How the Eagles can sack Tom Brady in Super Bowl LII

MINNEAPOLIS — First things first, you should try to sack Tom Brady if you can. Brady is very good at throwing the ball -- perhaps the best ever — when he’s standing up. But curiously, he’s less good when he’s prostrate on the ground.

Teams have used this one weird trick to beat the Patriots in the past. The last time the Patriots lost in the playoffs, Brady was hounded by the Broncos’ defense for four sacks and finished with a quarterback rating of 56.4 in a 20-18 loss in 2016. Pass rush was also key to both of the Giants’ Super Bowl wins over the Patriots. In 2008, Brady was sacked five times and the Pats scored 14 points. In 2012, Brady was sacked twice, both by Justin Tuck, and forced into an end zone intentional grounding penalty for a safety in a 21-17 loss.

All those teams had to do was overwhelm the most meticulous and ruthless quarterback in NFL history. The answer is simple then for the Eagles in Super Bowl LII: Just hit Brady, a whole bunch, and the Lombardi Trophy is theirs. Never mind Nick Foles, the Eagles have one of the best defensive fronts in football and they’re in a fairly important football game because of it. But don’t take my word for it:

Von Miller on how to beat the Patriots:
“Sack Tom Brady.
That’s it.
End of article.
We good here?”
— Nicki Jhabvala (@NickiJhabvala) February 2, 2018

See? With that, here are a few steps the Eagles can follow.

Step 1) Be Deep And Versatile And Great

Those Broncos and Giants defensive fronts featured names like Von Miller, Justin Tuck, Jason Pierre-Paul, Michael Strahan, DeMarcus Ware, and Osi Umneyiora. That’s pure talent, but the Eagles can compare. Fletcher Cox has been named second- or first-team All-Pro in three of his six seasons. Brandon Graham, a second-team All-Pro last season, led the team in sacks while remaining one of the Eagles’ best run defenders. Rookie Derek Barnett has played beyond his years and veteran Chris Long has defied his, and both are playing as backups to Graham and Vinny Curry.

“I like the diversity of it, I like that you’ve got multiple guys who can rush at any time, you’ve got guys who can rush from a lot of different angles, guys who can play multiple positions through the day, so it’s a lot interchangeable pieces,” Eagles defensive line coach Chris Wilson says. “When you have that flexibility, it makes you different. I don’t like to use the term ‘better,’ but it definitely makes you different.”

The pure numbers matter, too. The Eagles, on the surface, aren’t better than the Jaguars defensive front the Patriots faced in the AFC Championship. That unit was second in the NFL with 55 sacks and led the league in pressure rate when not blitzing. The fact that they can go deep into their rotation means they won’t gas out like the Jaguars appeared to do at the end of that game, however. They certainly won’t fall off like the Falcons late in last year’s Super Bowl. Via The Ringer’s Danny Kelly:

But after registering a 44.7 pressure rate over the first three quarters, the Falcons pass rush ran out of gas. There’s plenty of other reasons for their collapse, but Atlanta could muster only a 20.7 percent pressure rate in the fourth quarter and overtime—and that’s when Brady took over.

The Eagles rotate a lot. Graham was on the field more than any defensive lineman this season, and he still sat more than 35 percent of their snaps. Defensive tackle Beau Allen was seventh in number of snaps played as a defensive lineman, and that was still good for 41 percent. The Eagles can do so much switching in part because their lineman can do everything.

“You want multidimensional players, players who are good against the run and the pass because we can’t dictate if they’re going to run the ball or pass the ball,” defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz says. “You can’t just be a pass rusher and expect to have success.

“Being able to throw waves at them — I’ve compared it to pitchers coming out of the bullpen. We want to keep throwing fastballs, and one of the ways you can do that is keep your guys fresh.”

The Eagles didn’t necessarily stand out during the regular season as a pass rushing team — they had 38 sacks and were 19th in the league in adjusted sack rate -- but they had perhaps the best rush defense in the league. They can feasibly get the Patriots into long down-and-distances, and that will give them more opportunities to plant Brady in the dirt.

“The idea that they were moving some of those defensive ends — Graham and Curry, and some of those guys — down inside, because if you’re any sort of football historian at all you know that the Giants were able to beat the Patriots with that NASCAR package, right? And bring in Tuck and those guys down inside and getting pressure on the interior part of it.” NBC announcer and analyst Cris Collinsworth says. “There’s not even a doubt in my that the Eagles are going to try and do much of the same thing.”

Step 2) Don’t Ever Believe You Have Things Under Control

The Patriots’ comebacks against the Jaguars two weeks ago and the Falcons last year came on like cold symptoms. Neither team seemed to want to acknowledge that what was happening was actually happening.

The Jaguars ran the ball on first down over and over, only to keep giving the ball back quickly.

The Falcons did the opposite, throwing into the second half a little longer than they should have after taking a [hops in car, drives to local library, visits newspaper archives, finds a copy of USA Today dated Feb. 6, 2017, reads game recap, asks librarian if this is a typo] 28-3 lead late in the third quarter.

At this point, teams should expect the Patriots to have an advantage in the fourth quarter. They are maniacally well-conditioned, and they consistently make the right corrections to render what you were doing hopelessly ineffective.

Again, you don’t have to take my word for it:

“Part of it’s adjusting to the game speed of those guys,” Patriots offensive tackle LaAdrian Waddle explains. “As much as you try to assimilate to that, you really can’t until you go against them, and that requires conditioning. Fourth quarter, guys have gone through three quarters of the ball game already, they’re starting to wear down already, they’re fatigued, and we’ve kind of reached that fourth quarter is our quarter. Instead of regressing or turning it down, we pick up the pace and we put it down to the metal.”

The Patriots ran chip routes against the Jaguars’ outside pass rushers in the second half with their tight ends, throwing defenders off their rushing lanes before settling underneath the secondary. They could do the same against the Eagles on Sunday to neutralize the defensive front. The trick to beating those blocks will be ratcheting up the intensity at a point in the game when it’s easy to get complacent.

“I always call it chip the chipper,” former Vikings and Chiefs defensive end Jared Allen explains (I spoke to Allen through his sponsorship with Amazon). “The tackle might sit heavy inside on you because he thinks he has chip help, and if you can sell like you might be going inside, the back might release you to come around the edge. A lot of times I chip the chipper and try to spin off inside, or counter off back to the inside just because they can get kind of messed up.

“But yeah I’m not going to sit there and let some guy tear my route apart.”

Step 3) Keep Things Under Control

There’s an axiom that says that to beat Brady you have to get pressure up the middle, take away the lane for him to step up into, and watch him panic. If you can just fold the pocket consistently — not necessarily put Brady on the ground — you can make him uncomfortable. Remember that one play during the AFC Championship game when the Jaguars made Brady look like a scared baby deer?

Brady was able to hold the ball for a long time, but because the Jaguars closed the lane, he eventually went down. If you can do that all game, you’ll be in good shape, but for a defensive lineman sitting on your heels is maddening.

The Patriots often complete quick, short pass after quick, short pass to their running backs, tight ends, and underneath receivers, leaving pass rushers no time to get home. That’s when they start over-pursuing, and Brady takes advantage by finding space and throwing deep.

“Any inconsistency in your rush lanes or the way you build his pocket, [Brady’s] going to exploit those,” Long says. “You just have to be on your game and not get frustrated when he might for a quarter or two be getting the ball out super quick, and we might be rushing just fine, but we haven’t touched him. And you just can’t get frustrated. You’ve got to stay at it and not get out of your game, because that’s when he beats you is when you try something new.”

Step 4) Hope No One Else Screws Up Ever

Brady’s — and the Patriots’ — biggest asset is his ability to find an exploit and needle the hell out of it. The Pats are notorious for the Next Man Up mantra that your favorite team likes to talk about a lot — only they actually embody it. Against the Jaguars, that man was Danny Amendola. In the fourth quarter, he caught five passes for 56 yards — two of them for touchdowns, and one of them a 21-yard gain on third-and-18.

Before that quarter he had two catches for 28 yards. In his last 11 regular season games, he had more than 43 yards receiving just twice. Amendola is just one of many good weapons that the Patriots have stockpiled only to detonate at exactly the right moment. If you cheat underneath, Brandin Cooks is fast enough to take the lid off. Try to protect deep in quarters coverage, and Amendola and Chris Hogan will devour you underneath. Feeling blitz-y? James White and Dion Lewis will gladly turn a dump off pass into a 30-yard gain out of the backfield.

They’re a bitch to gameplan for.

“They’re good at trying to recognize what you’re in and trying to take advantage of that,” Schwartz says. “This is not an offense that you can render ineffective by taking one player away. I’ll give an example: Last week with Gronkowski, with Jacksonville. I mean, he was out of the game, and they were still able to score enough to win the game, and they came back from 10 points down without him. So imagine if that had been Jacksonville’s gameplan: Take Gronkowski out of the game. Well guess what, that was mission accomplished.”

It’s not so much that the Patriots’ offense is a powerhouse, but that it is bionic. Only the Chiefs had fewer turnovers, and no one averaged more than their 6.2 plays per drive, which signals how well they move the ball consistently to wear defenses down while also creating more opportunities for you to goof everything up.

“What are you going to take away?” Colinsworth says. “You say, ‘Oh, you’ve got to take out Gronk,’ well there goes your double team. Right? That’s it. So now everyone else gets one-on-one. Well that’s no fun covering those backs out of the backfield in that situation with your linebackers.

“I guess the bottom line is it doesn’t matter what you do. They’re going to see it, Brady’s going to know it, he’s going to know where you’re vulnerable, and he’s going to take advantage of you.”

Step 5) Maybe Just Don’t Play Tom Brady, Actually

Teams that don’t play Tom Brady are undefeated against Tom Brady.

Step 6) Ah Crud, You Have To Don’t You

Step 7) Welp

Here’s where Fletcher Cox blows up the whole premise of this article.

“I don’t think there’s no blueprint,” Cox says. “I think the only blueprint is our defensive line against their offensive line. Which guy can win one-on-ones. Which guy can create that pressure, and just go out and be themselves.”

Teams have been able to bother Brady before, but we may have to go back all the way to Step 1 to understand why. If you want to sack Brady, your pass rush better be Hell on legs because when faced with an opportunity to make a play, Brady almost always does.

“We always talk about offensive linemen protecting the quarterback. I always thought it was the opposite. I always thought quarterbacks protected their offensive lines,” Colinsworth says. “I think Brady can innately feel when it’s time. Generally, what I think he does, early in drives, early in the game, he’s never holding the ball. He’s just not. He’s not going to give you a chance when he’s fresh to come and get him. But as the drive continues, and they’ve trapped you on the field, and they’ve no-huddled you, and they’ve done all that stuff, now he’s going to hold the ball.”

Wilson is more succinct: “You can watch the tape, you can watch the video, you can see the things that create the matchup issues. The thing is, everybody’s got good players.”

“There are no surprises,” he adds. “He is that good.”

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