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AlbaNY_Ram
That's certainly one take. Here's another, from this article: [
www.espn.com]
What we saw from the Patriots on Sunday night was the best defensive performance we have ever seen in a Super Bowl.
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... the win in Super Bowl LIII surpasses them in the pantheon of brilliant defensive game plans from Belichick, with credit also going to defensive coordinator and future Dolphins coach Brian Flores. So, how did the Patriots pull it off?
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... the Patriots played plenty of zone coverage throughout the game, including quarters looks on early downs. Quarters helped the Patriots keep the intentions and depths of their safeties disguised before the snaps, while simultaneously allowing New England to flood the box with defenders to stop the run. The Pats used what amounted to a 5-1 over front with Patrick Chung as a strongside linebacker to try to penetrate into the backfield against outside zone.
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On third down, the Patriots tormented Goff and McVay with stunts and twists to throw off their pass blocking while preventing Goff, McVay and center John Sullivan from diagnosing where pressure was going to come from before the snap. Teams that load up on twists often struggle to keep contain or leave an obvious running lane open for the opposing quarterback, but the Patriots did an excellent job of getting pressure against the interior of the Rams' line (particularly guard Austin Blythe) while simultaneously closing down Goff when he bootlegged out of the pocket.
Most would call that a 6-1 front with Chung being a LB but if they want to call him a DB then fine but regardless Belichick calls it 4-3 pro. But yes, they took the Rams wide zone running away and also IZ. The 6-1 beats the zone double teams and Rams cannot get OL to second level in IZ or split zone ... we've all heard about DUO but zone also has double teams.
And yes they had a quarters look - similar to a Fangio deep, it's a cover-2/4 shell. And they played Cover-3 buzz. The CBs played soft and the LBers (Chung and Van Noy -- in this instance, Chung is a LBer, but) played the flats ... so the CBs could play the deep 1/3s with the safety in the MOF -- middle 1/3.
The zone running and the play action build off it was stopped or slowed a lot. The 2-hugh shell presnap discouraged crossing routes, one of McVays favorite thing the safety not in the deep 1/3 took bading the hook zone ...
And it worked, then we saw it a lot in 2019.
