas from Super Bowl XXV.
Of course, the New York Giants and defensive coordinator Bill Belichick won that game, 20-19. It might be remembered as the “Wide Right” game, but for Giants fans, it is remembered for Belichick’s defensive gameplan. One that resides in Canton. Part of that plan? Letting Thomas run for over 100 yards. Belichick stood in front of his defense, a unit that prided itself in stopping the run, and told them the best way to win was to let Thomas have a big night.
His players did not immediately buy in.
“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”? Perhaps Belichick was well ahead of his time. The passing game is more explosive, and more dangerous. Let them run. The more times Kelly turns to hand the ball off, the less likely they are generating explosive plays in the passing game.
That is another way to approach the Chiefs. If the job is to take away what the Kansas City offense does best – which is pass the ball – then dare them to run. Force them to run. Hell put just two defenders in the box. Better to see Patrick Mahomes turn and hand the all off than it is to see him drop back to throw.
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 short yardage, 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.
Of course, they might take you up on that dare. As we have seen this year, they can hit you for big plays on the ground. More on that later this week.
So, the task remains daunting. Thankfully for me, all the machinations I can scheme up in my brain do not matter in the end. I’m just a guy pacing in his office and slowly driving himself insane.
Todd Bowles, however? He faces this challenge this week. For real. Will he implement the matching concepts in the secondary? Will he dare Patrick Mahomes to hand the ball off? Will any of it work?
Or is the best way to beat Mahomes to hope that Tom Brady has some magic left over from that 2018 season?
That’s not a bad Plan B.