The Gridiron Breakdown: Preliminary Super Bowl Thoughts

No matter how the conference championship games went, I was convinced we were getting a quality and interesting Super Bowl with any combination of the final four teams. So what is the story line for Super Bowl LIII? I think the key word is "innovation" for this one.

Oh, the lazy narrative is the Old Guard (Patriots) vs. New Wave (Rams). Both of these teams and coaches represent the best the NFL fosters in terms of innovation.

"The Patriot Way" is as hard to duplicate as it is to doubt. Bill Belichick and his staff are the absolute masters of situational football. On defense, they take away something important for the opposing offense and dare you to beat them with what's left. (And teams do succeed in that from time to time. No team is unbeatable.) On offense, we've seen the Patriots go from a power attack, to a wide open pass-heavy offense, to now ball-control (with pass and run) clock-eating multiple nightmare to defend. And all of that is rests on Tom Brady's superior ability to distribute the ball. The Patriots run of success isn't luck or conspiracy. It's from being tops in situational preparedness.

The Rams represent the shiny, new things NFL teams are now obsessed with, but it's really just an evolution of previous schemes. Sean McVay gets a lot of deserved credit for his offense and the ways he deploys his play makers to create mismatches in space. What's he's done is take the West Coast/90s Zone Blocking schemes and added the wrinkle of more shotgun and bunch WR forms while moving the QB out of the pocket. That creates all kinds of coverage and role confusion for teams defending that. The Rams defense is pretty simple; they create pressure from the middle of the line to disrupt timing in your backfield. Coverage can be spotty for them but only a few teams have time to exploit that.

The X's and O's of this Super Bowl fascinate me and over the next week we are going to be treated to a lot of discussion about that, but you are going to have to look for it. I venture a good bit of media coverage will be on the controversial call in the NFC Championship Game and asking Tom Brady how much longer he can play. Cut your way through that mess and you will find there's plenty of people breaking down the match ups in the game.

Thanks for reading. Please share with others and I'll be back next Friday for a full Super Bowl preview and picks. Monday on the blog I'll be reviewing the dueling Fyer Festival documentaries on Netflix and Hulu. Also, we now have a PODCAST. It's available everywhere podcasts are found. The intro episode will tell you about the format of the show and first episode will drop in early February.