In approaching preview pieces I often try and place myself into the minds of the various coordinators in each game. What will keep me up at night? What are our assets? What are the other team’s weaknesses? What advantages can we press, and what would we need to do to shore up our liabilities? Almost crawling into the mind of Westley from “The Princess Bride.”
Some weeks that is harder than others, as when one must figure out how to stop the Chiefs’ offense:
Hell if I know. pic.twitter.com/VJPMj03l9X
— Mark Schofield (@MarkSchofield) September 30, 2020
On Wednesday morning, I tried to crawl into the mind of Bill Belichick. I drew up a rather standard formation and alignment from the Kansas City Chiefs on the whiteboard in my office and began to think.
Hours later I had yet to come up with an answer.
Yet that is the task that the game’s foremost defensive mind faces this week. How do you stop – or at least slow down – one of the game’s most dangerous offenses? An offense that has weapons everywhere, and still managed to throw touchdowns passes last week to a fullback and an offensive tackle?
After pouring through some of Belichick’s past game plans, including games against these Chiefs, I have some potential – potential – answers.
Dare them to run
Prior to Super Bowl XXV, the defensive coordinator of the New York Giants stood in front of his charges. A group of men who prided themselves on tough defensive football, and stopping the run. A group of defensive players who were proud when they limited opposing rushing attacks to less than 100 yards in a game.
That defensive coordinator told them that the only way to beat the Buffalo Bills was to let Thurman Thomas rush for over 100 yards.
He was met with incredulity.
“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…?”
That is the first step in Belichick’s thought process this week. Every time #15 turns to hand the football off is a win for the New England Patriots, because that is one less time that Patrick Mahomes has a chance to beat you over the top for a one-play scoring drive.
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 a 3rd and 1 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.
The names may be different, but the premise is the same. Every time that #15 hands the ball off is a win for the defense. As Belichick said after Super Bowl XXV: “And I always felt when we needed to stop the run, we could stop it.”
Of course, Reid might not comply. So you better have an answer in the secondary.