Hey I want to believe as well.
There's a certain amount of 'faith' involved in this projection, I will admit. It's faith that Bill Belichick still has the ability to accurately assess Miami's defensive weaknesses, and still has the ability to accurately assess what has and has not been working for his own team.
If he does still have that ability, then he uses Sony Michel to hit Miami with a single-back, 11-personnel based run attack. And it has an excellent chance of working, particularly as they start putting Josh Gordon on the field in addition to Chris Hogan and Phillip Dorsett, with of course Rob Gronkowski.
And if Belichick still has those abilities, he also hits Miami with passes to guys like Dwayne Allen, or Chris Hogan off play-action, out of 12-personnel, because Miami quite frankly sucks at defending the pass out of their Base defense.
Doing this all at HOME tends to give you a boost.
The flip side of the coin is what Miami's offense can do to New England. And again, a certain amount of faith is involved, but not unreasonably so.
The Patriots have a very strong history of LEVERAGING their defensive personnel toward the pass. They've faced 1-WR personnel on 10 snaps but only marched out 3 goal line packages against them. They've faced 2-WR personnel on 63 snaps but only marched out a Base package 32 snaps. They've faced 3-WR personnel 125 times, but have used Nickel on 156 snaps. And finally, they've used Dime on 23 snaps, and Prevent (7-DBs) on 8 more snaps, even though they've only faced 11 snaps with 4-WR personnel on the field.
So you put out a 2-WR package and you're only going to see NE's Base 4-3 on the field only about 40-50% of the time. If you go to 3-WR personnel, you may see a Dime or even Prevent as much as 10-20% of the snaps.
They're gaming the system based on their analytical regressions of situational football.
So what does that mean for us?
I think the Patriots coaches would actually argue that with Mike Gesicki as your tight end (thinner, weak blocker), and your two running backs BOTH being halfbacks instead of having a fullback out there, they should potentially be going Nickel EVERY time we bring out 12-personnel or 21-personnel. Additionally, they would probably argue that when Miami goes 13-personnel or 22-personnel, they should only go to Base and never bring out their Goal Line unless they're actually on the Goal Line.
When Miami goes to 3-WR personnel, I think the Patriots COULD be liberal with their use of Dime. Miami has established some strong run success out of Nickel. That could scare the Patriots out of this approach. But I don't think so, because Miami's ground success versus Nickel defenses has been predicated on SPEED and MISDIRECTION.
If I were the Patriots, quite frankly, I'd rather have the six defensive backs (three safeties Devin McCourty, Duron Harmon, and Patrick Chung, along with three corners Stephon Gilmore, Jason McCourty, and Jonathan Jones) out there...as opposed to making sure I've got that second linebacker on the field (Kyle Van Noy).
What could Miami do to counter this?
I think you've got to make a strong argument that having Albert Wilson and Jakeem Grant on the field at the same time is like having at least ONE halfback on the field. The run threat is there. So Miami could legit get out into a 01-personnel against New England's Dime package, with Kenny Stills, Danny Amendola, Jakeem Grant, and Albert Wilson, and they would MAINTAIN the run threat.
Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of doing a shovel pass to Albert Wilson working off a Jakeem Grant fake jet sweep, which is what we've seen Kansas City do with Tyreek Hill and Albert Wilson. Or perhaps even a shovel pass to Gesicki that way, as we've seen at Penn State.
Also, last week Miami put out a 13-personnel look and then threw to Kenny Stills in the end zone. He was open. Tannehill missed it. They could try and explore 13-personnel passing against New England's Base 4-3. I don't know that this really favors Miami, certainly from a numbers standpoint, but they may feel a little different about the personnel and spacing, if they're able to isolate one particular guy. Or maybe they feel like they can finally run the ball out of 13-personnel. They haven't shown any ability to do that yet, but who knows?
I think if the Pats pull out Dime and we've got to pass on that, you're going to have to try and get bigger bodied guys like Mike Gesicki and DeVante Parker to win. Or your slot guy has to win against Jonathan Jones. Obviously Amendola and Jones know each other very well. Maybe Amendola has some feelings about who won the vast majority of those training camp and practice matchups.
It's not a closed case by any means. I just don't like the failpoints that are set up for Miami in this game. The things they have to successfully do to end up winning it...I'm just not comfortable predicting there's a better than 50/50 chance they'll do them.
