After weeks of living with a Goldilocks Principle offense (just enough running, just enough passing), the Broncos ended up with a cold bowl of porridge at Baltimore this weekend.
The Ravens – a talented team coming in with 3 straight losses – simply played harder and hungrier than the Broncos. The defense for at least one week, again looked like the defense that announcers expect every time the Ravens take the field. They were fast and aggressive. The Broncos were neither. Ray Lewis and his compatriots played like they were outside a night club at the Super Bowl in Atlanta. And this time, the Broncos were the ones that ended the night with a knife in their stomach.
While the final score is a little deceiving, it isn’t the Broncos defense that is the big concern to me. One TD came on a kick return (the Broncos special teams has been about as special as Johnny Knoxville in the Ringer this year) and the defense was able to keep in check Joe Flacco, whose game has grown more in the last year than his eyebrows, who came into the game with three 300-yard games already this season. If the Broncos had been able to get Ray Rice down on first contact, this game would have as high scoring as that 6-3 Browns Bills crapfest of a couple weeks ago.
The real difference in this game was the disappearance of the Broncos offense.
Beyond the simple fact that the Ravens played harder than the Broncos, the Ravens defense were also better prepared and came in with a gameplan for the evolving ‘velociraptor’ offense of the Broncos. It was almost like they knew exactly what to do to beat this offense.
When I was thinking back about this game a few hours later, trying to come up with something to say that was interesting and witty and not involving Brett Favre I made a realization. The Ravens didn’t invent a new way to beat the Broncos offense. They just used a blueprint that has been there for nearly two years.
Quite simply, they used the Giants blueprint for beating the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.
Remember back to that game when the Patriots were looking at going 19-0 and cementing their status as the greatest team – and greatest offense – of all time. The Giants, with a strong defensive line of Michael Strahan, Osi Umenyiora and Justin Tuck swarmed, pressured and dismantled the prolific Patriots attack.
The weak link all season for that Patriots had been a less than stellar running game. By bringing a full 8 players in the box, the Giants stifled any running game and then pinned their ears back and put the all-out rush on Brady.
NOTE: Is it just me or is ‘pin their ears back’ the lamest cliché in all of sport? What does it even mean? Where did it come from? What or who once actually pinned their ears back? And yet, I still used it and your read it and understood it. We are just victims of the machine my friends.
With the hard rush on, Brady didn’t have adequate time to wait for receivers to get open downfield, so he was forced to throw underneath.
Is this starting to sound familiar? Isn’t it sounding a little like yesterday?
So, what do the Broncos do now? While the blueprint is now known on how to beat them, the next question is how many teams have the personnel to do it? Frighteningly one answer to that question is: their next opponent – the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Can the Broncos offensive line do enough against the Steelers to get a running game going and slow the pass rush a little? Can McDaniels come up with a scheme to exploit a too-aggressive pass rush?
Let’s hope josh finds a microwave to get that porridge re-heated before next Monday night.
