Breakdown of the 2nd Brady to Edelman play

Ok here it goes,

Pre Snap: Brady sees that none is guarding edelman one on one, therefore he assumes that denver is in zone and based on the position of the two safeties its likely a 2 deep zone.

After the snap brady looks to his left and sees the saftey start backpedaling towards the sideline eliminating Gronks stop and go route.Therefore he looks to Edelman and sees that LB Danny Trevathan is trying edelman is trying to force him outside. If you pause the clip about two seconds in you will see that Trevathan is actually completely horizontal as edelman is about to pass him at the 40 yrd line. When brady saw this he knew that edelmans speed would allow him to pass trevathan, and because trvathen had such an outside stance it would be impossible for him to change direction and move back inside and jump before the ball arrived to edelman. Brady also knew that the saftey was forced to stay back because of the threat of Gronk and Edllman just staying vertical down the field so the throwing lane to Edleman over trevathen was going to be open

The reason why edelman doesn’t cross is because then he would have been forced to slow down and cut which would give up part of the depth advantage on Trevathan and would give the defense more time to react . Also against zones, deep crossing routes can be very hard to execute because receivers don’t have as big of a catch radius as on looser deep routes.Vertical routes also offer more flexibility because a QB-WR with good chemistry can change them mid-play they into stop or bend routes that expose the holes in a zone without giving the defense time to react.