Recapping Super Bowl LIII with a splash of NFL Draft

It’s officially the offseason! With Super Bowl LIII in the books, we now get to focus our attentions to the re-signing phase, free agency period, and the NFL Draft. But first, we have to wrap up the season by looking back on the New England Patriots win over the Los Angeles Rams.

There’s a case being made by Bill Barnwell that the Patriots’ defensive gameplan was the best in Super Bowl history. Does it hold water?

Here’s a mostly accurate transcript of my thoughts on the matter from The Kist & Solak Show #76:

“Bill Barnwell put out a piece for ESPN where he called the performance by the Patriots defense the best we’ve ever seen, and there’s some interesting supporting data for this..

Barnwell took the regular season points per games for Super Bowl teams, then took their points scored and then spit out a percentage. What that looks like is, for instance, in 2013 the Seattle Seahawks limited a Denver Broncos’ offense that averaged 37.9 points per game to only 8 points in the Super Bowl, which was 21.1%. That was the 3rd best all time.

The Patriots limited a Rams offense that averaged 32.9 points per game in the regular season to only 3 points, over 4% better than the 2nd place Dallas Cowboys who held the Miami Dolphins’ offense to 3 points back in 1971.

Sean McVay said it himself, he was outcoached. We’ve talked about the Detroit Lions and Rams game from early December a lot. That’s where the seesaw started to come down on the other side as defenses figured out the Rams, but nobody noticed because the Rams ultimately won by two scores. Bill Belichick and defensive coordinator Brian Flores apparently loved the gameplan the Lions used and took pieces from it to construct their own plan,

The plan was also similar to what the Eagles did, which was deploy quarters coverage which also added extra defenders close to the box. The Patriots also played with a hole or robber defender a lot to take away the typically easy short to intermediate stuff in the middle. They then really confused the Rams offensive line with stunts and games.

This really was a masterpiece by Bill Belichick and Brian Flores, but it was made possible by the way the Lions, Chicago Bears, and Eagles had success against McVay from Weeks 12-14 and really even in the past when Belichick went up against McVay when McVay was still a coordinator. I think that’s part of the reason I loved this gameplan from Belichick so much. When you decide how far back you want to look and you can take pieces from all of it and it all had a very clear purpose and it was extremely effective.”

You can hear additional thoughts on this, plus a deep discussion on Jared Goff’s disappointing performance, NFL Draft talk and more by listening to The Kist & Solak Show #76! Check it out on the media player below or click here if the player doesn’t load. New to podcasts? Check out our guide on how to listen to BGN! FLY EAGLES FLY!