2019 BDL Bizz Bowl Championship: New Orleans Jazz vs. Camden Hoodrats

[VigilantZombie]

This is the Story of a likely and an unlikely participant, both achieving their destiny of playing in the greatest show on turf!

The Top Dog vs. The Undedog

The #1 Defense vs. The #1 Offense

The Loud Ego vs. The Silent Assassin.

When the Dust Settles the names of those that remain will be forever cemented in BDL History! 

IT'S TIME TO PUT UP OR SHUT UP! IT'S TIME TO PROVE YOU BELONG, THAT THE VOTERS OF BDL DIDNT GET IT WRONG.

IT'S THE LAST STAGE OF THE GAUNTLET!

IT'S THE BDL BIZZ BOWL CHAMPIONSHIP AND WHETHER YOU'RE READY IT'S HERE AND THERE IS NO TURNING BACK!!

OFFENSIVE LEADERS:

The Runner 

 

The Gunner

 

DEFENSIVE LEADERS:

The Barbarian

 

The Savage

 

Location:  BDL Bizz Bowl Dome 

 

Featured Teams:

New Orleans Jazz: @WFLukic

Camden Hoodrats: @Jlash

Vote for who you think will win this game.

Rules:
One vote per person, duplicate accounts will be banned and action taken against those attempting to rig the results.

One vote per team involved in the match. Co-owners may vote in every match up except their own.

For members, who have been following along, and wish to vote.  Please join the conversation and maybe give a reason you voted as you did. This will alleviate any suspicions of unusual voting and will promote discussion.

Note: Players that have a (D) next to their name indicate that they are doubtful or unlikely to play. Players with (Q) are game-time decisions.

Good luck to you both

Edited December 23, 2019 by wwhickok

[VigilantZombie]

New Orleans Jazz Roster:

 

Offense:

QB: Josh Allen
RB: Ezekiel Elliott
WR1: Michael Thomas
WR2: D.J. Moore
WR3: Tyler Lockett
TE: Zach Ertz
LT: Andrew Whitworth
LG: Joel Bitonio
C: Travis Frederick
RG: Kevin Zeitler
RT: Mitchell Schwartz

RB2: Devin Singletary
RB3: Duke Johnson
WR4: Deebo Samuel
TE2: Mike Gesicki
TE3: Tyler Kroft
TE4: Nick Vannett
OL6: Riley Reiff
OL7: Justin Pugh

Defense:

DE: Calais Campbell
DT: Geno Atkins
DT: Jeffery Simmons
DE: Cameron Jordan
LB: Alexander Johnson
CB: Stephon Gilmore
CB: Chris Harris Jr.
CB: Kyle Fuller
DB: Micah Hyde
SS: Haha Clinton-Dix
FS: Darnell Savage

DE3: Nick Bosa
DE4: Josh Allen
DT3: Johnathan Hankins
DT4: Mike Purcell
LB2: Foyesade Oluokun
S4: Sheldrick Redwine
CB4: JC Jackson
CB5: Tre Herndon

 

Camden Hoodrats Roster:

 

QB- Lamar Jackson
RB- Carlos Hyde
WR- DeAndre Hopkins
WR- Courtland Sutton
WR- AJ Brown
WR- Cooper Kupp
LT- Jason Peters
LG- Isaac Seumalo
C- Chase Roullier
RG- Trai Turner
RT- Orlando Brown Jr
_________________________
WR- Cooper Kupp
RB- David Montgomery
RB- Sony Michel
TE/H-back Darren Fells
TE- Jason Witten
OL- Isaiah Wynn
OL- Cordy Glenn
QB- Jimmy Garoppolo

DE- Yannick Ngakoue
DT- Dexter Lawrence
DT- Damon Harrison 
DE- Maxx Crosby
LB- Darius Leonard
LB- Jaylon Smith
CB- Ahkello Witherspoon
CB- Denzel Ward
CB- Greedy Williams
S- Kevin Byard
S- Jamal Adams
________________________
CB- AJ Bouye
CB- Justin Coleman
DE- Montez Sweat
DE- Shaq Lawson
DT- Tim Jernigan
DT- Quinton Jefferson
LB- Todd Davis
S- Chuck Clark

 

Edited December 23, 2019 by wwhickok

[VigilantZombie]

New Orleans Jazz Gameplan:

The friendship bowl of all friendship bowls. Good luck Jlash, a lot of admiration for the team you’ve built and it’s a privilege the face you in the bizzbowl.

Offense:

We acknowledge that Camden might just have the best personnel of any team to stop our offense, given it has a number of players who are great at the intermediate level at safety and lb, two great run pluggers on the interior and a deep CB group. However, with Zeitler’s return to the line-up, we’ve got our elite offensive line back together that has served us for the majority of the season and our weapons are playing as well as ever so we’re not going to stray too far from our bread and butter.

Run at the edges

Lawrence and Harrison is as formidable duo as you can get against the run for a defensive interior, but Ngakoue is on the undersized side for a down-lineman and although Crosby has been impressive as a rookie, isn’t someone we’re afraid of. As a result, we intend to give Camden a heavy dose of Elliott and Singletary running at the edges. This should

1.     Give us early returns in terms of yardage as these two should struggle to hold up against the run and in particular Elliott’s bruising style; and

2.     Tire out Ngakoue and Crosby and limit the effectiveness of Camden’s pass-rush, which is heavily reliant on these two generating sacks off the edge.

If Camden decides to respond by bringing creeping its linebackers towards the edge, we’re going to respond with running out of the gun or pistol at a higher frequency, with a greater number of either delays/draws or toss option plays for Allen who’ll start rolling out.

Ertz up the seam

Ertz has largely functioned as a safety valve for Allen, running shallower routes and operating as a check-down, however this week we want him stretching the middle of the field. The idea behind this is that he’ll either:

1.     Drag Adams or a linebacker with him downfield which reduce their threat as a blitzer and open up the middle for our other weapons underneath;  

2.     Leave Byard, who presumably will play deep, in two minds as to whether to go for an outside receiver stick in Ertz’s area; and

3.     Give Ertz the opportunity to make some plays deep in 1v1 coverage if Byard moves to double the receiver.

Allen going deep

Allen’s deep ball has continued to develop to the point where he can hit a few big strike plays in a game. We know Camden is going to try and load up the short-intermediate zone, so we want Allen to fling a few deep balls to our deep specialist in Lockett, as well as Ertz as mentioned above. DJ Moore will also run a greater share of deep routes as we want to try and get this Camden offense to respect us. The aim is to make sure that Camden eventually have to move to more of a cover 2 look with Adams staying deep, and of course hitting on a few of these big plays and putting up quick points in what should be a tense affair.

We’re not particularly averse to turnovers on the deep ball because we know our defense is good enough to cover for us and if we’re taking these shots on 2^nd and 3^rd down, the effective result will be an arm punt and we won’t lose too much field position. With that said, Allen’s shown the ability to take care of the ball recently and our plan is for his miss to be an overthrow so that no-one can catch it.

Of course to cover people saying I’m not mentioning Thomas, it goes without saying that he’s going to get a considerable number of targets, especially if he’s not double covered. In fact, the idea is that if Camden does commit resources deep, Thomas should be the main beneficiary and feast on whichever CB is on him without much help.

Screen Game:

With Leonard and Adams on the other side of the ball, we anticipate Camden is going to blitz a fair bit. While we’re sending players deep on more occasions than usual, we’re not going to forget the screen game as a major counter to this, particularly if Camden introduce more blitz looks than usual and we key onto this.

The mix of Camden sending their intermediate guys and our receivers going deep should create plenty of space for Elliott and Singletary to get chunk plays in the screen game without a great deal of risk.

Allen running the option in the shotgun/pistol:

As it’s the final game of the season, we’re throwing the kitchen sink at Camden and part of this is going to be having Allen run the majority of his plays of the pistol or shotgun and having a free-reign to run the ball as often as he likes, taking a few more shots than usual.

But a major part of this is that we know Camden is going to be blitzing given the deficiency of their pass-rush. This will give Allen the chance to see the rush coming and either roll out early to avoid getting hit or go for his quick read in Thomas who will win on slants and should come open given the space created by the blitzers leaving those areas.

If Camden doesn’t blitz, we’re happy to just have Allen sit in the pocket since our line will hold up against Camden’s defensive front. With the strength of his arm, we’re comfortable that from a set pocket and stance he can zip any pass to a slightly open receiver.

Defense:

Lamar Jackson’s success is largely because of the threat of his legs and his ability to sustain drives which are able to chew up the clock and keep the opposing defense on the field. Camden’s offense isn’t exactly built that way, especially considering it has a rather weak offensive line for BDL standards and doesn’t have the TEs to run that power running game.

Thus to be succinct, our plan is to eliminate the power run game which Camden will try to establish, trust our CBs to do the job against a great receiver group and force Lamar to beat us with his arm as our safeties will be keyed in on him at the LOS.

Beefing up the DL

Camden has a uniquely constructed team. Their quarterback is by far the quickest player on the offense, and aside from AJ Brown, lack a homerun threat on the rest of their offense. We’ve made it clear that we think playing a lighter back 7 is the key to beating Camden, and in turn we expect them to beef up the offensive line or try and play some smashmouth football using their bruising backs in Michel and Hyde.

To counter this, our base set is going to be heavier than usual, with Jeffery Simmons coming in for Nick Bosa and Campbell kicking out to DE. This gives us a defensive line with 3 guys at 300lbs or more and Jordan who’s at 290 lbs. While we do give up a little bit in terms of the outside rush, Campbell, Jordan and Atkins still make for a potent pass-rush and Simmons, who’s snaps will be limited, has also proven he can collapse a pocket and generate pressure.

We also plan to frequently rotate in Purcell and Hankins on early downs to ensure that everyone’s snap count is managed and we’re able to have everyone going at full steam ahead for every snap.

Thus while we have gone on the lighter side when it comes to the second level and back end, we aren’t worried about Camden’s running game outside of Jackson hurting us as the lanes should be completely clogged up and if Camden wants to try and run Hyde or Michel to the outside, our safeties should easily be able to pick them off in space for small gains.

Safeties closer to the LOS

Following on from the above, we want to take a leaf out of the Bills’ book given they’ve had the greatest success in stopping Jackson. Their plan involved playing safeties closer to the LOS and a substantial amount of cover 0. While we do plan to retain our base cover 1 man scheme given the strength of Camden’s wide-out group, we do plan to weave in a fair bit of cover 0 (more later) and move our safeties closer to the LOS.

Cover 1

In our cover 1 man, we plan the following coverage:

Gilmore – Hopkins
Fuller – Sutton
Harris Jr. – Kupp
Clinton-Dix – Tight-End
Johnson – Running-Back

With Micah Hyde spying on Jackson and Savage staying deep.

Cover 0 - Blitzing Jackson (especially when under centre)

One weakness we think we can target in the Camden line-up is their interior offensive line. The loss of Larry Warford shouldn’t be underestimated and while Seumalo has been ok this year, it harms the chemistry of the line and obviously lowers the overall talent level. Therefore something we want to throw in is a few cover 0 looks with one or even two blitzing safeties and the other remaining as a spy if Lamar somehow escapes.

We feel comfortable doing this because while we do know how good Lamar is, he’s not yet a passer who’s polished enough to quickly strike from the pocket, nor is he a cerebral pre-snap quarterback who can diagnose a blitz. While we also acknowledge the strength of Camden’s receivers, we might be one of the only teams with a cornerback group that is actually capable of hanging with them on a snap to snap basis, and certainly at least for a few seconds before the blitz hits.

So sending any combination of Savage, Hyde and Haha along with our defensive line bringing their usual heat should give us plenty of opportunities to get to Jackson and potentially force an errant throw or fumble.

Rush 5 ft. Deeper QB Spy

If Lamar is spending a substantial amount of time in the gun/pistol, we plan to rush 5 on a few occasions with the following line-up:

DE: Bosa
DT: Campbell
DT: Atkins
DE: Jordan
LEO (lining up outside Orlando Brown): Allen

With Allen generally coming in for either Johnson or Savage. A couple comments;

1.     We want Allen to line up over Brown as we feel his speed rush is a mismatch for Brown and putting two premier pass-rushers on him should be able to cause him trouble; and

2.     In these circumstances Hyde will play as the deeper spy, largely in part due to his ability to diagnose plays early and react. While we do run the risk of giving up a few easier short gains for Jackson, we’re ultimately trusting our pass-rush to win against a mediocre OL and that our CBs are good enough to not get beat deep quickly.

3.     Lastly, Hyde playing as a deeper spy should serve as a safety valve for any pick plays or slant/crossing routes in which a Camden WR might get open against.

At the end of the day, we’re happy for Jackson to have a few deep throws. He’s got a great deep ball no doubt, but Gilmore, Jackson, Fuller and Harris Jr. have 15 takeaways between them this season. While Jackson has avoided turnovers by throwing short to his tight-ends who tend to be fairly open, his deeper balls to WRs tightly covered by ballhawks may yield a few interceptions especially if he’s under duress from our pass-rush.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Camden Hoodrats Gameplan:

QB- Lamar Jackson
RB- Carlos Hyde
WR- DeAndre Hopkins
WR- Courtland Sutton
WR- AJ Brown
WR- Cooper Kupp
LT- Jason Peters
LG- Isaac Seumalo
C- Chase Roullier
RG- Trai Turner
RT- Orlando Brown Jr
_________________________
WR- Cooper Kupp
RB- David Montgomery
RB- Sony Michel
TE/H-back Darren Fells
TE- Jason Witten
OL- Isaiah Wynn
OL- Cordy Glenn
QB- Jimmy Garoppolo

DE- Yannick Ngakoue
DT- Dexter Lawrence
DT- Damon Harrison 
DE- Maxx Crosby
LB- Darius Leonard
LB- Jaylon Smith
CB- Ahkello Witherspoon
CB- Denzel Ward
CB- Greedy Williams
S- Kevin Byard
S- Jamal Adams
________________________
CB- AJ Bouye
CB- Justin Coleman
DE- Montez Sweat
DE- Shaq Lawson
DT- Tim Jernigan
DT- Quinton Jefferson
LB- Todd Davis
S- Chuck Clark

Offense (Power pistol RPO base)
The Friendship Bowl becomes the Bizz Bowl! Going into the season NO was ranked as an overwhelming favorite to get here, while we were ranked towards the bottom of the pack each time due to the lack of faith in Lamar Jackson. Now is our shot to prove everyone wrong.  NO brings a wealth of talent on defense, but we feel like we can move the ball against anyone. Here are some of the key aspects of our offense today.

Spread NO out- When teams try to key in on your run game, sometimes it's better to spread them out rather than run right at them. I'd imagine NO will sell out to shut down the run and force Lamar to beat them through the air. Good thing for us we have no problem throwing it with the weapons we have. While NO brings a ton of talent on the defensive line, we feel beyond Stephon Gilmore (legit DPOY candidate) we have some very winnable matchups in that secondary. So we'll trot out tons of 4 wide sets today, often stacking one side of the field with 3 WR's and forcing NO to cover 4 very dangerous WR's while still having to keep their eyes on the backfield to defend the RPO. NO loves to play man coverage, so stacking guys up and forcing the Jazz defenders to work laterally through traffic should help us open some stuff up. 

Stay balanced- While we're bringing a lot of 4 wide sets out, we know a big strength of ours is running the ball out of the RPO set up with Lamar. The Jazz have very good run stuffers along their line, but we want to keep the offense as multifaceted as possible. Even out of our spread sets, the RPO will be prevalent and we're going to force the Jazz defenders to respect every possibility that can come their way. Hyde and Jackson should get enough attention to stop these defensive ends from teeing off, and we plan to attack the edges of this defense, if nothing else but to wear them out with big bodies pushing on them constantly. 

Use their spy against them- If the Jazz go with the popular approach of putting a spy on Jackson, we want to use that against them. That gives them one less active defender in the passing game in a matchup where we plan on spreading them out to throw it. If they spy, we'll start running crossing routes and drags right past the spy and using him a natural pick against his own players. We'll also start sending our RB's out on routes out of the backfield to see if they are accounted for in the passing game. We have a feeling that with the worry on Jackson running, and the field being spread out with 4 WR's most of the time that our RB's are going to be forgotten as receivers. 

Heavy sets- Part of the balance we spoke of will consist of our usual heavy sets. Wynn will come into the game as an extra blocker, and Darren Fells will assume his H-back role and we'll keep grinding this defensive line down. We won't go as consistently heavy as we have in the past, but you'll see us bring this out in the red zone and about 15-20% of the game. Darren Fells is our secret red zone weapon, as he's quietly got 7 TD's in that role this season and with so many other options to defend, we think Fells can do some damage today. 

Pace- Go, go, go. That's our motto today. With spreading the field out and running the RPO the defense already has a lot of thinking to do. If we can get them winded while doing it, it's better for us. We'll go hurry up most of the game, only slowing down for our heavy sets in the red zone and the small % we've pointed out. 

Defense (Combo zone base)
We know what this offense does best, and what it wants to do. Grind the game out, control the clock with Zeke and give Allen simple reads to attack with. For all the talent they bring into the game, the guy who holds the key has been by far their biggest weakness, and we want to exploit that today. Here is how.

Make Josh Allen beat us consistently- Today is about shutting Zeke down as best as possible and making Allen beat us. We've all seen how inconsistent his accuracy has been, and while he'll make a throw everyone once in a while, he's much more prone to overthrow someone than put a ball in a tight spot. Our usual meat wall is being deployed, and to help we get Jamal Adams back today and with our zone coverage assignments he'll get to roam closer to the LOS. We'll deploy lots of run blitzes with Adams attacking off the edge as well to create negative plays. Putting Josh Allen in 2nd and long and 3rd and long is a recipe for disaster for the Jazz and we need to create that to win. 

Heavy zones- We want to force Allen to have to think every time he drops back, so we're going to mix up a number of zones today.
Shallow Cover 3- Allen works best in the intermediate part of the field, and so do his two best WR's and Ertz so running what I call a shallow cover 3, where the 3 back defenders play 5 or more yards closer in their zone is going to severely clog up the intermediate part of the field. Picture the image below with the back three zones condensed about 5 yards shorter. We think this should cause serious problems for what Allen sees as his comfort zone. It makes us a little more susceptible to a deep threat in Lockett, but with Byard patrolling back there and Allen's concerning deep ball issues we're ok with taking our chances. 2 good passes out of 26 won't kill us today, but giving up tons of easy completions to Thomas and Moore will.
 
Cover 6

Cover 6- This set up looks exactly like what the typical zone defense would until the ball gets snapped. Except the 3 deep defenders are different players then the initial look, and with a player dropping into the flat instead of working back, this could trick Allen into thinking he's got an easy short completion with a defender roaming right into that lane. Here is how that would look, with the exception of a 3rd LB being subbed for a defensive back, obviously.

Blitzing Allen- With deploying heavy zones comes the advantage of being able to disguise some more blitzes. We want to attack with Jamal Adams (2 sacks away from setting the single season DB sack record) and Darius Leonard (5 sacks) on occasion to force Allen to make a quick decision. Here is how that would look.

Another nice advantage of going so zone heavy is it gives Allen less ability to just take off and run, something he's capable of. Zones keep our defenders eyes forward, as opposed to man which can lead to defenders with their backs turned to run. 

Overall if we can slow Zeke down, switch up a couple different zone defenses to keep Allen guessing we can force him to try to make plays with his arm. If there's a way to beat this team, it's letting Allen do the heavy lifting.

Edited December 23, 2019 by wwhickok

[WFLukic]

Lamar might be MVP but he's more like Lamer when throwing to WRs!!!!

Also, Simmons was ruled out at game time. Happy to leave him out, but I'm pretty sure he was rested by Tennessee rather than being legitimately injured since this match was pretty inconsequential for them. 

Anyway, if everyone treats him as out, Hankins will move into the starting DT spot. I guess the main implication is less of that base and more of our usual DL with Bosa at DE and Campbell at DT given we're a man short in the rotation. Might be a blessing to some voters...

Edited December 23, 2019 by WFLukic

[Malfatron]

3 hours ago, wwhickok said:

Vote for who you think will win this game.

I got the Camden Hoodrats winning 40-6

Camden is my official vote to win.

 

[VigilantZombie]

Forgot to add a poll, fixed that.

[Scoundrel]

Planned overthrows? Yikes

[WFLukic]

1 hour ago, Counselor said:

Planned overthrows? Yikes

There's a difference between planned overthrows and planning your misses to be long rather than short...

[Jlash]

7 hours ago, WFLukic said:

Lamar might be MVP but he's more like Lamer when throwing to WRs!!!!

 

 

7 hours ago, WFLukic said:

Also, Simmons was ruled out at game time. Happy to leave him out, but I'm pretty sure he was rested by Tennessee rather than being legitimately injured since this match was pretty inconsequential for them

They were trying to clinch the final playoff spot yesterday homie.

[Scoundrel]

3 hours ago, WFLukic said:

There's a difference between planned overthrows and planning your misses to be long rather than short...

That guy can barely plan his on target throws now he is going to plan his misses to be long? This is one of the most absurd things I’ve read in a gameplan lol. 

[WFLukic]

He literally does it in real life... 

[Scoundrel]

7 minutes ago, WFLukic said:

He literally does it in real life... 

Oh yeah he plans to overthrow his receivers when he misses? This is one of the most hilarious things I’ve read on here. 

[VigilantZombie]

I'm really torn on this game. DL depth favors NOLA. 

However Jeffery Simmons being inactive is significant.

The other element of this is the over throws thing. I get it, sort of, but Camden has a really good secondary, imo, its gonna leave to some interceptions. I get the idea of being okay with that because of the defense but...they're gonna end up getting tired regardless of depth. 

Ezekiel Elliot had an atrocious week and tbh, so did Josh Allen. Andrew Whitworth is an average LT imo.

Okay...maybe I'm not as torn. 

This game is going to be amazing but in the end, I like the Underdog to come up with a Stone Cold Stunner here.

35-31 Camden Hoodrats.

[WFLukic]

1 hour ago, Counselor said:

Oh yeah he plans to overthrow his receivers when he misses? This is one of the most hilarious things I’ve read on here. 

No, he plans the misses to be overthrows when he does miss. It's not a difficult concept - it's the idea of throwing it where only your receiver can make a play on the ball. Not a very radical concept at all. 

I predicted Jlash would play his safeties nearer the LOS to clog up the intermediate level (which he did) so it's more likely that my receivers are going to outrun the coverage on deep routes. Lockett and Moore aren't really contested catch/jump ball guys, so if Allen puts a little more juice on his usual throw, the logic is it will either result in my receiver speeding up on his route and getting it, or it goes past everyone as an incomplete.

If I had a guy like Sutton at WR who's a big time contested catch guy deep, I wouldn't mind because I know he's just as easily going to get position on an underthrown pass and win it off the CB. But alas, I'm not throwing to him. 

 

 

[WFLukic]

8 hours ago, Jlash said:

 

They were trying to clinch the final playoff spot yesterday homie.

I'm happy for him to not play because rules are rules but I'm pretty sure it came down to them beating the Texans, who'll be resting their starters, no matter what because of some weird tiebreaker application.