No surprises between Bowl foes
The pick: New England’s offence will best Seattle’s defence
The media’s final shot at Super Bowl XLIX contestants came Friday morning, when the coaches held their joint news conference.
Sitting informally a few feet apart on director’s chairs, with the Vince Lombardi Trophy on a table between them, Bill Belichick began by picking up his microphone and saying: “Testing.”
But what was he really saying?
Pete Carroll replied: “Take it, Bill.”
Wonder what he meant by that?
Anything more revealing had to have come in the three preceding days, and as these things tend to go, there wasn’t much.
Want to know about the game plans of the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks? You’d better be good at film study and reading between the lines.
But there is nothing wrong with the basic premise about the matchup of these teams, which Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com number-crunching Elo rating calls the secondstrongest Super Bowl meeting ever, behind only Pittsburgh-Dallas following the 1978 season.
Theoretically, it’s still a punishing, straight-up, nothingfancy Seattle defence aiming to contain or (if possible) stifle New England’s dink-and-dunk, hurry- up, Tom Brady-led offence while the Seahawks offence does just enough to win.
In a perfect world, Seattle’s great cornerback Richard Sherman and hard-hitting safety Earl Thomas would have survived the NFC Championship Game unscathed, rather than each with one arm hanging by a thread.
At 100 per cent, or as close to it as any team gets by this time of the season, the Seahawks are a match for anyone in a game where a great defence almost always prevails over a flashy offence.
But despite taking part in practices and professing themselves ready to roll Sunday, it defies credibility that Sherman’s elbow and Thomas’s shoulder can have healed in two weeks — or that they will hold together through a lot tougher test than Seattle faced a year ago in their Super Bowl win over Denver.
Those injuries could make life just the tiniest bit less stressful for Brady, who is shooting for a fourth Super Bowl title, and a measure of football immortality.
At 37, with two disappointing losses in the championship game since winning three times in his first four years as the Patriots’ starting quarterback — the last of them 10 years ago — these chances may be running out. It could be his last shot at equalling the record for Super Bowl wins by a quarterback (four), shared by San Francisco’s Joe Montana and Pittsburgh’s Terry Bradshaw.
“Well, I think there is a balance between those two things,” Brady said earlier this week. “You’ve got to have ambition and you’ve got to have a belief that you can accomplish those things or else why would you play? But you also know that the reality of football is a contact sport and your career can end at any point.
“I had a tough injury about six years ago and even when we lose now, I walk off the field going, ‘Well, at least I get a chance to go out there and do it again.’ “
It’s not a radically different offensive formula for any team hoping to win a championship: Establish the run, get the other team off-balance, protect the quarterback, don’t turn the ball over.
Brady makes it more difficult for the Seahawks because of how quickly he releases the ball, how many targets he uses, and not incidentally because he has tight end Rob Gronkowski, who poses an immense, as in 6-foot-6, 265pound, challenge to the Seattle defenders, notably strong safety Kam Chancellor and Thomas and whoever else has inside responsibility.
“We know what he is going to do. He plays everywhere. He is one of the best at his position, but we also feel like we have one of the best safeties (Chancellor),” said defensive end Cliff Avril. “Big on big and let them go at it.”
Of course, a strong Seattle pass rush could minimize the effects of injuries in the secondary, and with Patriots centre Bryan Stork held out of practice most of the week with a bad knee, the New England line could be vulnerable to breaches.
Especially so, if they are unable to run the football with LaGarrette Blount, the big back who rejoined the team after walking out on the Steelers and being released in December. “All quarterbacks get rattled if you hit them enough,” said Avril.
The Pats are hit-and-miss with the running game, anyway, unlike the Seahawks, who tend to keep giving the ball to Marshawn Lynch until he wears a hole in the defence.
But Belichick’s teams are famous for taking away the one or two things the opposition does best, which in Seattle’s case means Lynch’s running and quarterback Russell Wilson’s ability to escape the pass rush and extend plays.
“I think you’ve got to try to keep (Wilson) in the pocket and make him throw from there,” said Pats DB Devin McCourty. “Obviously, he can beat you there, too. (But) you’ve got to try to pick your poison and make it tougher.”
Stopping Lynch is another story.
“You go against running backs every week, but Marshawn’s a whole different beast, and that’s why we’re all on it so much that we have to stop him, because he’s like the front of the train — he’s what gets that whole offence running,” said Pats defensive tackle Sealver Siliga.
Lynch ran the ball 27 times for 157 yards and a touchdown in the Seahawks’ nervous 28-22 victory over Green Bay in the NFC Championship Game. But in the Patriots’ last meeting with Seattle, albeit two seasons ago, they held Lynch to 41 yards on 15 carries.
Practising against their own big back, Blount, is good preparation, but hardly the same thing.
“I don’t think you can replicate any player. I don’t think they can replicate Tom, I don’t think they can replicate Gronk; some players are just unique,” said New England linebacker Dont’a Hightower.
Troubling for the Seahawks was the way the offence struggled and turned the ball over ( five times) against Green Bay.
Wilson walked off at halftime with a 0.0 passer rating and even after the late rally — one that relied on a series of improbable events, including a trick-play touchdown pass thrown by Regina-born punter Jon Ryan, a fumbled onside kick recovered by former Winnipeg Blue Bomber receiver Chris Matthews, and a two-point convert that ought to have been intercepted but came down in the arms of LaSalle, Ont., tight end Luke Willson ( how about those Canadian connections?) — his rating only improved to 13.6, the worst by any quarterback in nearly 100 NFL playoff games dating back to 2006.
On both sides of the ball, then, there is just a hint of vulnerability in the Seahawks that wasn’t present a year ago.
But don’t expect any hints on that score, from either side.
The Seahawks don’t have to fake their bravado: they have it by the boatload. Facing Brady doesn’t faze them, any more than Peyton Manning did a year ago.
“They’re different in their own ways,” said middle linebacker Bobby Wagner. “Future Hall of Famers, but we’ve taken down Hall of Famers in the past.”
The Seahawks were twopoint underdogs as of Friday, and they won’t mind those odds.
Even so … Patriots by 6.