SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The Broncos have the best defensive coordinator and the best defense and a plan to stop Superman:
Spy Cam.
Defensive coordinator Wade Phillips used a defender to follow Alex Smith this season and the Broncos are supremely confident they have enough speed and athleticism to spy Cam Newton.
“I faced him in college, and he was the same type of guy, but he’ll be more smarter, he’s more instinctive now and he got a little bit more smarter,” linebacker Danny Trevathan said. “I faced him before, for sure he’s a different animal, I’m a different animal.”
Trevathan’s Kentucky Wildcats limited Newton (13-for-21, 210 yards, one interception) in a 37-34 loss to Auburn in 2010, but Newton destroyed them with his legs (28 carries, 198 yards, four touchdowns). Trevathan had a career-high 17 tackles.
“I kinda did spy him,” Trevathan said.
The blueprint for stopping him?
“You have to make him uncomfortable, you have to make him think too much,” Trevathan said.
Trevathan was involved as a spy on Smith this season. “In certain situations, I did have him,” Trevathan said.
Phillips is not afraid to spy a dual-threat quarterback.
“We had Randall Cunningham at Philadelphia, and I saw people put spies on him that couldn’t run as fast as he could,” Phillips said. “When you spy a guy, you have to have somebody that’s able to tackle that guy in the open space. Anytime you put a spy on somebody you don’t have as many people rushing. There’s a fine line in there, too, as to when you do and when you don’t.”
Phillips chuckled when asked if he has guys who can run as fast as necessary for the job.
“You’ve seen our guys?” he said. “Seen Von Miller and DeMarcus Ware and some of our defensive linemen? We got some guys that can spy on him, yeah.”
Ware, and especially Miller, can bring the heat quickly enough to feel safe with deploying a spy rather than a blitzer.
“Everybody else can rush and doesn’t have to worry about their lanes,” Phillips said. “That’s where a spy comes in handy. If you don’t have to stay in your lane all the time and you can take a chance and go after him and maybe get him. That’s where a spy helps sometimes. But you got to be able to cover.”
Not to worry. These Broncos can cover. Defensive end Derek Wolfe, asked what percentage of the time the Broncos spied Smith in a 29-13 loss, said: “Not enough, because we ended up getting beat.”
Smith was 17-for-31 with 204 passing yards and one touchdown, plus 33 rushing yards on six carries, on the day Peyton Manning threw four interceptions and was benched. In addition, Ware and Aqib Talib were sidelined.
“I could be a quarterback and I could spy myself,” Miller said. “I probably would be easier to spy than Cam. I don’t throw as far as Cam. But I can run the read option and stuff so…”
Defensive end Antonio Smith considers Newton a Michael Vick-Ben Roethlisberger hybrid.
“The big difference is that they have designed run plays,” Phillips said. “You don’t see that in our league very much. The last time I saw it was Michael Vick.
“The problem with him is, if you say, ‘Well, keep him in the pocket all the time, he’s a good pocket passer.’”
Do you spy him?
“Well you do, yeah … like I said, they run certain plays where he’s running the football,” Phillips said. “You have to have real strong run defense, not only against [Jonathan] Stewart and the running attack, but against him also.”
Smith warms to the task.
“That’s like the persona of a ruthless defense,” he said. “Our front seven is designed to strike fear in the running game, to strike fear in middle crosses coming across the middle. You can’t really hit like that no more, but that’s the way things like that is, ‘OK, you want to run the ball, you want to take these chances,’ we just got to punish you as much as you can when you do.”
“We got linebackers just as fast or faster than him,” Smith said. “So yeah, we got guys that can spy him. And if that don’t work, we’ll use a safety. And if that don’t work, we’ll use everybody we can. Whatever we got to do to win this game is going to be done.”
Spy Cam.