How Belichick attacked Brady in his return to New England

PATRIOTS FILM REVIEW

After beating the Patriots on Sunday night, Tom Brady revealed to NBC Sports he had prepared for Bill Belichick’s defense by studying film of how Belichick attacked other elite quarterbacks as far back as 2013.

Turns out, all Brady needed to do was turn the clock back a year.

In Week 4 of last season, Belichick pulled the strings on what was then the best defensive performance ever against Patrick Mahomes, limiting him to 236 passing yards and his Chiefs to 19 offensive points. There were two tenets of Belichick’s plan: pre-snap disguise and 8-man coverages. Against Brady, the Patriots dropped eight defenders into coverage on 24% of his dropbacks, a significant jump from their previous three games. They crowded the middle of the field at all times, yielding just three completions between the numbers. Akin to their Kansas City plan, the Patriots preferred man coverage against Brady, using it on 76% of his dropbacks and often with at least one defender in short zone.

The Patriots dropped eight almost immediately, deploying one deep safety and two linebackers who hunted crossing routes amid a full field of man-to-man coverage on Brady’s second snap. The Pats occasionally inverted that structure, calling for two deep zone defenders and one short. Overall, they rotated safeties regularly, sprinkled in a couple of double teams and occasionally blended man and zone principles, forcing Brady to constantly read and react.

The Pats also blitzed him sparingly at a 15% clip; more than the two times they chased Mahomes, but still far below their season-long rate. Belichick forced Brady to be patient and work against the man-to-man matchups he chose for the Bucs’

Pro Bowl wideouts Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Antonio Brown: J.C. Jackson on Evans, Jalen Mills tailing Godwin and Jonathan Jones on Brown. All three, while outmatched from a talent standpoint, survived.

Perhaps the best Belichick trick pulled against Tampa was convincing their coaching staff to take the ball out of Brady’s hands in the third quarter, when they called nine runs to five passes after a sluggish first half. And yet that’s when the Bucs were surprisingly at their most effective, scoring their only touchdown on an 8-yard scamper by Ronald Jones; a reflection on the Patriots’ ongoing struggles in run defense and the brilliance of their head coach’s plan to limit Brady like few had before.

Here’s what the film revealed about the Pats’

19-17 loss on Sunday: