Typically keys to victory articles highlight a certain player or a side of the ball. This NFC Championship Game features the top-seeded Green Bay Packers vs the Wild card Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This is the final four, both rosters are loaded with talent and game-breakers. In this huge bout that leads to a ticket to the Super Bowl, it isn’t a player that will have the biggest impact on the final score. The entity that will decide this game is the man calling plays for the Buccaneers defense, Todd Bowles.
Todd Bowles Holds Key to Victory In NFC Championship Game
Everyone knows that the Packers have set the NFL world on fire this season on offense. Only three offenses since 2002 have averaged over three points per drive: the 2007 New England Patriots, 2018 Kansas City Chiefs, and this year’s Packers. All three of these teams presumably had that year’s MVP under center and made it to at least the conference championship games.
The Bucs will be able to score points – they have all season long. The key to winning this particular game is stopping the man on the other sideline. That task falls squarely at the feet of defensive coordinator Todd Bowles. Bowles as his time as a coach has believed that getting to the quarterback is the best way to succeed, in turn he likes to bring the blitz.
Bring the Heat
This has been quite successful this year as the Bucs tallied 48 sacks on the season, good for fourth in the NFL. Aaron Rodgers has been on another level this year regardless of what you throw at him, but the best strategy has been to blitz. Rodgers when up against four or fewer rushers this year tallied a league-best EPA/play (expected points added per play) of .4. When facing the blitz this year that figure dropped down to .19, which is still amazing but is half of what he produces against standard rush packages.
We have already seen this play out before; these two teams have already matched up in Week 6 of this season with the Bucs pulling away in the second quarter for a 38-10 victory. It’s tough to point to a game so early in the season and look for potential strategies to use this Sunday, but it still speaks to a potential process. In that Week 6 game Bowles sent the blitz on 16 of Rodgers’s passing plays, he did not perform well against that. In that game Rodgers went 5-16 for 48 yards and two interceptions, almost half of his season total of five.
Adjusting to Green Bay’s New Offense
The Packers will see a lot of things they can do differently from that game. First off, the Packers used a lot of bunch sets in that game against Tampa, this particular formation can have a lot of pros and cons. Bunch sets are when a group of receivers are very close to each other before the snap.
A big pro to bunch sets is the ability to get a receiver off the line of scrimmage freely without being deterred by a defender, this can lead to him gaining more space quickly, making the throw easier for his quarterback. A big con to a bunch set is it brings a lot of bodies near the line of scrimmage making it harder for the quarterback to identify who’s going to blitz and who’s going to drop into coverage.
Expect Green Bay to scrap a lot of those bunch sets and instead opt to spread out the Bucs defense. This will make it harder to disguise blitz packages and leave players on islands in man coverage. Fans and pundits screamed aloud for Bowles to play press-man against the Saints, the Bucs came out and did that and it led to a poor showing in Drew Brees’s potential last game.
Throw Out Last Week’s Gameplan
The same game plan against the Packers would get shredded and shredded quickly. One of Rodgers best qualities is his ability to make plays with his feet, in man coverage defenders turn their backs to the quarterback, providing easy running lanes if Rodgers decides to escape the pocket. Sitting back and playing a soft zone coverage where the outside corners give 5-10 yards off the line of scrimmage is a death wish as well as Rodgers will take those easy completions up and down the field. There is no one correct answer for stopping this Packers team, hence why they were the best offense in the NFL. Bowles will have to craft a game plan built around the blitz and stopping game-breakers like Davante Adams and Aaron Jones to have a prayer to beat this Packers team.
Bowles will have to decide that the only way to come out on top of the scoreboard is to go out swinging. Expect the Bucs to blitz on close to 50% of their snaps Sunday, while varying up zone and man coverage. Rodgers will hit a few big plays on Sunday due to that, the key will be for the Buc’s to get home more times than Rodgers burns them. This game falls to the feet of coach Bowles, who will stay in Tampa this year after being passed over for other jobs. The Bucs will not win this game if it turns into a shootout, they will need to hold Green Bay to fewer than 30 points to have a shot. Not often is the biggest x-factor going into a conference championship a coach, but in this case, the game is a chess match.
Main photo:
Embed from Getty Images
