Pats V. Tampa Bay

This is shaping up to be quite a match-up. In fairness to the Pats in regards to my last post, the weather for Saturday is sunny and 40 degrees. That means a level playing field. As a Pats fan, you had to have been hoping for 20 degrees and snow. Tampa has never won a regular season game under 35 degrees and their starting RB, "Cadillac" Williams has NEVER even seen snow. A win for the Pats would be a good win. If they aren't victorious it will leave us all felling the same way we did after KC 3 weeks ago, that they just aren't good enough to beat a good team - and TB is a good team. AND don't worry, Brady will play. He's been running without a noticeable limp in practice. That will make 76 straight starts for the team MVP and future President of the United States.

Defensively, TB is #2 overall but what's really impressive is that they are top five v. both the run and the pass. (#5 and #4 respectively) Not surprisingly, the Tampa D is 7th on third down, holding opponents to just 34% of conversions.
The "Tampa 2" defense is their base defense, which means they usually have two deep safeties in pass coverage with an agressive one-gap D-Line featuring Chris Hovan and Simeon Rice. The conventional wisdom is that the way to beat the "Tampa 2" is to throw to the TE over the middle, between the two safeties.
To run v. the one-gap the O Line will do a lot of letting the DLine through only to be whacked by the TE pulling into the middle. Obviously, the Pats will need BIG games from Watson and Graham both blocking and catching the ball. They are both listed as questionable and if they can't go the Pat's may be in trouble.

Offensively, Gruden is known to attack the D's weakness over and over again. The way that Belichick described it was, and I'm paraphrasing: "Shanahan (denver) does a good job of sticking the knife in where your D is weakest, but Gruden sticks the knife in and twists it around a few times until it really hurts."
In the past Gruden has done this by using lots of motion to create mismatches and favorable matchups. However, TB has been much more vanilla since Simms took over and stays in a lot of max protect formations. In TB's 3 losses with Simms, he has been sacked 15 times. In their 4 wins he's been sacked 3 times. Expected Belichick to throw lot's of different looks at Simms. Zone coverage, man coverage, blitzes, fake blitzes, zone blitzes, you name it. Belichick will try to take advantage of Gruden's young QB and the vanilla O.

It's interesting that since Gruden's arrival in TB he and Belichick have developed quite a relationship. It's only going to grow since Belichick's former X and O buddy was Nick Saban, now the coach of the Dolphins. You can bet that Belichick's not talking X's and O's with him anymore.

Tampa Bay is the last team in the NFL that Brady hasn't started against.

The Pats haven't beaten TB since 1988.

The Pats are 43-7 after Nov 1 since 2001.

The Pats set a franchise record with 32 1st downs last week.

Tom Brady is 19-0 when the game time temp is under 40 degrees.

Deion Branch needs one TD catch to set a new career high of FIVE.
(Superbowl MVP my ass. Who threw him the ball?)

The Pats are now #9 in the ESPN power rankings playing against #5 TB. Why then, ESPN analysts, are the Pats favored by 5 points if TB is so much better?