Point Blank – January 26
What a “Bettor Better Know” – AFC Review and Hoops…In the pocket at Denver, Tom Brady did not have “Time” on his side…The snow from Jonas may have stopped, but some hoops teams are still having to dig out…OKC will bring Thunder on offense, but not much lightning on "D"...
If it is Tuesday that means time for the weekly NFL review, but this week I will change it up a bit – because the Conference Championship games brought so many issues into play that will play a part in Super Bowl 50, and because there are some key issues to be filing away on the College and NBA hardwoods, I will split the football up this week. Today the focus goes on New England/Denver, and then the key basketball happenings, so that you do not end up having to have too long of a scroll to sort through. Besides, with -4.5 and 45 mostly dry paint right now, you do not have to be in a rush. Now let’s get to work…
Item: Tom Brady was on the ground a lot (In the pocket “Time” was not on his side, and it just ran out for Dave DeGuglielmo)
Brady got hit often on Sunday, just how many times depends upon the source. I have read 20 in several places, yet also as high as 23, a lot of plays ending with him having to get up off of that mile high turf in the shadows of the Rockies. Even the lower number of the two represents the high for any QB in the NFL this season. Brady was sacked four times but it easily could have been twice that, with his ability to get the ball into the general direction of receivers under duress a big plus, while also staying on the right side of NFL rules in terms of intentional grounding penalties. In the previous 17 New England games Brady had only been hit 99 times, or 5.8 per outing.
With another long read calling for some musical background to help ease you through, let’s revisit a classic that connects to the theme, with Keith Richards leading the X-Pensive Winos, plus Sarah Dash on vocals, “Time is on My Side”, live from Boston in 1993 (A version with Mick Jagger singing lead would have been too easy; you need to broaden the horizons on occasion). Time indeed has been on the side of Mr. Richards, perhaps unexpectedly; on Sunday in the pocket it was not there for Brady -
How did it come about? There are a myriad of reasons that matter in building a proper diagnosis, and some that particularly matter in terms of projecting Broncos/Panthers. First let’s start with the fact that Wade Phillips put a terrific game plan out there, and it is best set up through his own words - “My guys make plays other defenses don’t. Brady is unbelievable. You know you won’t stop him forever, but you want to make him uncomfortable. You want to take the first receiver away so our rush has an extra second to get to him. We stayed in a three-man rush scheme early and dropped people in coverage so he couldn’t throw it quick. When we went to the four-man rush later and I think he wasn’t sure some times what we were in.”
And more on that theme from CB Chris Harris - “We wanted to get up in their face. We wanted to make Brady hold it to give our rush three, four seconds. So we took away his first throw. We felt if we could do that consistently we knew the dogs were coming.”
The Patriots are ordinarily the NFL’s best at making adjustments, but with a limited OL the options were not as plentiful, and they were thrown so out of sync that RB James White was targeted 16 times, just about the only matchup advantage they could find to exploit, often getting him isolated against a LB. But even those throws were not successful; White only catching five passes for 45 yards, as Brady had a rare game of under 50 percent completions.
In the end it really was about the pass rush – playing those intense latter stages without safeties Darian Stewart and T. J. Ward, coverage was an issue. Phillips even went to the patchwork gamble of using Harris at the position, even though he had never even lined up at safety in practice. Brady exploited that coverage when he had time, but he did not have time often enough (by the way, consider Stewart and Ward both probable for the Super Bowl). And there was some fall-out in the aftermath, New England OL coach Dave DeGuglielmo being handed his walking papers.
There was also another aspect of play that aided the pass rush – Down and Distance. It is a fundamental part of football and one that the Bronco defense has first created, and then owned, in the AFC playoffs, though there is an * attached. It also becomes one of the first bricks in building the wall of a Super Bowl handicap
Item: Denver has allowed 4-27 on 3rd downs in the playoffs (New England went 2-15)
If you hold Ben Roethlisberger and Tom Brady to 4-27 on third down you are doing something special, and the stalwart play on those downs will become a big storyline over the next two weeks. But it is not just what happened on third down snaps, but instead what transpired on the first two that set them up. Of those 27 plays it was third-and-8 or longer 19 times. That is substantial. When that many yards are needed to convert the offense is forced into longer pass patterns, meaning more time spent for the QB in the pocket. For Brady that time wasn’t there.
The reality here is important – it was the distance of those third down plays that mattered so much, with only four of the 27 requiring three yards or less. That was set up partially by good Denver defense, but also the fact that both the Steelers and the Patriots came in with severe limitations in the running game. Yes, in 2016 this is a passing league, and New England has succeeded often without much of a run threat. But you can not beat the Bronco class of defense on the road without some semblance of a ground game, setting up better second- and third-down settings, and also having the threat of play action passes to slow the pass rush down. The Steelers and Patriots handed the ball to RBs 31 times across the two games, and by the official counting netted only 77 yards, a paltry 2.5 per attempt (my own numbers credit the TD runs by Felix Toussaint and Stephen Jackson as being worth more than a full yard). That was a big part of the third-down success rate, but also now where the * comes – Carolina brings an entirely different matchup, and it is something you will be reading about on these pages between now and the Super Bowl 50 kickoff. But back to the review session…
Item: Sunday brought the best of Peyton Manning
Sub-Item: Sunday brought the worst of Peyton Manning
The true fan of sport cannot help but have a small warm feeling from Manning getting a little redemption, in particular vs. the opponent it came against. Then you move past it and think of ways to get the cash register bell to ring. There was plenty to see here, both the best and worst of Manning on display in the same game.
The best was on display through the two TD passes to Owen Daniels. Daniels had only caught three TD passes all season, the last coming more than two months ago, but Manning caught the Patriots twice in defenses schemes that left only LBs to check him. Yet they were entirely different plays. On the first score Manning was able to work Daniels from the slot, and get him wide open down the middle of the field because the New England safeties had over-committed to the outside. On the second Daniels was lined up on the outside, leaving him one-on-one outside against LB Jamie Collins, who had little chance to keep up with him. It was a master’s recognition of what was left open, and Manning took full advantage.
But then there was the second half, after Bill Belichick and his assistants made their adjustments. Over the last two quarters Manning dropped back to pass 13 times, but those plays only produced 29 yards. The Broncos went 3-and-out four times, and on their last two possessions, when they could have sealed the game by getting a few first downs to burn the clock, six snaps generated a net of three yards (there was a false start penalty that cost them five).
Manning will get time to rest before heading to Santa Clara, so he should be physically fresh, but now comes a key “game inside the game” of Super Bowl 50 – if the Panthers play it straight on defense, and do not leave openings based on the schemes alone, can Manning make enough throws down the field to keep a defense honest? He only had one completion of longer than seven yards in the second half on Sunday, when the Bronco offense came to a halt.
Item: NCAA Hoops, after the storm
There are a couple of games on the NCAA board tonight that have leftovers from Winter Storm Jonas playing a part. Note that #738 Duquesne/LaSalle #750 Providence/Xavier and the write-in of 766 Wake Forest/Virginia bring some set-up issues that can matter.
No team got into the headlines more than Duquesne for that long journey home after beating George Mason on Friday, noted in the Monday column, yet the Dukes may have actually come through it all better than tonight’s opponent. The Duquesne players were still back on campus by 11 PM Saturday night, meanwhile the Explorers had their game vs. St. Joseph’s pushed back 25 hours, and now a depth-shy team lacks much turn-around time for this trip. To add some sizzle to the Palumbo Center tonight, Duquesne is promoting the game as a “White Out” for a tribute to what the team went through, and that may well get a few more students into the seats.
Providence is facing the most grueling stretch a team in the Big East will have this season - Villanova/Xavier back-to-back, with travel included and only one day in between. The Friars were supposed to have played the Wildcats on Saturday at Noon to open the sequence, but that became Sunday at 1 PM instead, and the fact that it went to overtime exacerbated matters, Ben Bentil playing the entire 45 minutes, and Kris Dunn logging 43 of them.
Meanwhile Virginia could face a similar disadvantage vs. Wake Forest. This game was originally set for Monday night, a quick turnaround for each team but a fair one, with both scheduled to tipoff at Noon on Saturday. The Demon Deacons did; the Cavaliers did not.
The Virginia game vs. Syracuse as not just moved back to Sunday, but also to a 7 PM start, 31 hours later than the original schedule. Given the issues the Cavaliers have already had on the ACC road, losing outright as favorites at Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech and Florida State, this quick trip calls for a slight tweaking of the power rating. Whether Wake Forest will play with enough toughness to make a game of it is another matter – the Deacons are next-to-last in the conference in defensive efficiency (counting league games only), and their patience to execute properly in what could be a half-court grinder has not been inspiring.
About Last Night, Part I…
The decision to buck the market rush and play Cleveland Under on Monday was costly for the pocket, but brought a lot of food for thought going forward – as it turns out, the result was one based more on offensive efficiency than pace. The Cavaliers took five fewer FG attempts and two fewer FTs than vs. Chicago on Saturday, but scored 31 more points, managing to connect at 50.6 percent from the field. While that may bring a little feel-good to the table, the defense did not.
Minnesota was just a make away from shooting 50 percent (41-84), and the Timberwolves had 28 assists vs. only 10 turnovers. These were not grand basketball designs that Cleveland struggled to cope with, but instead some young players out there having fun - it was the first time in NBA history that a team had three players that have not reached their 21st birthday (Karl Anthony-Towns, Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine) score at least 20 points in a game.
The oddsmakers face a challenge going forward. After Lue’s comments about wanting to play faster became well known the Total on Monday rose a full four points from the opener. That may force their hand in terms of setting the next few games higher than the base numbers would call for, especially with the Cavaliers having a couple of days off at home ahead to tweak their system. But is a faster pace really going to be a reality with this roster?
About Last Night, Part II…
Golden State has ruined back-to-back Mondays in which I was hoping to watch playoff basketball, simply shredding Cleveland and San Antonio in a pair of games that had their outcomes decided before halftime. There is a key takeaway, however, even from a game in which no starter for either side played 30 minutes – while scoring 120 points against a defense playing at a historical level was brilliant, it was really the Warriors own defense that played the biggest part in the outcome.
Golden State had 15 steals, the ball pressure leading to 26 San Antonio turnovers, and the Warriors scored 32 points off of them A big part of beating the Spurs defense was actually not having to face that defense on many occasions, those turnovers providing numerous open-court opportunities. In the open court, Steph Curry and teammates are simply lethal.
In the Sights…
A pair of teams ready to vent frustrations off of losses in double figures square off in Madison Square Garden tonight, and I believe we can take advantage of those energies on the offensive end by playing #709 Oklahoma City/New York Over (7:35 Eastern).
The Thunder were indeed flat in their 116-106 loss at Brooklyn on Sunday, but there was also a reality in play – already without Steven Adams, the loss of Andre Roberson left their defensive rotations extremely fragile, and the Nets scored at least 30 points in three of the four quarters. The options to replace Roberson will be mostly Kyle Singler, Dion Waiters and Anthony Morrow, which means better offense but significantly weaker defense, and Adams was downgraded to doubtful this morning. So the Thunder will attempt to bounce back from that embarrassment by being aggressive on the attack, and the Knicks will not get in the way all that much.
What New York will counter with is also offensive energy, and getting back-to-back days off is just what the doctor ordered, literally, for Carmelo Anthony. Look for this to be a free flowing affair in which the offensive efficiency counts should be favorable (you should be able to do a 209, with some 208.5 at Pinnacle and a few other key precincts this morning).
UPDATING - As it turns out the time off is not enough for Carmelo Anthony to be able to give it a go for the Knicks tonight. But New York has played 4-1 to the Over in the five games he has missed, beating the expectations by an average of 49.5 in the process, or nearly 10 full points per game, so the Over is still a fit.
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