BDL 2021 Week 1 - Berlin Blitzkrieg @ Rome Eternals

[Whicker]

BDL 2021 Week 1

Match: Berlin Blitzkrieg @ Rome Eternals

Away Owner: @Ragnarok

Home Owner:  @bcb1213

Vote for who you think would win the 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.

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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

[Whicker]

Berlin Blitzkrieg

Offense
QB - Aaron Rodgers
RB - Aaron Jones
WR - Odell Beckham
WR - Brandon Aiyuk
WR - Allen Robinson
TE - Hunter Henry
LT - Kolton Miller
LG - Alex Cappa
C - Corey Linsley
RG - Royce Newman
RT - Tristan Wirfs

RB - Michael Carter
RB - Salvon Ahmed
WR - Kadarius Toney
WR - MVS
WR - Marquise Brown
TE - Jordan Akins
IOL - James Daniels
IOL - Solomon Kindley

Defense
DE - Za’Darius Smith
DT - Quinnen Williams
DT - Derrick Brown
DE - Demarcus Lawrence
LB - Tremaine Edmunds
LB - Rashaan Evans
CB - Kendall Fuller
CB - Rock Ya-Sin
CB - Byron Murphy
SS - Antoine Winfield
FS - Juan Thornhill

DE - Trey Hendrickson
DE - D.J. Wonnum
DT - Zach Sieler
DT - Kingsley Keke
LB - Kyzir White
CB - Eric Stokes
CB - Nik Needham
S - Lamarcus Joyner

 

 

 

 

QB Justin Herbert

RB Najee Harris

WR Amari Cooper

TE Logan Thomas

LT Tyron Smith

LG Michael Onwenu

C Brandon Linder

RG Chris Lindstom

RT Ryan Ramcyk

TE OJ Howard

WR Juju Smith Shuster

 

RB D’Andre Swift

RB Phillip Lindsay

WR Hunter Renfrow

WR Jaylen Waddle

WR Josh Palmer

TE Dan Arnold

OT Braden Smith

C/G Justin Britt

 

DE Carlos Dunlap

NT Michael Brockers

UT Dalvin Tomlinson

DE Marcus Davenport

LB Matt Milano

LB Leighton Vander Esch

CB Marlon Humphrey

CB William Jackson

NB Jamel Dean

S Eddie Jackson

S Duron Harmon

 

Edge Dante Fowler JR

Edge Jaelan Phillips

INT Malcolm Brown

INTJerry Tillery

LB Alex Singleton

CB Janoris Jenkins

CB Noah Ighinobhene

S Grant Delpit

[Whicker]

Offense

Overview - Run the ball, use play action, let our WRs do their thing.

Run Game - We are going to run the ball and go playaction off of that.  Jones will get the vast majority of the touches, but we will rotate Carter and Salvon in a little to keep him fresh.  We are going to run left, right, and middle, typically using our stretch play from last season as it allows Jones to hit the hole, bounce outside, or cut back.  We will also run right up the gut, especially if their defense starts flowing too quickly.

3 WR - 60% - We are going to keep Robinson on the outside, but OBJ and Aiyuk will switch back and forth between the outside and slot.  

We want to use a lot of playaction in our base set because 1. Rome does have good linebackers and we want to keep them honest and 2. Rome’s pass rushers are either old or bad and we think Rodgers will have time to make the fake, turn around, read the field, and find the open WR.  Despite having two good CBs in Humphrey and Jackson, they won’t be able to cover our guys for that long.  We are going to let our guys run every route and attack every bit of the field.

Henry is going to be in-line for the most part, we want him helping to seal the edge on run plays to his side before scraping off to the second level.  He is going to mostly run an option route this game.  If he sees 2 deep safeties, he will push down the middle to the open area.  If he sees a safety sitting in the middle, he will break to the outside away from the linebacker as Rodgers loves throwing that route to the TE.

4 WR - 25% - MVS or Hollywood will come in for Henry and play on the outside with Robinson while Aiyuk and OBJ play the slot.  We want to test the pass rush and CB depth for Rome, so are going to line them up and let Rodgers do his thing.  This will be mostly all shotgun and no huddle.  Just get to the line, put a guy in motion to get an idea of the defense, let Rodgers call the play, and go.  Our outside guys will be looking for plenty of back shoulder throws here.  Jones will be in the backfield and either provide a check down or run a draw as we want to run just enough to keep the linebackers honest.

5 WR - 10% - Robinson, OBJ, Aiyuk, MVS, and Hollywood.  Hurry up situations.  Rodgers plays backyard football.  Good things happen.

2 TE - 5% - Akins comes in for OBJ or Aiyuk and provides another big body in short yardage and redzone situations.

Defense

Overview - Rotate our DL, play lots of zone on early downs, more man on 3rd down, don’t give up the big play.

Defensive Line - Rome has very good OTs and a solid IOL.  We have the top tier guys to win and depth to keep everyone fresh.

Base - We don’t expect much base defense, but White will come in for our 3rd CB with Byron sliding outside.

Nickel - We are going to have Kendall Fuller shadow Amari, Byron shadow Juju, and our 3rd CB shadow their third WR or 2nd RB if they try that.  We are going to give Rock, Stokes, and Needham all snaps at that third CB spot.  Our CBs will follow their man before the snap, and if we are in zone, just drop into the corresponding zone of wherever they end up.

Dime - Rock or Stokes will be that 3rd CB and Needham will be the 4th guy.  Our general concepts will stay the same, but we doubt we see too much of this as it would pull Logan Thomas off the field.

1st and 2nd Down - We are going to play primarily zone on early downs.  Herbert is very good at throwing down field, so look for a good amount of Cover 2 and 3 to take away the deep ball.  This will also allow us to shade a safety to the 3rd CBs side if need be.  We want to force Herbert to have to hold the ball so our pass rush has time to get to him and force the incompletion.  This will also keep our eyes towards the backfield so we can shut down the run game and not let Herbert scramble for yardage.

Our linebackers will be focused on the run game and Logan Thomas.  They are going to take those middle zones with eyes in the backfield, and if Logan goes down the seam or breaks out to their side, they will follow.

Our goal here is to win first and second down so that we can routinely force Rome into 3rd and long.

3rd Down - Look for more man coverage on 3rd down.  Thornhill will always be taking a deep half to the 3rd CBs side to lock down that half.  Winfield is going to move all over but typically start closer to the linebackers.  At the snap, he might bail out and take the other deep half, he might help bracket Logan, or he might stay in a middle zone to help in the middle.

Tremaine will also have Logan in coverage while Evans will watch the RB.

Assuming a 3rd and long, we will play off a bit in man coverage, try to force a contested completion short of the sticks, and make the tackle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Offense

Welcome to another exciting year of Rome football.  This week we welcome in our divisional rival Berlin!

Rags has done a nice job in assembling a lot of speed on this defense.  However, we feel this squad lacks much in terms of run stopping as the majority of this defensive line is more about getting to the QB.  

We welcome new toy Najee Harris into the starting lineup and he will be featured heavily behind BDL’s best offensive line.  We aren’t going to get overly fancy or pretty in this one.  Lots of two TE sets and running right up the middle into the suspect linebacker group.  We plan to keep a fast tempo to our offense as Berlin doesn’t carry a lot of interior d depth that we worry about.  We trust both Harris and Swift to punish the second level and get larger chunk runs as the game progresses.

 

With the run game churning we are going to churn out some play action deep plays with Herbert and company if we see man or defenders peaking into the backfield.  The Berlin corners don’t worry us too much as their best performer from last year was Ahkello Witherspoon who ran from mostly cover three concepts.  If we see cover three here we have seam routes that should be available with our talented TE duo. We will even throw some jumbo three TE, Braden Smith at FB formations in short yardage situations as we feel we can move their line and break off a big gain after getting through the line.

Up front the Berlin defense is very talented in terms of rushing the passer so we plan on moving the pocket with Herbert to help neutralize the pass rush.  We still, however, trust our line to stop the front four.

We will also run a good amount of three wide in short distances with a RPO option of najee up the middle or hitting a quick strike to Cooper or Juju out of the slot.  If both of these options are taken out, we always can count on Herbert hitting the back side of the play with a QB run for the first.

In longer downs and distances we bring in Waddle and Renfrow.  Per usual we will use motion pre snap to determine coverage.  We will consistently Flood the wide side of the field if zone is being shown with Renfrow the underneath option and Waddle with Cooper/Juju alternating the deep and intermediate routes.  In man coverage we have zero issue attacking Sin or Needham with any of our WR

Out of two TE, as mentioned previously, we will be looking at the TE off the play action in man as well with Rashaan Evans being a target early and often against whoever he is on.  All three of our RB are good options out of the backfield and if there isn’t any pressure, we would love to get them in space as well.  Our secondary formation is with Waddle coming in for Howard.  This provides us with a vertical threat to run underneath of and take out coverage from an area.   

TL/DR-  Establish the power run game early and often.  Work off the play action with seams and floods against zone and just better talent against man.

 

Defense

Oh, hi Aaron Rodgers.  Berlin comes in with a nice offense that will prove challenging to stop for most teams throughout the season.  We aren’t going to do anything too fancy this week as Rodgers has seen it all.  We have to trust the defense we built and go into bend but don’t break type of defense.  

When facing Rodgers, running a blitz at him is almost always a terrible idea, so we plan on sticking with mostly base coverages.  We lean on our extremely talented CB group to cover the weapons of Berlin.  In three wide, Humphrey grabs Robinson, Jackson has OBJ, and Dean takes whoever is left.   In four wide, Jenkins comes on and gets Robinson, Humphrey switches to OBJ, Dean on Ayiuk,  and Jackson takes Hollywood.  While this may surprise some we want to do speed for speed in four wide and Jenkins, whose bugaboo has always been getting beat deep, can worry less about that with Robinson. If OBJ is out or limited, Humphrey goes back to Robinson and Jenkins takes Kirk.   Henry will be covered by whatever LB is on his side of the field while the other LB will get Jones out of the backfield.  We will play a mix of Cover one and cover 2 man with the emphasis being more cover one Robber looks to force the ball outside into our talented corners coverage.  This also allows out safeties to do what they do best which is read and react. Jackson is a premier safety while Harmon is a do your job type who won’t find himself out of position   If they go five wide, we’ll mainly play zone.

While we don’t have what many consider the upper echelon of pass rush, what we do have is excellent depth along the defensive line and we plan on rotating fresh bodies in regularly.  Whenever there is an incompletion, we will be subbing in two-three bodies up front. In longer distances we will go with four DE on the line with Dunlap and Davenport rushing from the inside with Phillips and Fowler on the outside.  We also can run 3 DT when necessary in short distances against bigger packages in more a 5-2 look (zone behind the five line)

Up front Berlin has a solid line.  However we know we can push James Daniels around and Tomlinson will be lined up right over him with our other DT playing the G/C gap taking up both blockers.  We love our matchup here as while Daniels has shown to be athletic and a great pull blocker, he has really struggled against swim moves and power rushers.  Miller is also more of a finesse type of pass blocker who uses his athleticism to get himself in good position against speed edges.  Dunlap and Davenport are more traditional power edge rushers so we also think we have the edge in that matchup.  When we do blitz it will generally be Milano with a safety covering his assignment or a safety with a single high look.  Blitzes will mainly come from up the middle as our DE can all maintain edge responsibilities to not let Rodgers escape.  Press coverage on the outside should allow the blitz to get home

Regardless, we love our front against the run and with the cover one looks, we have an extra safety in the box.  We also will mix in cover two, cover three and occasional cover four looks.  We obviously don’t want to use much of that as Rodgers will pick zone defense apart if he sees it all day, but mixing it in sporadically with man coverage should allow it to be successful.  We will depend on the coverage unit to give us the extra second we need to get home.  Jones is a talented back but we think we have a great run stopping front.
 

TL/DR:  Trust the corner trio and run stopping front. Get pressure up the gut.  Mix in occasional blitz and zone.  Bend but don’t break, force FG

[bcb1213]

OBJ inactive.  Ayiuk on a snap count due to hamstring issues 

Edited September 12, 2021 by bcb1213

[Ragnarok]

11 minutes ago, bcb1213 said:

OBJ inactive.  Ayiuk on a snap count due to hamstring issues 

Yep and yep(Aiyuk was very annoying cause they said he'd be fine all week).

Guess that means MVS and Hollywood would be starting with Toney being my 4th WR...and no 5 WR sets :(.  

[bcb1213]

15 minutes ago, Ragnarok said:

Yep and yep(Aiyuk was very annoying cause they said he'd be fine all week).

Guess that means MVS and Hollywood would be starting with Toney being my 4th WR...and no 5 WR sets :(.  

I'd say you'd prob have Ayiuk for those limited 5 wr sets.  5-10% seemed about all he was out there for 

[Ragnarok]

Just now, bcb1213 said:

I'd say you'd prob have Ayiuk for those limited 5 wr sets.  5-10% seemed about all he was out there for 

That seems reasonable.

Not that the 49ers really needed to force him out there today.

[Pickle Rick]

Aaron Rodgers hurts more than helps with his play from week 1 and it hurts even more with OBJ Aiyuk limited.  Rome here for me

[Scoundrel]

Berlins offense kind of no showed. Won’t be that way every week as they have a lot of talent. I imagine we might see a different result in the rematch. I do like both gameplans and I think Rome would struggle getting pressure on the outside against Berlins tackles however I think Herbert does enough with Cooper to get the W.

[pheltzbahr]

I dont think its possible for this Berlin offensive group to collectively perform as bad as they did week 1 at any point in the future.  Rome gets handed a win against a strong team, but they have some developing to do on the offensive side to be considered good enough to compete with some of the better BDL offenses out there.

[Ragnarok]

Good game @bcb1213.

Here's to hoping my skill players got that out of their system.

[VigilantZombie]

Let's just call this what it is. Berlin has a really good team, especially offense, that had a really bad week. I gotta go Rome here BUT I have zero doubt Berlins team bounces back in a big way from this.

[SirA1]

Went Rome for the reasons several others stated above. Better luck next week to Berlin.

[Jlash]

Terrible luck for Rags losing key weapons in what should have been a shootout.

[SirA1]

20 hours ago, Ragnarok said:

Good game @bcb1213.

Here's to hoping my skill players got that out of their system.

Looks like OBJ is already ruled out for Sunday.

Edited September 16, 2021 by SirA1