Fascinating to read about some of the coaching adjustments the Bucs made in the Superbowl.
Offensively, the big one was with play action. They went from 20% during the season to 43% during the game, but the other interesting twist was that during the season they almost exclusively used play action to take deep shots, while in the big game, they ran routes designed to clear out short/intermediate primary looks.
The other fascinating one was that Fournette TD run in the 3rd quarter. Arians has a bread and butter run for years. It's kind of an option run. Straight ahead blocking with front seven accounted for. Primary options are one of two directions inside, or the RB has a third option to bounce outside where he has to make a CB miss. He's been running that for years. First time ever, he and Leftwich throw in a twist . . . a pulling guard and they leave the weakside linebacker unblocked. Fournette, by design, starts inside, which freezes the weakside linebacker (who expects a block attempt). Then, he bounces outside, where the true design is shown (a fake inside run) as the pulling guard obliterates the CB and the weak side linebacker is too slow to react to a play twist he's never seen and not been coached to anticipate.
Meanwhile, defensively . . . holy hell, Todd Bowles. Part of this is due to the Chiefs crap line, but his game plan was to force Mahomes left and to take away the deep stuff (conceding the scrambles for gains much like the Giants years ago conceded the run when they beat the unbeatable Bills in the Superbowl). The way they most frequently lined up reminded me of what the Steelers did to the Colts during the 2005 playoffs. Three on the line. Two in the ILB position. Four DB on the line. Two deep safeties to make sure they don't get beat over the top like they'd been earlier in the year. The team that loved to blitz in turn rarely blitzed, and what they did instead to confuse the Colts OL was you couldn't predict what they were going to do out of that basic set. 4 people were coming, yes, but there was so often 1 who came free (or very quickly) because they were getting a look they hadn't seen on film (and then an adjustment was hard because of all the different things being run from that look).
But, the most fascinating thing with what Bowles did is that each player was like a chess piece, and they attacked in combination, with each piece serving a specific role. There were plays, for example, where JPP was supposed to crash inside (to open things up for a stunting LB or once in a blue moon a blitzing corner), and he never rushed hard, because his role became (a) opening things up for the true rushing attacker and (b) to serve as a spy on Mahomes.
Just really fascinating to read about the coaching adjustments from the Bucs on both sides of the ball.
And, yes, I'll leave the comparisons to others.
