Does it feel like you've eaten McDonald's every day for the past two weeks?
Super Bowl Sunday — finally, mercifully — is almost here. When the Patriots and Seahawks won their conference championships a State of the Union address ago, the table was set for an appetizing finale. For the second straight season, the two best teams in football were going head-to-head. We were going to be talking about superstar players — Tom Brady! Rob Gronkowski! Russell Wilson! Marshawn Lynch! We were going to be reading about legacies. And we were going to be watching sappy Tom Rinaldi ESPN specials.
It was going to be good. And it was going to be delicious, wrapped in bacon.
Then this happened:
Breaking: A league source tells me the NFL is investigating the possibility the Patriots deflated footballs Sunday night. More to come.— Bob Kravitz (@bkravitz) January 19, 2015
Breaking: A league source tells me the NFL is investigating the possibility the Patriots deflated footballs Sunday night. More to come.
We got days and days of football coverage all right. Instead of stories about the pressure of playing in a game watched by more than 100 million people, we got stories about the air pressure in a ball thrown by one man.
And we ate it up. There were accusations. There were denials. There were even explanations from "Bill Spy, er, Nye the Science Guy" Belichick, who suggested "atmospheric conditions" were at play. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson weighed in, and so did the real Science Guy.
What started as an opportunity to giggle during Belichick's and Brady's typically dull press conferences devolved into an absurd national obsession. Less than 48 hours after President Obama's address, Deflategate led the ABC, CBS and NBC newscasts.
Here we are now, feeling sick and bloated after having willfully consumed too much coverage of underinflated footballs. The fervor has given way to fatigue. Can't we get Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth to read their script and kiss up to the league so we can forget about all this? Let's get on with the game already!
I can't tell you whether the ball Brady throws Sunday night will be inflated to between 12.5 and 13.5 pounds per square inch — though certainly someone will be checking like never before — but I can give you an educated guess about where that ball might go.
You've read enough Super Bowl previews to know that Brady attacks defenses with quick, short passes. Unlike the science of underinflated footballs, this is no mystery. Brady's passes this season traveled an average of 8.09 yards, which ranked 20th in the league. He took only an occasional shot deep down the field, throwing the ball 20 or more yards about 10 percent of the time.
That he rarely threw a deep ball isn't a bad thing in itself — Joe Flacco and Drew Brees attempted a lower percentage — but on such throws he was not much more productive (17-of-60, three drops, 528 yards, five touchdowns, two interceptions) than, say, Kyle Orton (15-of-45, 505 yards, four touchdowns, two interceptions). In the AFC Championship Game against the Colts, he attempted five deep throws, one of which was the second-quarter interception that sparked Deflategate.
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Explore all your optionsWhere then will Brady target the vaunted Seahawks pass defense? Will he challenge cornerback Richard Sherman, who is expected to play despite torn ligaments in his elbow? Not likely, at least based on his tendencies during the regular season.
It's not that Brady won't throw at Sherman as much as it's that Brady just doesn't throw to his side of the field very often. During the regular season, he threw only 16.1 percent of his passes outside the right numbers, the least among quarterbacks who threw 300 or more passes (not including passes thrown away, batted passes or spikes). Only two other quarterbacks threw less than 20 percent of their passes in that direction: the Bears' Jay Cutler (17.2) and the Browns' Brian Hoyer (17.4).
Plus, the Seahawks don't move their defenders all over the football field. Most of the time, they're in Cover 3 (a three-deep zone) where Sherman is responsible for the left side of the field (Brady's right), cornerback Byron Maxwell is responsible for the right side and safety Earl Thomas is responsible for the deep middle. The Seahawks' other safety, Kam Chancellor, will often roam behind the linebackers but will sometimes move into the box.
While the loquacious Sherman and his bum elbow hogged the spotlight this past week, the cornerback to watch will be Maxwell, as Brady threw outside the left numbers almost twice as much as the right numbers (150 attempts to 87). Maxwell, a free agent-to-be, doesn't intimidate opposing quarterbacks like Sherman, but he has more than held his own in coverage, allowing only one touchdown this season (Broncos tight end Jacob Tamme in Week 3). Linebackers Bruce Irvin, Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright figure to be busy as well. More than 75 percent of Brady's passes have been short (0-9 yards or less) and intermediate (10-19 yards) targets to the left and over the middle.
The Patriots get a lot of slaps on the back for their ability to radically reshape their offense based on the opponent. Some celebrate this as a superior brand of game planning; others might simply call it "coaches doing their jobs." Either way, no team in football makes us wonder what is going on as often as the Patriots (well, maybe the Browns, but that has nothing to do with football). One game, they virtually abandon the running game for an entire half; the next, LeGarrette Blount takes over. One game, they unveil a four-man offensive line; the next, offensive linemen are catching touchdown passes.
So maybe the Patriots have been setting us up for five months, all but ignoring the right side of the field in anticipation of this very Super Bowl matchup and this particular injury to Sherman. That Belichick, he's gooooood.
As creative as the Patriots can be, short passes and play-action are their bread and butter. Brady threw a play-action pass on 26.3 percent of his dropbacks during the regular season, fifth-most in the league, and his 1,366 yards on such passes led the NFL.
QUARTERBACK | % PA | COMP % | YARDS | YDS/ATT | TD | INT | QB RATING |
Alex Smith, Kansas City | 31.0 | 69.4 | 1,265 | 8.1 | 6 | 3 | 98.3 |
Russell Wilson, Seattle | 30.8 | 63.6 | 1,207 | 8.4 | 6 | 2 | 98.4 |
Brian Hoyer, Cleveland | 29.2 | 60.0 | 1,311 | 10.1 | 7 | 4 | 99.2 |
Cam Newton, Carolina | 27.0 | 59.2 | 897 | 7.2 | 8 | 3 | 92.7 |
Tom Brady, New England | 26.3 | 66.9 | 1,366 | 9.0 | 8 | 3 | 104.9 |
Source: profootballfocus.com |
The Seahawks defense, though, downright dominated a similar — and better — offense in last season's Super Bowl. In 2013, the Broncos tore through the NFL, setting records for points scored and touchdowns. To break the individual single-season records for touchdown passes and passing yards, Peyton Manning attempted and completed more passes than any other quarterback, but his average pass length of 7.84 ranked 29th in the league. He, too, used the play-action pass frequently (25.6 percent) and successfully (completing 69 percent of his passes for 1,971 yards, 18 touchdowns and three interceptions). But the Seahawks grounded the all-time top 10 offense, shutting it out until the end of the third quarter.
Why? The Broncos' offense was built on getting receivers the ball in open space. Denver excelled at this, leading the NFL during the regular season with 2,751 yards after the catch (YAC). But the physical and sound tackling Seahawks were a matchup nightmare, as they allowed the fewest YAC (1,361) and held the Broncos in the Super Bowl to just 3.7 YAC per reception (128 yards on 35 receptions), which was about two yards less than they averaged during the regular season.
The Seahawks were strong again in that department this season, as they allowed 1,540 YAC, just 20 more yards than the league-leading San Francisco 49ers. This season, the Patriots finished with 2,072 YAC, 13th in the NFL. (Side note: The Buccaneers have finished last in the NFL in YAC for two straight seasons.)
Final analysis
Because Brady throws the ball more quickly (2.36 seconds) than anyone but Peyton Manning (2.24), the Seahawks must generate pressure with their front four and with limited blitzing. They did this against Manning in the Super Bowl, blitzing him only six times but applying pressure on 20 of his 51 dropbacks. Aside from the David Tyree helmet catch and the Wes Welker drop, that's how the Giants upset the Patriots in the 2007 and 2011 season Super Bowls. In Super Bowl XLII, the Giants blitzed Brady 14 times but pressured him on 23 of 53 dropbacks. In Super Bowl XLVI, they blitzed Brady only five times but pressured him on 20 of his 43 dropbacks.
The New England offensive line, which allowed the second-most quarterback hits (Colts), will have its hands full against two of the most productive pass rushers in the NFL: Cliff Avril and former Buc Michael Bennett. In a game that is as close to a tossup as it gets, that could be the difference. The pick: Seahawks 23, Patriots 21.
Statistics from Pro Football Focus, Football Outsiders and Sporting Charts were used in this report. Patriots fans can send their hate mail to tbassinger@tampabay.com or unleash their scorn on Twitter @tometrics.