| |  Crennel deserves plenty of love
By John Clayton
ESPN.com
Super Bowl XXXVI was supposed to be a coming-out party for Rams
defensive coordinator Lovie Smith. Instead, the Patriots' 20-17 victory over
the Rams put the name Romeo Crennel on the NFL coaching map.
Lovie versus Romeo?
"It was a love fest," Crennel joked.
The schemes of the two teams were as different as can be. Smith uses the
simple two-deep zone concept that has limited blitzing and only two or three
different coverages. Conversely, Crennel's schemes unloaded the playbook at
the Rams.
In the first meeting, won by the Rams, 24-17, during the regular season, the
Patriots blitzed 39 times. Sunday in Super Bowl XXXVI, Crennel only called
about six blitzes.
Instead, he used four or five different fronts. Once, he even tried the Bears 46.
The one look that gave the Rams the most trouble was the use of five
defensive linemen. Crennel forced the game's most critical interception by
using the five linemen with linebacker Mike Vrabel set to the right side of
that formation.
The Rams' offensive line didn't slide over to block Vrabel, so he had
a clean rush at Warner, forcing the second-quarter interception that Ty Law
returned 47 yards for a touchdown.
"I knew with that call I had double-edged pressure," Crennel said. "Their
offensive line slide the other way, so now the quarterback had to make a
quick pitch."
Crennel mixed up five, six and seven defensive backs to further confuse
Warner. They borrowed from the Saints' successful strategy, enabling the Patriots' defensive backs to make as many physical hits on Rams pass-catchers as possible.
He also instructed the defensive ends and linebackers to hit halfback
Marshall Faulk before and after plays to affect his concentration.
"One of the things we wanted to do was disrupt them at the line of
scrimmage," Crennel said. "We made calls that allowed them to get up tight
and be disruptive to throw off their timing."
Crennel also made sure that the Patriots didn't let Marshall Faulk run to
the outside.
Meanwhile, Smith's strategy worked until the end of the game when Tom Brady
picked the defense apart in their soft zone to get the winning field
goal drive.
"It was a situation with no timeouts and very little time, you have to
keep them out of field-goal range," Smith said. "You can't play too soft
of coverage. You still have to be aggressive. They hit one big pass (a
23-yarder to Troy Brown). That really hurt us, but we were in a coverage
where we should have been OK."
They weren't. So the love fest with Crennel's scheme is in vogue.
John Clayton is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.
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SB XXXVI Over/Under
