Funny. Everyone gives Mazz his due with baseball. I’ve never heard him be correct once.
That's the thing with Mazz. He can critique every move the Red Sox make with no accountability at all. Listeners, most anyway, assume he knows what he's talking about so he rarely gets challenged. Once in a while a caller will tell him why he's wrong and more often than not that caller gets cut off while Mazz babbles on & on or changes the subject. I'm not a fan of Mazz and I hate HATE his baseball show. Thankfully he's done til April with that crap.
Felger has decent knowledge of football having covered the Pats for 5+ years at the Herald, but he's a prick on air so who can listen? Still, he doesn't come close to Bedard in football knowledge so he should just shut up and let Bedard do his thing of educating the listeners.
Here's an example of what Bedard brings to Pats fans as he explains why the Pats
couldn't play man coverage the first 4 games.
One of the problems with playing man coverage is that you have to have at least five players that are capable of playing man coverage against targets of varying sizes and speeds, from big receivers to little scat backs. To play man, you need players that are capable of playing man against all possible targets.
“If you don’t feel like you have enough matchups in man coverage, then it’s hard to call man coverage,”
Bill Belichick said last month.
One of the big problems for the Patriots entering Thursday night’s game against the Bucs was that in the first four games of the season, they felt they couldn’t matchup in one crucial coverage area: Patriots linebackers vs. the opponent’s running backs.
The Chiefs had speedsters
Kareem Hunt and
Akeem Hunt. The Saints had impressive rookie
Alvin Kamara.
Lamar Miller and
D’Onta Foreman both ran sub 4.5 seconds in the 40. And the Panthers had the very quick
Christian McCaffrey.
In the first four games, the Patriots had
Kyle Van Noy,
Elandon Roberts and
David Harris available to matchup with running backs. None of them can provide straight man coverage of any backs, let alone that group. That’s why you saw the Patriots attempt to use safety
Jordan Richards at linebacker against the Chiefs. Turns out he wasn’t much better, and offered zero resistance to the run, so that experiment was quickly abandoned.
As a result, the Patriots tried to play it safe by playing more zone to cover for the linebackers. We all know the result: the worst defense in the league in yards and points allowed.
So in facing the Bucs, on a short week no less,
Matt Patricia and Belichick were faced with a major dilemma:
How do we let our secondary play at their best while not exposing the linebackers and the integrity of the rest of the offense?
There were a few subtle tweaks, some good advanced scouting and just some good fortune that enabled the defense to get its groove back in Tampa Bay, and lead — yes, lead — the Patriots to a 19-14 win over the Buccaneers.
Here’s how it happened.
First of all, the Bucs don’t feature their backs very much in the passing attack, other than for a checkdown for
Jameis Winston. Sure, they’ll occasionally split one out and try to exploit a matchup but it doesn’t happen that often. Plus, with DeSean Jackson and O.J. Howard on the roster to go along with Mike Evans and Cameron Brate, the Bucs are now more of a downfield passing team. And their best receiving back,
Doug Martin, had just come off suspension so he was bound to be rusty and not a huge part of the game plan.
That worked out exactly as planned, as Martin only caught one of three targeted pass for 8 yards.
The other component was knowing that when the Bucs go to shotgun and have a back in the backfield, that back is part of the protection packages. Basically, the Patriots could discern on film and through study that if they the lined up with so many defender on the line of scrimmage, the back would either a) have to stay in block, b) chip an edge rusher, or c) at least delay his path into the pattern until he was sure danger had passed.
For that part of the plan, the Patriots often put Van Noy and
Dont’a Hightower (back many times at his inside linbacker spot) on the line. That caused the back to stay in and block, or delay his route. Both were wins for the Patriots because that meant they only had to defend the four other eligible receivers with five-to-seven defenders.
https://www.bostonsportsjournal.com/2017/10/06/bedard-tweaks-matt-patricia-allowed-patriots-defense/
Felger doesn't have the knowledge to do that. Analysis is what Bedard does best; poking fun at others & ridicule is Felger's schtick. I don't like him as a person or as a sports broadcaster.
As an aside, Bedard's explanation goes back to the discussion about the Pats poor front 7 personnel and why it came to this. Our LBs suck and our best DLs are inexperienced. Draft last, or close to last, in line and this is what happens. All the best players are gone when it's the Pats turn to choose.
