Rams defensive coordinator Wade Phillips has old plan for Patriots' old QB

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ATLANTA -- Wade Phillips had a correction for Bill Belichick at Media Night. A small one. But a correction nonetheless.

Asked if he agreed with Belichick's assessment that the Phillips defensive system hasn't changed in 30 years, Phillips thought for a moment before noting Belichick's mathematical error.

"Well," the Rams defensive coordinator said, "it's been 40 years. I've been in it 40 years."

While the marquee coaching matchup of Super Bowl LIII is between the 66-year-old Belichick and his 33-year-old counterpart Sean McVay, the 71-year-old Phillips and his defense will of course have a very real say in the outcome.

His scheme will be tasked with slowing down Tom Brady in his ninth championship game. His scheme will be tasked with slowing down a grind-it-out running game that breathed life into the Patriots offense late in the 2018 season.

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Phillips' scheme, though, is what it's been for a long time. He agreed with Belichick on that front.

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"We run obviously the 3-4 defense," Phillips explained. "We were the first team with the Oilers to run a full time 3-4. We're still running a 3-4 defense. There's little nuances and things we've changed. But the big thing about his defense and our defense all along was try to use the personnel you have to do what they do well.

"When I had Elvin Bethea, who's in the Hall of Fame, we stunted him a lot. Now we got a three-technique that's better than everybody so we don't stunt him as much because he can play the three technique as well. It's still about the players and what they can do."

That three-technique Phillips referenced is Aaron Donald, who once again was the most disruptive defensive player in football this season. Paired with Ndamukong Suh, the Rams have two of the most physically gifted interior defensive linemen in recent NFL history.

It makes them a unit that is constructed far differently than the one Phillips coordinated that beat up on Brady in the AFC title game in 2015. Back then the Broncos had Demarcus Ware and Von Miller on the edges to ruin plays, as well as a swarming secondary that hurt people and had a nose for the football.

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"Twenty-four hits on the quarterback in that game," Phillips said. "Those guys were a phenomenal defense. I think one of the greatest teams of all time. Especially in the playoffs when you beat [Ben] Roethlisberger, Brady and Cam [Newton]. All of 'em were top, top quarterbacks. Even Carolina was averaging 40 points a game in the playoffs. We had a great stretch there with a great defensive team.

"We've done some different things with this group. We played the run really well the last two games. I think that's gonna be a key for us. But Tom Brady is Tom Brady. He's big in the big moments."

Phillips was surrounded by a hoard of reporters at State Farm Arena on Monday, notepads and voice-recording devices crowding his personal space. Yet he was as calm as always. He wasn't hurried with his answers, and if he couldn't quite hear a question because of the din in the arena, he patiently waited for it to be repeated back to him.

He acted surprised to hear that his particular brand of humor in the media and on social media (Twitter handle: @sonofbum) has turned him into a "cult hero" in some circles.

"I have? I dunno," he said. "I try to be myself."  

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He joked that he needed to have Tony Romo in his ear telling him what plays the Patriots were about to run in order to stop Brady.

He spent several minutes remembering his dad, Bum Phillips, and explaining that, yes, in fact that was his dad's coat he was wearing when he got off the plane in Atlanta.

Phillips' easygoing demeanor suggested that the challenge ahead of him and his players was maybe six months away, not six days. But he's well aware of what lies ahead, well aware that as a subplot to Belichick-versus-McVay is the matchup between himself and the other septuagenarian who'll be walking the sidelines on Sunday, 70-year-old Patriots offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia.

"He's a great line coach," Phillips said. "He's been that way for a long, long time. They can run a lot of different schemes from game to game. And Bill Belichick's the same way on defense. They're a lot smarter than I am. I have to run the same thing I've run for a long time. They can adjust and run a trap offense. They can run a wham offense. They can run a gap offense. They can run a lot of different schemes."

    Phillips added: "They don't make many mistakes. Part of it is they don't take any losses. In the running game they're going forward all the time. They're going downhill. They're not running sideways. In the pass game they don't take any sacks. The guy gets rid of the ball. They don't have any losses. Good teams, great teams like that can do that."

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    The Rams allowed 5.1 yards per carry during the season, worst in the NFL. But for all the do-what-we-do storylines surrounding Phillips and his scheme of late, he's done something to adjust and make his team's run defense better recently. In two playoff games, L.A. has allowed 98 yards rushing on 43 attempts for an average of 2.28 yards per carry.

    The scheme hasn't changed. But those little nuances -- the ones the Rams may have employed since the postseason began, the ones Phillips glossed over to reporters at Media Night -- could end up being the difference in the biggest game of the season.

    No, "urgency" might not have been the first word that came to mind to anyone listening to Phillips and his own particular brand of Texan English when Super Bowl week officially began. But if you got past his delivery and listened to his words, it was there.

    "We've gotta play like we did the last two weeks," he said. "That's really what it comes down to. We played two pretty good running offenses and we played really well. We need to do the same thing."

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