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Potential Pleasant Surprises


dll2000

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On 7/6/2018 at 2:13 PM, dll2000 said:

I respectfully disagree.   Lovie gave up tons of long drives.  He  was all about bend but don't break (don't give up the big play) playing the now famous hybrid cover 3/cover 2 (the Tampa 2).   He combined this style with generating takeaways by trying to stand and strip or punch it out while gang tackling.  Also getting more interceptions with DBs facing the QB rather than turn and bail - making a pick is far easier coming forward or breaking than over your shoulder.   Then converting those turnovers to scores on the return  which they did fairly often.  Especially during their SB year or whenever they had a healthy Mike Brown/Tillman/Urlacher/Briggs playing together.  They practiced it.   

Of course when you are punching and trying to stand guys up they often get another 3 or 4 yards or even break away resulting in more 1st downs and less 3 and outs.  It was a trade off.

It was a solid scheme that generally worked unless they played a veteran QB like Manning who could exploit the predictability of it.   He crushed them almost every time they played.  

 

 

 

1 correction, Manning didnt crush them almost every time they played.  The SuperBowl was about not being able to stop the run ( in large part due to not having Tommie Harris).  2 years later in 2008 the Bears went into Indy and used the LBs in the a gap to take away the running lanes and forced Manning to beat them in the air which he wasnt able to do consistently.  Those are the 2 games of note in which they played each other.  (Im excluding 2004 as Lovie didnt have his personnel in place, and we all remember the QB situation from hell)

Realistically Tom Brady and the Pats are the only team that could consistently crush the Bears bc they could actually play mistake free football.  Yes the Pack after Aaron Rodgers consitently beat the Bears, but those games were always close and the Bears typically presented the greatest challenges to that offense.  The issue against the Pack for the Bears was always that they couldnt stop their own offensive mistakes. The Lovie Bears lived and died on one simple premise.  You cant go 80 yards in 10-12 plays against us and not make a mistake.  And when you do, we'll capitalize on it.  More often than not they were right.

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