It's a good point about moving Brady and Moss down on cheat sheets somewhat - you have to wonder whether more teams will utilize the "blitz-on-almost-every-play" strategy that has worked against them recently, and whether Belichick will find a way to adjust. As the Pats showed on their one good drive in the 4th quarter, they're capable of beating that kind of pressure with short passes to Welker and Moss, but that kind of gameplan probably won't result in the kind of ridiculous numbers Brady and Moss were able to put up this season.

According to Spagnuolo's estimate, the Giants only blitzed on about 30 - 35% of their defensive plays. If those numbers are accurate (didn't look into it), then that's not really much of a blitz-happy strategy; a lot of that pressure would have come from their standard four-man front.

As for cheat sheet adjustments, I'd say you can't really expect Brady or Moss to equal their output from this season. The biggest factor in that will be whether or not Randy comes back; just think of the difference in production for both of them between this year and the previous year.

After seeing Eli this postseason, I think you have to bump him up some. You still have to be wary, though; he has been much improved, but his completion percentage was still not that great in the playoffs. That may just have been due to the caliber of defenses he was playing against, but it also suggests that he still possesses the inaccuracy that caused him to throw 20 picks this year. Expect him to do better, but don't expect him to be a top-flight fantasy option.

By "on-every-play" I was obviously exaggerating, but he definitely called blitzes more often than most defensive coordinators would, and did so even (especially) in high-risk situations. From here:

As the Patriots took the field for that last drive with 29 seconds left and Brady with three timeouts, Spagnuolo called a fire blitz! He didn't call a conservative coverage -- like 90 percent of coaches in the NFL would. I was so impressed with the call that I got choked up.

Hah, I was just offering what I felt to be valid analysis; blitzing 33% of the time is equivalent to blitzing every third down, which means that they were not blitzing ridiculously often. However, when they did blitz, their packages were creative, and their d-line did a good job at putting pressure on Brady when they weren't blitzing. Also, their blitzes were well-timed, which seemed to throw Brady off his game.

As a side note, I loved the fact that Spagnuolo was willing to blitz late in the game. I understand that you don't want to get beat deep late, but if you've been beating them all game by blitzing, why stop when the most important part of the game arrives? Tim Lewis, the old Giants defensive coordinator, went to a prevent far too early in the Giants playoff collapse against San Francisco many years ago, and it proved to be costly. I definitely liked Spagnuolo's tendency to stay aggressive late instead of getting overly conservative, it seems to have worked out well.

I'm not trying to downplay anybody's contribution, but the Giants d-line was a bigger part of that game than almost any other unit of the field. In the end though, all I was really concerned about was the Giants winning. Which they did. Hope you enjoyed the game, Marshall.