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Fact-Finding Mission: A Little Follow-Up

So the idea that the Stillers needed this game as a learning experience – a “fact-finding mission” as someone called it – is a joke huh? At least that’s the response I’ve gotten from some people who’ve read my previous commentary.

Let me apologize if I haven’t communicated my thoughts clearly enough. First, I’m not “rationalizing” this loss as anything but the butt-whooping it was. Quite the opposite – I’m stating that this lopsided loss was just what the team needed to experience in case they’re lucky enough to get a playoff rematch with the New England.

The ’07 Patriots are the decade’s first team to take full advantage of the NFL’s rules that make it laughably easy for the passing game to succeed. In doing so they’ve said “screw the run, we don’t need it.” Their offense is predicated on two things, in this order: 1) back-breaking quick-strike deep TDs and 2) rapid-fire short-range passes designed to zig-zag up the field. Running comes in a distant third, just slightly ahead of punting and getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick.

Therefore you cannot play conventional defense against them. You’d think this would be painfully obvious, but there were the Stillers doing exactly that in the second half of Sunday’s game.

Which brings us back to the debate, where one astute poster had this to say:

“What was there to find out? The Pats pass a lot? They like to go deep to Moss, Stallworth, and Gaffney, while shredding you underneath with Watson and Welker?

You needed to actually play the game to find that out?”

Well apparently the answer is a big fat “yes,” judging from what both the Pats and Steelers had to say after the game:

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Strategy thrown out there, and works

By Mike Reiss

Globe Staff / December 10, 2007

FOXBOROUGH - One-dimensional is usually a prescription for disaster for an offense, but the Patriots went that route by choice yesterday. The decision ultimately turned a 4-point halftime lead into a second-half blowout. If there was a revealing statistic that stood out from the Patriots' performance, it was this: The offense dropped back to throw on its first 26 snaps of the second half, turning a 17-13 halftime score into a 34-13 blowout.

Considering the Steelers entered the day as the NFL's top-ranked pass defense, it was a decision that yielded a strength-on-strength matchup.

Score this one a decisive knockout for the Patriots' passing attack.

"Right now we're a throwing offense - pass, then run when we need to," left guard Logan Mankins said. "When you have great receivers and a great quarterback, you have to take advantage of what you have. Coaches must have seen something where they knew we could throw it and they just kept dialing up the throws. It was working; we were just going down the field."

In terms of the tactical second-half approach, the Patriots had quarterback Tom Brady in the shotgun for 21 of the first 26 snaps, mixed in some no-huddle at times to maintain the desired tempo, and flooded the field with receivers.

Of the 26 straight pass plays, they ran their four-receiver package on 16 second-half snaps, which included a holding penalty drawn by receiver Randy Moss. Their three-receiver package was in for the other 10. At times, the team went with an "empty" package, with running back Kevin Faulk lining up as a receiver.

By spreading the field, it allowed Brady to isolate the man-to-man matchups he liked against Steelers defenders.

As coach Bill Belichick has noted often in the past, production in the passing game is a coordinated effort. It doesn't matter if you put talented receivers like Moss, Wes Welker, Donte' Stallworth, and Jabar Gaffney on the field if you can't pass protect. Or have a quarterback to deliver the ball where it needs to go.

The Patriots had all their parts working in concert yesterday, and it started with pass protection. Mankins estimated the Steelers blitzed around 75 percent of the time, yet they most often met a strong wall of resistance. Brady was not sacked and in-game statisticians had him absorbing just four hits.

To Mankins, the performance was reflective of the attitude of the entire offensive unit. While it's easy to call a grind-it-out running team like the Steelers a smash-mouth unit, Mankins pointed to the physical play up front as a sign that passing teams can play with bite as well.

"If you watch a lot of pass blocking, it's smash-mouth," he said. "If someone is standing there, they're getting cleared out. You can still hit people even when you throw the ball."

Steelers linebacker Larry Foote agreed the Patriots' ability to handle the blitz was a key to the game. He felt the quick deliveries of Brady to his "hot route" rendered the pressure meaningless. Foote noted Brady "knew that blitz was coming, so he was throwing into it." Defensive end Brett Keisel added that "there is no way to get pressure on him."

In some ways, the Patriots' all-pass approach in the second half caught the Steelers off guard.

"It was a little weird at first," Pittsburgh linebacker James Farrior said. "I thought they would try to run when they had the lead on us, but they kept throwing the ball. Brady is good at reading defenses and our disguise wasn't good enough. He picked up most of our blitzes."

By day's end, the Patriots had both Moss (135) and Gaffney (122) in triple-digits in receiving yards. Welker led the way with nine catches.

In all, the Patriots threw 46 passes, and only rushed nine times. The Steelers might have come with the blitz often, but it was the Patriots who blitzed them through the air.

"It was the No. 1 ranked defense and I thought we went out there and moved the ball and scored points; most of it was throwing," Belichick said. "We felt like that was a good matchup for us, and I would say that it was.”

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Are you getting that part I’ve bolded? Farrior is SURPRISED the Patriots didn’t run the ball? Especially given they started out with a whopping FOUR point lead?

You see, this is EXACTLY my point: mind-blowing as it sounds, the Stillers were caught by surprise by what New England did Sunday. Something any schmoe on the message boards (myself included) could have told you was coming.

Apparently watching 12 games on film wasn’t enough for the Stillers to realize the Pats weren’t going to abandon their pass-first approach – no, they needed to see it up-front-and-personal. But hey, no learning needed here, right?

I can only hope someone with direct ties to the Stillers organization reads this site – that the Stillers were caught so unaware is nothing short of mind-boggling and inexcusable!

The Eagles and Ravens provided the blueprint of how to beat the Patriots. The Stillers showed teams exactly how to lose to them – guaranteed.

Like I said before, the Stillers weren’t physically beaten by the Patriots the way they were against the Colts a couple of years ago. They simply out-dumbed and under-thought the competition. Still want to argue that point now?

The truth is there, in black and white. Let’s just hope the Stillers have learned from it.

The views of PalmerSucks are not necessarily those of Stillers.com – but should be.