How to stop the Patriots
Dallas' staff experienced against New England attack
Posted: Thursday October 11, 2007 1:37PM; Updated: Friday October 12, 2007 9:56AM
A lot has been made of the Patriots offense entering Sunday's 5-0 showdown with the Cowboys in Texas Stadium, and deservedly so. Tom Brady ranks No. 1 in completion percentage, passer rating and touchdowns; Randy Moss leads the league in yards receiving and is tied for first with seven scores; Ben Watson shares the lead for most touchdown catches by a tight end with five; and the running game is averaging 4.5 yards a carry, tying for ninth-best overall.
But here are two reasons the Patriots don't figure to reach 34 points for a sixth consecutive game -- and why it would come as little surprise if the Cowboys prevail against their favored opponent: Wade Phillips and Brian Stewart.
Phillips is the head coach of the Cowboys, Stewart the defensive coordinator. Each has tremendous respect for the New England offense, but neither is cowering at the thought of facing it. The primary reason, after their abilities as coaches, is that they're familiar with the Patriots and have had positive results against talented quarterbacks and high-scoring offenses in recent years.
Phillips and Stewart worked together the previous three seasons in San Diego, where Phillips was the defensive coordinator and Stewart was the secondary coach. During that time they played New England and Indianapolis twice each, including one playoff game against the Patriots. The Chargers split against each of them, but more important, the defeats were by a mere field goal each. And the only time the Phillips-led defense allowed more than 24 points in those games was 2004, when the Colts' No. 1-ranked scoring offense, behind the passing of Peyton Manning, who would break Dan Marino's single-season record with 49 touchdown passes, put up 27. (Indy scored 34 total, but seven were on a kickoff return.)
The Patriots scored 24 on the Chargers last year in the playoffs, and it marked the only time in three postseason games they failed to put up at least 34. They also finished with postseason lows for third-down conversions (23.5 percent), average yards per play (4.4), per rush (2.4) and per pass (5.2). New England did not have newcomers Moss, Wes Welker, Donte Stallworth and Sammy Morris at that time, but Stewart believes it's just as important to understand the mindset of an offense as it is to know the personnel, particularly if the players' ability levels are similar.
"Having faced them will help tremendously, tremendously," said Stewart, who is in his first season as a play-caller. " I'll tell you why. You really don't understand how well-prepared they are and how they play until you've played them. You really don't. You think you know, because you go through practice and everything. And then all of a sudden you're in the game against them for the first time and you're just like, 'Wow.' They're so well-prepared ... Well, at San Diego we were beyond that because we got a chance to play them or the Colts and Peyton Manning continuously every year I was there.
"When you're talking about Brady and Manning, that's two of the best quarterbacks. So that's a chance to go against the most cerebral quarterbacks, as far as their preparation. Those were good learning opportunities, and I think that helped. Obviously Wade's been in the league a long time, but it helped me tremendously to see that, to see the preparation, and then to try to understand how they're attacking us.
"And they're attacking you by your percentages," added Stewart. "Meaning, when they're in a certain formation -- say they've got two tight ends in the game, but they've got one of them [split] so it looks like a receiver in slot on one side and a tight end in slot on the other side, so two-by-two. All they do is get in that formation and look at every single tape you have and what you do against that formation, then they play the percentages to beat what you like to do against that formation.
"That's what they do the best job of," Stewart continued. "What that does is, it wears on your defense because the defensive players line up and then [the Patriots] say, 'OK, it's a zone blitz coming this way.' Our players come back to the sideline and say, 'They know what it is.' We have to tell them not to get shook up because they know what we're doing. Bottom line, offenses can draw up something to block anything. But it's the speed and the intensity of the blitz that determines whether that blocking scheme is going to work. That's what we had in San Diego. They blocked stuff up, but it was the speed and the intensity of our guys on the blitz that disrupted it."
Stewart and Phillips have similar defenders in Dallas, where the defense has allowed only one touchdown in its last three games -- not that anyone is doing cartwheels considering the opponents were Buffalo, St. Louis and Chicago, which respectively rank 28th, 25th and 19th in scoring. Even Stewart admits there still is room for improvement because the players are learning a new scheme with new responsibilities.
"I think they're doing a good job grasping it, but there's still a learning curve," he said. "A lot of times they go back to, 'I'm supposed to stay in this gap.' Well, wait a minute; the ball's going right and your gap is the other way. You better run to the ball. We're a 'see ball, get ball' defense, and some of them don't know when to abandon their responsibilities and go to the ball. I can understand that. But the way our defense is set up, there's always somebody for the reverse, so if it's not you, go to the football.
"There's always somebody for the running back, so if it's not you, go to the quarterback. We're not, 'OK, you're supposed to be inside the center, stay there, don't move.' That's how they played it before, strictly. They got [chewed out] if they didn't. You're looking at four years of doing it one way and three or four months, including the training camp and OTAs, of doing it another way. When they get worried, they revert back. We've just got to get them to know that, hey, we play football around here. We run to the ball."
The Cowboys will have to be on their game against the Patriots, who have been frighteningly consistent on offense. Consider some of the numbers: multiple touchdowns by Moss in three of the last four games; a 100-yard receiver each week; three games without allowing a sack, and only three sacks allowed all year; five consecutive games with at least three touchdown passes and 16 overall by Brady, who is completing 74.1 percent of his passes.
"That's ridiculous," Stewart said of the completion percentage. "You can look at it and say, 'Let's try to get the guy off his spot. Let's try to do this.' And you know what? That ain't going to work. He knows where everybody is as far as his players, and then what they do probably the best job of anybody in the NFL is they get in formations and they know your choices of defenses -- your options.
"They essentially say that, in this formation the defense is either going to play man or straight zone, and I'm going to see it right away I've got them spread out. If you pressure, I'm going to see it because it's a spread formation. They do a good job with that. They just study what you do and your tendencies. So he knows and he can anticipate.
"Plus, they know the weak players. They attack the defense, the weakest player of that defense, and [Brady] knows where that is. If you take away something that he expects to be there, he knows what else is going on somewhere else. In that case you don't get a lot of sacks and you get a lot of completions, and that's exactly how they've been running it.
"How do you stop it? I think you have to really, really choose -- I think [Cleveland coach] Romeo Crennel said it best -- I think you've got to really pick your poison. You've got to pick one or two things that you want to eliminate and preach to your guys that we're going to eliminate these two things and we're going to survive and rally to those other things. With that, we're going to stop them from running -- traditionally that's what we do when we play against them, we attack the run; and we're probably going to have to do something with Moss. The two things we're going to be committed to is the run and not letting Moss be a vertical threat."
The Browns limited Moss to three catches for 46 yards last week and still lost by 17. No doubt, this is the deepest and most talented Patriots offense that Phillips and Stewart have seen. But if there are two men with the know-how to slow it, they're the ones.
