AFC East

Swerving from our usual path of providing a quick detail about the upcoming game’s key matchups, during Super Bowl Week we’ve gone into further depth and broken out each of the pivotal battles in their own articles.

With that being the case, this Three to Focus on is going to serve as a clearinghouse for all of the preview content we’ve supplied you with in the past few days–your one-stop shop for PFF’s Super Bowl content.

If you missed anything along the way, here’s your chance to click through and catch up.

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This being Friday of Super Bowl Week, you’ve surely encountered a healthy dose of matchups, breakdowns, and backstories for the two teams and their players by now. The necessary paces of proper previewing dictate certain topics get covered, and the customary angles get addressed, but that’s all a bit too rigid for the Scramble.

Instead of tacking on more about the head-to-head, this-guy-or-that battles (tough to add to what our analysis team has produced this week anyway), our four Scramblers were set loose to explore the fringes of this week’s big game. Free to trek down whatever random path caught their interest, they’ve returned to assemble a piece that’ll take you in four directions and round out your pregame prep.

So, as the meat marinates, the beverages chill, and the guacamole awaits its first chip, have a read and join in on the conversation in the comments section below.   Read the rest of this entry »

As much as we like to pull the Super Bowl matchup apart piece-by-piece and haul each one under the microscope, this is a quarterback-driven league, and the bottom line is that these two men are likely to determine the outcome of the game between them. The man with the better game, or the one who can avoid the key error is going to go a long way towards tipping the balance toward his side.

With that in mind, we’re going to take a look a little deeper into the recent form of both players, trying to move beyond simply their season statistics and see at how each is playing as their teams have made their runs to the Super Bowl. Who enters the game in the better form? Who is more likely to carry his side to the Lombardi Trophy and win himself a trip to Disneyland and an MVP award in the process?   Read the rest of this entry »

Dominance.

It was the theme and most memorable attribute of Super Bowl XLII. Even more so than the game-winning touchdown pass from Eli Manning to Plaxico Burress, and the New York Giants victory over the New England Patriots. The unstoppable juggernaut grounded by a defensive front having its way with the opposing offensive line.

It was the manifestation of an age-old theory that pressure trumps everything when it comes to stopping a passing offense. The Giants brought that pressure and the vaunted Patriot offense simply couldn’t match the form it had shown all season to lead New England to perfection. Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing our Super Bowl Preview Week at PFF, we’re turning our attention now away from the team perspective in order to focus more closely on an individual player from each squad.

We’ll find out the Giants player that is coming under the microscope tomorrow, but today we’re taking a look at one of the game’s true X-factor players: New England’s Aaron Hernandez.

Hernandez started off as another of the new breed of receiving tight ends (a big receiver that can’t really block), and saw much of his time split out wide or simply running routes from his tight end spot rather than contributing with any blocking. Since then, however, he has morphed into a legitimate hybrid of three positions, and in this piece we’re looking at examples of how Hernandez can hurt teams three different ways.   Read the rest of this entry »

As the playoffs have progressed and the number of still-breathing teams has dwindled, we’ve offered more and more observations about each that remained. Our focus has again narrowed, for the final time this season.

In this Super Bowl XLVI edition of the 32 Observations, the Patriots and Giants rightly get all of the attention as we tack on another 16 quick statistical looks at each. Mentioning both stars and role players, it’s a good mix as we continue the countdown to kickoff.

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Few areas of the New York Giants’ team have come under more pressure this season than the offensive line, which has seen a precipitous decline in its form, having been one of their strengths the last few years.

Quarterback Eli Manning has faced pressure on 38.9% of his dropbacks over the course of the regular and postseason, second most of any quarterback in the entire league. The entire offensive line has been poor in pass protection; no Giant offensive lineman grades higher than -3.9 (William Beatty) for their play in that area this year. The two players most culpable for this pressure are the two covering the tackle spots this Sunday in Indianapolis, David Diehl and Kareem McKenzie.

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Following Sam Monson’s piece from yesterday, PFF Analyst Ben Stockwell takes another look at how the Super Bowl teams match up in critical aspects of the game.

His task: compare the Patriots’ offensive strengths and weaknesses to those of the Giants’ defense. His table below breaks down how they’ve looked so far this season and which team should have the edge in each area when Sunday comes. One of these games-within-the-game will decide the outcome. Which will it be?

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PFF Super Bowl preview week continues with a look back at some of the plays that sent the Patriots on their way to Indianapolis as once we again we break out the Analysis Notebook, this time on the Patriots’ Super Bowl season.

After an early bump in the road against the Buffalo Bills, the Patriots coasted through the regular season to a 13-3 record and clinched homefield advantage as their rivals in Houston, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh stumbled during the stretch run.

Many doubted the Patriots’ credentials entering the postseason because they were so short of being battle-tested, but they showed their class once in the playoffs. The Patriots ended the rather unorthodox fairy tale of Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos before setting aside the Ravens last Sunday as New England’s much-maligned defense rose up and rescued their suddenly misfiring offense. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: Here’s a look back at how things went down in the regular season meeting between the two Super Bowl participants. Re-posting our Re-Focused article for that game for an interesting look back to a critical time in the season for both teams. 

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The Super Bowl XLII rematch started slowly, but both teams saved their points for the second half, leading to an ending that was eerily similar to the 2008 encounter. Eli Manning led the New York Giants to a go-ahead and game-winning touchdown in the fourth quarter, trumping Tom Brady’s last minute heroics. Brady, like Manning, saved his best for last as the New England Patriots scored a touchdown to take the lead with 1:36 to go in the game. Ultimately though, Manning turned around and drove the Giants down the field with the help of a 20-yard pass interference penalty as well as tight end Jake Ballard’s best David Tyree impersonation. Read the rest of this entry »