Super Bowl LIII was hyped up to be an incredible game. The young high powered Rams would go against the dominant and veteran Patriots. The main hype was around the offenses. Tom Brady, Jared Goff, Todd Gurley, Brandin Cooks, Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski were all expected to put on a show. (But there was one thing all the critics were forgetting about, the defenses.) There were stars all over the defense such as Aaron Donald, Nadomican Suh, Stephon Gilmore, Aqib Talib and Devin Mccourty. While these players were always an afterthought in comparison to their offenses, these defenses were no pushovers. Finally the main attraction of the Super Bowl… Sean Mcvay Vs Bill Belichick. One of the great young coaches in Mcvay who is 34 years old, and the greatest coach of all time in Bill Belichick who is 66 years old. This was going to be a chess match. Mcvay is an incredibly offensive mind and Belichick is a defensive mastermind. This game was a rematch of the Super Bowl 36 when the Patriots pulled off a major upset against the Rams and greatest show on turf. That was the start of the Patriots dynasty, now Sean Mcvay and the Rams have a chance to end it.
As the fighter jets flew over the field before the biggest game in America, the stage was set. Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta was looking beautiful as the end zones were painted and the the Superbowl symbols were drawn at the 25 yard line. Tom Brady and the Patriots looked as calm as ever for their third Super Bowl consecutive appearance. On the other side of the field the young Rams team looked amped up and a little nervous, for this was the first Super Bowl for many of these players. The Rams won the coin toss and elected to defer. The Patriots would start with the ball. Greg Zuerlein of the Rams kicked off the football and Superbowl LIII has begun.
The Patriots opening drive looked promising. The running back tandem of Sony Michel and James White started off fast as they busted off some big runs. But on Tom Brady’s first pass attempt the ball was intercepted by Cory Littleton thanks to the batted ball from Nickell Robey Coleman. This gave momentum to the Rams but the offense was unable to capitalize on this opportunity. The Patriots defense did an incredible job shutting down the high powered Rams offense. Meanwhile the Patriots seemed to always move the ball to mid field but the Rams defense would always stop them before they would get in field goal range. The Patriots were winning the field position and the time of possession battle. Despite the dominance by the Pats defense they only lead 3-0 at the half.
The second half was more of the same as the 3rd quarter was all defense. Wade Phillips did an amazing job making up some great schemes to shut down Brady and the patriots offense. The same could be said for Bill Belichick as Jared Goff and the Rams had no answers for the Patriots D. The score was 3-3 going into the 4th quarter and after 8 minutes in the 4th we finally got our first touchdown of the game. Thanks to an amazing throw from Brady to Gronk to get down to the 1 Sony Michel punched it in for the score. While Jared Goff and the Rams drove down the field effect, Stephon Gilmore made an amazing play to intercept Jared Goff and the Patriots would win Super Bowl 53!
Now the question has to be asked how did the Patriots Defense shut down Goff and the the LA Offense. While the complete defensive shutdown was unexpected, it wasn’t surprising. Like we’ve said before, its Bill Belichick and we’ve seen Belichick out gameplan many NFL coaches in the past. What Bill did was that he took advantage of the young QB in Jared Goff and forced him to make mistakes. While Jared Goff was a top 10 QB in the league this year and will be for years to come he still has many flaws. Throughout the year Jared has had a problem of not being able to make good reads. It's hard for him to go against zone defense because the Rams offensive system is made to beat man defense. Let me explain… the best way to beat man defense is to design rub routes, use motions, create 1 on 1 mismatches, and stacking receivers. The Rams use all of these designs in their arsenal. This helps make life easier for Jared Goff as he has very simple reads and most concepts are designed to get one man open. So the Patriots used this to their advantage.
New England decided that they would force Jared to cause his own mistakes. They did this in two simple ways. The Patriots disguised the coverages that they were in to confuse the Rams. They did this by starting off in man during the pre-snap read and then switch to zone. This confused jared on his pre-snap read because he was expecting a certain route to be open on man but once they switched to zone he wasn’t able to find an open man. The coverage was amazing by Gilmore and Mccourty, basically shutting down their side of the ball. But even when there were guys open it was too late for jared as the pressure came. They took advantage of a young QB who looked like a deer in headlights. Also they helped put pressure on Goff to force him into some bad errors, thanks to Dont'a Hightower and Trey Flowers. They forced Goff out of the pocket and out of his comfort zone. They also stopped the running game by not running straight up field but instead waited for Gurley to come to them. What I mean by this is that they ran with the blockers instead of trying to push them up. This is very good to counter the rams zone blocking scheme and shut down Gurley’s cutback lanes.
In my opinion this was the greatest defensive performance by any Belichick team before and luckily for them it came in the biggest game of the year.