Since Bill Belichick’s been in control of the Patriots, their defense has gone from a 3-4 front to a 4-3 front to now being a defense that’s not distinguished by its front at all, really, but by the number and deployment of defensive backs on the field.
Belichick went into detail Wednesday about roster-building and weighing factors like supply and demand and offensive trends when putting together a defense. With running quarterbacks, spread offenses and receiver-friendly rules, has the back end of the defense become the focal point?
“I think that’s part of building your team is trying to anticipate where your team is going and – especially defensively – (where the league is going),” he explained. “How do you construct a defense to handle the different challenges that you have? If you look at the numbers statistically and the amount of five defensive backs that are on the field, you’ll see the numbers shift dramatically, especially this year. You can see a trend but there’s a spike. There’s very few teams – maybe four or five – that are under 50 percent nickel.
“So when you talk about, ‘What defensive system do you run?’ virtually every defense you play in the league is in nickel, five defensive backs. Five defensive backs, whatever version it is. There are five DBs, put it that way. Whatever the rest of it is, you can look at that separately. That’s certainly not the way it was 10 years ago. I’d say we were in the 30s, 30 percent, high-30s. Now that number is doubled. We’re almost, I think we’re in the 70 … to 75 percent range of nickel defense this year. Now you know, we’ve been ahead some, but we’ve also played a lot of multiple receiver teams.”
In essence, the discussion of whether a team is 4-3 or 3-4 is outdated. There are – especially with the Patriots – only two linebackers on the field for the vast majority of their defensive snaps. What kind of front do the Patriots use?
Generally, the Patriots have two defensive tackles and two standup defensive ends, two linebackers and five defensive backs. Other times, they will go with three down linemen but those could be a defensive tackle and two guys who came into the league as either outside linebackers or defensive ends – edge guys – but are playing down.
