How Seahawks can stop Gronk

— -- The Super Bowl is all about marquee players playing on the biggest stage of all. In Rob Gronkowski, the New England Patriots might have the single most dominant and unstoppable offensive weapon in the game, and the Seahawks' effort to slow him down is going to be one of the key matchups of the game.

It is no coincidence that the Patriots' offense has been at its most dominant over the past few seasons with Gronkowski in the lineup, and this season the turnaround in the team's fortunes closely relates to an increase in workload after Gronkowski had returned from injury and approached full fitness.

Over the first four weeks of the season, Gronkowski was playing an average of 51.9 percent of the team's snaps, but since then his average has shot up to 88.8 percent, with a corresponding increase in workload in the passing game. After the loss to Kansas City in Week 4, the Patriots won 10 of their next 11 games, falling only to the Green Bay Packers on the road before dropping a meaningless Week 17 encounter to Buffalo.

Over that stretch, Gronkowski scored nine touchdowns and averaged 85.6 yards on 5.3 receptions per game. The 33.4 points per game the team averaged were the most in the NFL.

If Seattle wants to contain this New England offense, job No. 1 is limiting Gronkowski.

So what exactly is the blueprint for doing that? Is it as simple as defenders getting their hands on Gronk at the line of scrimmage, as Seattle cornerback Jeremy Lane suggested last week?

There is no secret coverage that is going to get it done, and it requires an effort from multiple areas to have success.

Gronkowski runs a pretty complete route tree. He has scored touchdowns this season from eight different routes. Only three routes feature multiple scores, and only two of those were at the same position. He is a varied threat who is difficult to second-guess and anticipate when covering him. One of the biggest advantages a defense has in taking away a particular threat is if the defenders can anticipate what it is they need to take away. With Gronkowski, there is little to key on.

His biggest scoring threat comes on slants in the red zone. Four of Gronkowski's touchdowns have come on this route, with all four coming when he was split out wide in the formation. The logical counter to this threat would be to play aggressive man coverage when he shows this alignment: Show hard inside leverage to take away the slant and press him at the line. The trouble with that is that it seems to have little effect. At 265 pounds, Gronkowski is bigger and stronger than almost anybody you have trying to bump him, and quicker than anybody who might match him for size.

Gronkowski has been pressed only 28 times this season out of 361 snaps lined up split wide or in the slot. Teams don't even see press coverage on Gronkowski as a viable option, and with good reason. Most of those press plays come in the red zone, where the field is shortened and the opportunity for yardage is diminished, and yet he is actually averaging a higher rate of yards per route run (3.5 to 2.0) when teams do try to get physical with him. In short, the numbers don't back up what Seattle's Lane said he has seen on tape.

Of all teams to play the Patriots this season, the Jets did the best job of limiting Gronkowski in terms of yards per attempt. When you look at the tape, the Jets didn't do it on the back end, but rather with pressure that forced the ball out early and at times inaccurately. In those two games, 58.2 percent of  Tom Brady's pass attempts were out in under 2.5 seconds, and when they were, his passer rating was just 73.9. The Jets could deal with the short, quick stuff, especially when it was wide of the mark. When Brady had more than 2.5 seconds to play with, however, his passer rating shot up to 109.5.

Limiting Gronkowski isn't about coverage alone. You can try to take away his ability to catch quick passes and run after the catch by crowding the underneath zones around him or by disrupting his timing with contact, but the deep part of the route tree is where the biggest danger comes from, and that is where you need help from the pass rush.

Nine of Gronkowski's scores this season have come from the deeper part of the route tree, from corners and posts to streaks, seams and fades. He is averaging 18.5 yards per catch on those passes and 10.6 yards per target. If Brady has time to look to Gronkowski on those routes, the defense has major problems. The Seahawks are better positioned than many teams to try to combat those plays, with the combination of speed ( Earl Thomas) and size ( Richard Sherman, Kam Chancellor) they have working the secondary, but the numbers still say that Gronkowski wins this matchup if he gets enough opportunities.

The key to taking away this threat is on the front end, where the Seattle pass rush must generate pressure and force the ball out of Brady's hands before he can work the deeper routes. New England's offensive line has been far worse this season than in previous ones, and though it has taken on less water than early in the season, the line remains vulnerable to pressure.

Brady was pressured on only 28.7 percent of his passing snaps this season, better than all but five other quarterbacks, but his passer rating plunged from 113.6 when kept clean to just 51.4 when he was pressured, in part because he couldn't deliver the ball to Gronkowski down the field on those plays.

The Seahawks' pass rush has not been as devastating this season as it was last season, but in Michael Bennett in particular they still have a player who can really get after Brady. Bennett has 72 total sacks, hits and hurries this season and often kicks inside to defensive tackle to rush the passer, bringing him up against New England's weakest pass-protectors.

As strange as it seems, the kind of game Bennett has might be the single biggest determining factor in the kind of impact Gronkowski has. If Bennett can hurry Brady consistently, then the Seahawks probably can contain the threat.