[Thread]

Trend that I'm getting from Seattle's blitz% splits per week: their blitz-heaviness wasn't *entirely* about Jamal being on the field. When you look at teams that they blitzed and teams they didn't, it's all about the style of offense they play more than anything else.

For instance they only sent 4 rushers 45.7% of the time combined vs New England and San Francisco. The only other times all year they were below 50%. They blitzed A LOT those games.

In the other 2 games Jamal was in, they rushed four guys 67.9% (vs Atlanta) and 61.3% (Dallas).

So it wasn't JUST about Jamal being on or off the field to determine blitz heaviness. For teams like NE or SF where they live and die by the run game or long-developing play action passes, Seattle wanted to bring pressure.

VS pass-heavy teams with lots of receivers, they rush 4.

The critical error that the Bills made, and Pete Carroll alluded to this, is they thought the Bills were ALSO going to be a run-heavy attack like NE or SF, so they planned to have a high-pressure game like the other plans they have earlier this season. https://twitter.com/Joe_Fann/status/1325554203444432897

Why did Carroll think Buffalo were going to be so run-heavy? Because that's exactly what they did the week before against the Pats where they ran 68% of the time and put up more points than the had in the entire last month of the season.

They thought BUF changed their identity.

But here's the thing - Buffalo can game plan too! And I think the Seattle staff forgot that they have the 29th ranked passing defense in DVOA while having a top-10 rushing defense DVOA. Why would the Bills EVER want to just run the ball against a good run defense?

As soon as it was clear that Buffalo were going to throw the ball (they called passes on 13 of their first 14 plays), Seattle should have realized that this blitz-heaviness was not gonna work and that they needed to change it up. But instead, they persisted.

44 points later...