Josh McDaniels said this week that noodling too much over what the Steelers could do Sunday night is a waste of time when, whatever they do, the Patriots have to react to it anyway.
In other words, do you. Be reactive to them if you have to.
“One of the things you've got to (avoid is spending) too much time guessing about what may happen because you could do yourself a lot of harm in that regard,” McDaniels said on a conference call. “You have an idea of the things that (the Steelers) do well based on many years of film study and understanding how they try to play and when.
“There's always a couple questions you have that you're going to find out in the first quarter of the first game of the season — where they're going to line so-and-so up, who is going to be in nickel, are they going to play this grouping, are they going to rotate players, are they going to play three-for-two at some positions. Some of those things are going to be determined quickly on Sunday night. To spend a lot of time guessing … the guesswork is something that just adds time to your week. … ‘Are they going to play this guy over that guy more, etc.?’ I think those conversations wait until Sunday to find some of those things out. We know we're going to play a good defense, that's for sure.”
Even though the Steelers played just twice after beating the Patriots last December, the team’s transformed a bit on both sides of the ball throughout the offseason and training camp. There will be looks and groupings the Patriots haven’t seen because of the new personnel — like slightly-built-but-speedy linebackers Mark Barron and Devin Bush — and because of departures (Antonio Brown, for one).
But Bill Belichick said Week 15’s game still has relevance.
New England Patriots
“I don't think it's insignificant, but there are changes and, again, both teams have had a lot of time to prepare for the game and also — both teams are different than they were at that point in time,” he said. “They've also had a chance to add, subtract or modify things schematically that they're doing and both teams have some different players that I would anticipate playing significant roles in the game that weren't part of that game. Those things are all different. But there's a lot of people that did play in that game that will be playing in this game, so I do think there's a relevance. I wouldn't want to say it's zero.”
One of the big reasons the Patriots lost that game was penalties. They had 14 of them. The unknown of how the officials will call a game at the start of a new season also looms, especially with all the directives the league showers them with.
McDaniels is bound to uncork a bottle of “What the hell are they doing?” formations on the Steelers. How well the Steelers defense deciphers and reacts to the Patriots initial foray will go a long way to deciding how deeply McDaniels digs after that. One limitation the Patriots offensive coordinator will encounter is the absence of a tight end threat and the lack of institutional knowledge among wide receivers.
If Tom Brady can only go as fast as his slowest offensive teammate, that will make it hard for New England to push tempo.
Then again, maybe the Patriots won’t want to push tempo because their modus operandi for this game is to be glacial and wear Pittsburgh down. It all depends.
“This week in particular is a little exciting because there's an unknown element to the opponent,” McDaniels offered. “You're not sure exactly what they're going to do. You may have a good idea, but it's never 100 percent that way. We're going to get out there and play a full game for the first time with this new group, which is exciting, and at the same time, you're going to find out a lot about yourself as you head into the first week and then move on from there.”
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