Much must be made of Joe Flacco's performance against the Pittsburgh Steelers this past weekend.The Baltimore Ravens' starting quarterback was undoubtedly the star in his team's convincing victory over its AFC North rivals. Moving forward, however, Flacco's play won't matter if the Ravens can't contain Tom Brady and the New England Patriots' high-powered offense.
Because of their limited secondary and the construction of the Patriots offense, the two most important players for the Ravens will be Terrell Suggs and Elvis Dumervil.
Suggs and Dumervil have both had very impressive, if different, seasons. Suggs has been a full-time starter who racked up 12 sacks and 61 tackles while being used in different ways. Dumervil has split time with Courtney Upshaw and has essentially become a situational pass-rusher.
Despite sacrificing snaps, Dumervil had 17 sacks during the regular season and two last week against the Steelers.
Facing Brady, interior pressure typically becomes more important than edge pressure. That is because Brady gets rid of the ball quickly and understands how to adjust to edge pressure, whereas it's much tougher for him to move away from interior pressure if lined up closer to him from the snap.
However, this season has shown that edge-rushers can disrupt Brady and that his offensive tackles haven't been consistently impressive. Starting left tackle Nate Solder has been a major problem at times, as he has struggled in one-on-one situations, while right tackle Sebastien Vollmer has been more consistent against lesser talents but has struggled with the best rushers he's faced.
Against the Steelers, the Ravens were able to simply rush four defenders after the quarterback and drop the rest of their defenders into soft coverage. That won't be as easy against the Patriots, who have a better rushing attack.
That shouldn't intimidate the Ravens defense, though.Baltimore's defense is constructed similarly to the Kansas City Chiefs unit that decimated the Patriots offense in Week 4. Chiefs defensive coordinator Bob Sutton is a creative coach who used different looks and disguised rushes that weren't necessarily blitzes to create confusion for Brady.
While Sutton's game plan was impressive, he needed three key pieces in the defensive front to play well—three eerily similar to three of the Ravens' front seven.
Chiefs outside linebacker Justin Houston is a better player than Suggs these days, but that says more about Houston's rise than Suggs' decline. More significantly, Houston and Suggs are similar players in that they are both outside linebackers with the versatility to excel at the various tasks they are assigned with.
Kansas City outside linebacker Tamba Hali is significantly less versatile than either Suggs or Houston but possesses the same pass-rushing threat that Dumervil boasts. Both players explode off the line of scrimmage with relentless energy to penetrate the pocket.
A better nose tackle than Dontari Poe of Kansas City may not exist in the NFL. Poe's numbers might have been down a little this season, but he was still a key cog for the Chiefs defense throughout the year. Poe is a physical freak who can rush the passer and clog space against the run. His natural player comparison is Haloti Ngata, the Ravens' nose tackle.
Ngata and Poe are the kind of defensive linemen who allow defenses to play more linebackers against a team like the Patriots. It shouldn't come as a surprise if the Ravens primarily feature two-down defensive linemen against the Patriots, forcing them to try and run the ball on Ngata and Brandon Williams/Chris Canty.
Source http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2318937-terrell-suggs-elvis-dumervil-need-to-star-for-ravens-to-upset-patriots
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