C.J. Anderson Incredibly Explains How Patriots Shutdown Rams

The New England Patriots won the Super Bowl, and their performance was brilliant. The Los Angeles Rams averaged under 33 points per game, and the Patriots brought them to 30 points below the regular season average. That’s awesome. Rams running back C.J. Anderson went on FS1’s Undisputed and talked about their loss.

“Bill does a great job at putting his team in the right position,” Anderson said. “They played great gap control against us. They gave us some different coverages that was not shown on tape. I mean, if anybody wants to go back and watch the Super Bowl … If you want their season, 90-percent they’ve been in man [coverage]. They play a little zone here, but they played in probably played 80-percent zone against us [in the Super Bowl]. Maybe they didn’t they they had the best matchups.

“I don’t know if it was to help stop the run. I think it was to help stop our big plays. Just from the outside in when I was watching the Rams when they came on primetime, the big plays got the offense going and the running game got the offense going. So if you slow down the run game and you limit the big plays … Obviously we had plenty against Dallas, our big plays against New Orleans was just enough to find a way to win in New Orleans, I think [the Patriots] slowed down a lot of our big plays and it was kind of frustrating. That’s kind of how that game went. It sucked.” 

Van Noy agrees with Anderson

Linebacker Kyle Van Noy lend credit to Anderson’s claim during his appearance on Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take podcast.

“There’s players that played different positions that hadn’t played that certain position all year,” Van Noy said. “Like [Patrick] Chung, he played backer most of the game before he got hurt. [Jonathan] Jones, he actually played safety that game. So there’s things they put players in different positions. And we weren’t necessarily a zone team, we didn’t play zone very much all year. And in the Super Bowl, we were predominantly a zone team.

“And that kind of probably threw ’em off. Like I saw a clip of Sean McVay reading the clip, and he said, like ‘Oh [shoot]’ in his head, ‘they’re running the Bears’ thing,’ or whatever the Bears did. Shoutout to the Bears, baby.”