The New England Patriots, with a defense ranked 31st in the league in yardage allowed during the regular season, understand that they have a huge challenge in Super Bowl XLVI against the explosive New York Giants offense.
“They’re playing good football right now, running the ball, passing the ball, so you’ve just got to try to take away some of the weapons. You’ve got to try to contain them. I don’t know if you can really just stop them all together because (Giants QB) Eli (Manning) is hot right now. The running backs are running the ball well, the offensive line is blocking well, so we’ve just got to do a good job trying to contain them,” said linebacker Jerod Mayo. “They’re clicking on all cylinders. It’s like, ‘What do you do? Who do you take away?’ Do you try to take the run game away and then you open up passing lanes and you try to take the pass game away and then you have (RB Ahmad) Bradshaw and (RB Brandon) Jacobs and (RB D.J.) Ware running the ball, so it’s like what do you do?”
The Patriots defensive plan is similar to the Giants plan to attack Tom Brady with as much pass rush as they can muster.
“I think we want to get after Eli (Manning) first of all, because he runs the show. They don’t give him enough credit. He’s a big, physical guy; he’s tough. He gets up after you knock him down. He just runs a tight ship. He does a great job so he’s the guy we have to try to get off track.,” said linebacker Brandon Spikes. “They can anytime take it the distance. We’re just got to contain and make sure we got guys at each position that can do it all. It can pop, anytime so we’ve got to do a great job of just containing and being fundamentally sound and everyone just hitting their assignments, being in the right place.”