The Patriots under Bill Belichick have lost twice in the Super Bowl. Both losses came to teams coached by Tom Coughlin.
Coughlin is now in Jacksonville. Even though he’s not the coach, Coughlin is in position to give coach Doug Marrone all the advice he needs for preparing to deal with the Patriots.
Defensively, the Jaguars have the firepower to do what the Giants did to Brady. It starts with generating pressure on him, primarily up the middle. This disrupts his ability to glide through, up, and around the pocket. Also, if he’s hit enough early in the game, Brady tends to start looking down at the rush instead of down the field to his receivers.
Given that his brain has become a computer loaded with 18 years of instantly-accessible pre-snap looks, zone coverage won’t work over the full course of a game. The Jaguars will need to use man-to-man coverage, primarily on receiver Brandin Cooks and tight end Rob Gronkowski. If they can pull it off, it will be harder for Brady to find an open receiver in whatever time he has to make a throw.
But even with the pass rush necessary to rattle Brady in Super Bowls XLII and XLVI, the Giants needed clutch offensive performances from quarterback Eli Manning. Can they count on the same from Blake Bortles?
Based on how he performed in Pittsburgh, the answer is, well, definitely maybe. Which isn’t bad for a quarterback who has been nationally maligned all year, several of his performances notwithstanding. Bortles has improved this year, and no matter how hard anyone tries to diminish his effort from Sunday, he made the right throws at the right times to help the Jaguars build a lead and, more importantly, to hold the lead when the Steelers seemed to be destined to mount a comeback.
Of course, it’s one thing to beat the Patriots on a neutral site. Coughlin and the Jaguars will have to do what few have done in the past generation: Win in New England in the postseason.
Given that the Patriots hold a long-term lease in the collective heads of the Steelers, and in light of the fact that the Jaguars are possibly too young to even realize that they should be intimated, maybe this won’t be the easy win that Vegas already envisions it to be, via an opening line of nearly 10 points. Maybe the Jaguars all along have had a better chance than Pittsburgh of beating the Patriots in their own building.