Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
I figured A-Gap blitzes could do damage and man those got STONEWALLED.
And I felt like he kept using them in critical situations. But I also wonder if those weren't designed more to attack the run than the pass.
I think they were just really focused on bottling up the ground game and forcing Hurts to the middle with his runs.
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When you look at it from the perspective of a DC going into the SB, his gameplan made a ton of sense. Hurts wasn't throwing well in the two pervious playoff games, barely threw for 300 yds in those two games combined, many of this throws were in the dirt or otherwise off-target, but their running attack was crushing it.
So, Spags took away their run game. I said in one of the pre-game threads that I wanted to see our defense somehow hold the PHI rushing attack to under 4 yds/carry. Well, they did that. In spades, to the tune of 2.7yds/carry.
He basically dared Hurts to beat his defense by throwing it.
And who could've predicted that Hurts would throw as well as he did?
I mean, he was throwing dimes and darts all over the yard. That one to Goedert on the 7 route or whatever it was to the sideline between a pair of our defenders was a pure-D
dot. He couldn't have trotted over and handed the ball to Goedert as precisely.
And he had a lot of throws like that, catches that were contested, but he just threw a better ball than could be defended. that's not on Spags, that was just an elite performance by Hurts and his receivers.