Wade Phillips has had seven cracks at Tom Brady as a defensive coordinator. He’s beaten Brady twice – the first time he coached against him back in 2005 when Phillips was Chargers DC and last November when the Broncos took down the Patriots in overtime.
In the rest, Brady has speedbagged him. That includes two postseason games: a payback win in the 2006 playoffs when the Patriots went to San Diego with an uninspiring offensive contingent and escaped with a win and a 41-28 win over Houston in the 2012 playoffs when the Patriots went ahead 38-13 early in the fourth then cruised.
This Sunday, the two will meet again to determine who represents the AFC in Super Bowl 50. Brady will be bringing two friends along that didn’t play in November – Danny Amendola and Julian Edelman.
After slipping past the Steelers on Sunday, Denver defenders testified on the behalf of Phillips to ESPN’s John Clayton.
"I remember in the last game against New England we just finished," Broncos defensive and Malik Jackson said. "We had great defensive pressure on the quarterback. We were rushing real well. The secondary was covering real well. We had a total all-around great game.
"He lets the dogs go," Jackson added. "Me, Wolfe [Derek Wolfe], DeMarcus Ware, Von Miller, Antonio Smith and Sly [Sylvester Williams] -- he lets us go rush and do our thing and he lets the secondary cover. I think that's why as a defensive lineman I love Wade, because he lets us do our thing and do what we do best, and we do it very well for him. He's going to let us go for him."
"He ain't scared," cornerback Aqib Talib told Clayton. "Sometimes defensive coordinators get scared and make their players scared because they call scary coverages. But Wade [lays it out] all the time and makes us stand up ,and we do it. The difference between this year and past years is [Wade]."
Loosing the canines against Brady has its merits. But blitzing him is like a boxer throwing an uppercut against a faster, smarter opponent. The haymaker might land and do damage. But it’s more likely to result in return fire in the form of two straight jabs in the middle of the face.
Especially when Brady’s got his waterbugs getting open in a blink, the ball is out of Brady’s hand before the rush arrives. Saturday, the Chiefs tried to blitz Brady on the game’s fifth play right after Brady completed darts to Julian Edelman of 11 and 13 yards. Brady saw the blitz before it started and flipped a 16-yard gain to an all-alone Amendola. Way too easy.
Which is all well and good but Denver will likely want to find out for itself on Sunday. Last time, they held the Patriots to 2 of 13 conversions on third down. While that came against an offense so outgunned that Brady threw it 11 times to Scott Chandler, it was a plan by Phillips that, ultimately, worked.
Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels said that Phillips will move off his spot if he finds things aren’t working.
“There’s enough volume in Wade’s defense to do what they need to do,” said McDaniels. “If they feel like blitzing is the right way to attack somebody then you’re gonna get blitzed. If they feel like covering different ways with different varieties of coverage elements, they have those available to them as well. Each team that you watch them play is not played identically. He’s gonna taper what he thinks is best for his team against the offense that they’re playing and try to stop the people that he needs to stop and apply pressure and create turnovers the way that he feels best about doing it.”
There is no discounting the amount of talent on the Broncos defense. Talib and Chris Harris are one of the top five corner tandems in the league, DeMarcus Ware and Von Miller are game-wreckers and the interior defensive line with Derek Wolfe, Jackson and Sylvester Williams is solid. As McDaniels said, “There’s no one formula that you can say has been very good against this group, they shut most teams down and there’s a reason they lead the league in defense.”
But defensive ranking is a stat-based number. The Broncos played the Patriots in November but they didn’t play the authentic Patriots offense. In that game, Brady threw for 280 and three touchdowns. To further pummel this dead horse, Ben Roethlisberger threw for 339 with a bum shoulder and no Antonio Brown on Sunday.
Over the next few days, you’ll hear a lot about Tom Brady being 2-6 in Denver over his career. And it’s true the city’s not been kind. But ask yourself what has more relevance this Sunday – the zip code or the defensive coordinator?