Carter's Classroom: Balance beats Belichick

Jan 19, 2017 • 4:17 pm

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Bill Belichick's defensive success over his long career has come from being able to take away his opponents' greatest strengths on offense.

Scheming to make certain superstar players a non-factor or finding ways to counter a specific style of offense -- whether legally or illegally -- has been a major factor in each of the Patriots' Super Bowl seasons.

However, the Steelers have an offense that has many different ways to light up a scoreboard. With Ben Roethlisberger's ability to extend plays, his trust in Antonio Brown, the development of young receivers like Eli Rogers and Cobi Hamilton, an elite offensive line and the best running back in the game in Le'Veon Bell, the Steelers have enough weapons to make it so the Patriots can't focus on a single aspect to stop them.

Let's get into the film room to show some of what the Steelers can do to keep the Patriots' defense on their heels ...

SPREADING OUT THE RUN

Belichick's defense will try to do what nobody in the NFL has done for nine consecutive weeks, and that's stop Bell from being a major factor in a game.

Bell didn't gain 100 yards in their last meeting, but factoring into that was the Patriots' knowing that Landry Jones was in at quarterback.

Still, the Steelers should notice a difference in how their success on the ground can receive a boost when their offense spreads out the defense with their formations. Take a look at this play when the Steelers bunched in two tight ends and a wide receiver tight on the line of scrimmage:

If you count the Patriots, that's nine defenders in the box, allowing them more opportunities to plug any gaps for Bell to run through. The holes are tighter and the Patriots' linebackers and safeties are aggressive to the gaps to give Bell no clear path to dart through.

However when the Steelers bring in a three wide receiver set that forces the Patriots' secondary to spread across the field, that places a bigger burden on the Patriots' front seven to each gap. Without the extra support of having more linebackers and safeties, plays like this can happen:

Watch how New England's Donta' Hightower (54) attacks the edge well but gets neutralized by David DeCastro. Because there wasn't as much support behind him, the Patriots' defensive backs have much more ground to cover which gives Bell more space to put on moves and get more yards.

While it will be up to Roethlisberger to make the appropriate adjustments at the line, it will also be up to Todd Haley to make sure the personnel groups are diverse enough to keep the Patriots from being able to load up the box with linemen and linebackers.

Once the Steelers can establish their ground game as a consistent problem with their wide receivers on the field, the Patriots will be forced to either switch some of their defensive backs out for linebackers and/or linemen, or for their defensive backs to be more aggressive towards the line of scrimmage.

The former will open up opportunities for more mis-matches for the wide receivers to exploit, the latter will allow for play action to freeze defensive backs and open up for deep passes behind the safeties and big plays over the middle.