I've rewatched the Super Bowl a few times now and one thing that stood out during my last viewing was the odd way we defended the Broncos bunch formations. When Denver lined up three Wr's to one side in a bunch, one of our corners would play ten yards deep another would play up on the line and then very late into the snap, a linebacker would trot over and line up directly in the WR's face. If you rewatch the game you can see this visibly unnerved the WR's. When the ball was snapped two of the WR's in the bunch were forced to double up on the linebacker because his sheer size demanded the double team, at that point that point both Cb's had a free shot on the WR with the ball. The use of a linebacker to front a bunch set is pretty damn smart, because if the WR's want to break out into a down field route tree you have this 240 pound freak busting you in the chops and taking out at least one WR.
The downside to this approach is it takes a linebacker out of the box and opens a whole for the run game. But what we did to cover that option was drop Cam into the box.
And I don't see other teams being able to utilize linebackers as bunch breakers, because they don't have a free safety who can cover the deep end of the field all by his lonesome, like Earl can.
Go Hawks!
The downside to this approach is it takes a linebacker out of the box and opens a whole for the run game. But what we did to cover that option was drop Cam into the box.
And I don't see other teams being able to utilize linebackers as bunch breakers, because they don't have a free safety who can cover the deep end of the field all by his lonesome, like Earl can.
Go Hawks!