The true MVP
Edelman takes home the hardware, but the Pats owe their sixth ring to their head coach, Bill Belichick
ATLANTA — NFL commissioner Roger Goodell officially awarded Julian Edelman his silver Super Bowl MVP trophy on Monday morning.
Off to the side, Bill Belichick looked on and applauded. But in all candour, Edelman and Belichick rightfully should have switched spots.
Yes, Edelman statistically had the most impressive game of any offensive player in the New England Patriots’ 13-3 suffocation of the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday night in Super Bowl LIII.
Edelman’s 10 catches for 141 yards outshone teammate Sony Michel’s 94 yards on 18 carries, even if the rookie running back scored the game’s lone touchdown, a two-yard plunge with seven minutes left.
But the overriding story of this Patriots’ Super Bowl victory — their sixth in the past 18 seasons — had far less to do with Edelman, Michel and 41-year-old quarterback Tom Brady. And everything to do with the Patriots’ underrated defence.
That side of the ball is 66-year-old head coach Belichick’s specialty. He and linebackers coach Brian Flores — who was officially named head coach of the Miami Dolphins on Monday — were New England’s primary defensive gameplanners in 2018.
And the fact is, that duo so outcoached the Rams’ 33-year-old head coach and wiz offensive game-planner Sean McVay as to make everyone now question how much of a wiz McVay really is.
McVay had no answer for the six-man lines the Patriots often deployed, to swarm running backs Todd Gurley and C.J. Anderson. Result? Gurley finished with 35 yards on 10 carries, and Anderson 22 yards on seven. Together Gurley and Anderson rushed for two first downs. Two.
Similarly, McVay proved incapable of adjusting his vaunted, cutting-edge passing attack to either give 24-yearold quarterback Jared Goff ample time to throw (he was sacked four times and hit eight other times) or scheme receivers open.
McVay himself admitted afterward he got schooled by Patriots defensive coaches.
“There is really no other way to put it,” McVay said. “I’m pretty numb right now, but definitely, I got out-coached. This is going to be a very humbling, tough one that you learn from.
“They did a great job. It was a great game plan. There is no other way to say it, but I got out-coached.”
Join the club, Sean. Belichick, with his top assistant defensive strategist
du jour — the Romeo Crennels, Matt Patricias and, this year, Flores — have been confounding genius offensive game-planners and superstar quarterbacks in showdown games literally for decades. Nearly four, to be precise.
To wit: John Elway and the Denver Broncos. Jim Kelly and the Buffalo Bills. Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins. Kurt Warner and the St. Louis Rams. And so many, many others.
In particular, it doesn’t seem to matter where the Rams franchise is based. The team has no answers in a Super Bowl for Belichick.
It’s all because Belichick is beholden to no rigid defensive style or system, from week to week. Offensive coaches, thus, always must guess as to what strategic curveballs the 66-year-old might throw at them on defence. Basically, they must — or at least should — prepare for everything.
For the Washington Post, long-time NFL writer John Clayton wrote after the Super Bowl that the Patriots deployed a version of Buddy Ryan’s old ‘46’ defence, augmenting a four-man line against a good Rams offensive line by bringing down the strong safety (Patrick Chung, before he broke his arm) to one edge, and a linebacker (Kyle Van Noy) to the other.
The Patriots also used more man-to-man coverage than they’d be doing.
McVay basically admitted the Rams guessed wrong at to what the Patriots would do, defensively. Really wrong.
“The Patriots coaches did an outstanding job putting their guys in positions, and then the players did a great job executing,” McVay said. “They definitely changed it up with what they had done over the past couple of weeks, especially when you look at some of the things that enabled them to have success against the (Los Angeles) Chargers and against the (Kansas City) Chiefs.
“Their coverage principles were definitely mixed compared to what they put on tape. They did a great job, and it is something that I’m disappointed that I didn’t do a better job of adjusting to in the framework of the game. That is one of the things that makes them great.”
At his own turn at the podium following Edelman’s at Monday morning’s MVP news conference, Belichick did what he always does — thanked everybody everywhere and praised everyone in the Pats
organization, all players and coaches in particular. Belichick didn’t gloat. Nor would you expect him to.
He’s not one to gloat. He’s just the GOAT — the greatest of all time at coaching football. Which he proved again. Even if he didn’t win the Super Bowl LIII MVP award