BobDigital
Pro Bowl Player
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2013
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You'll never get a direct answer out of the Patriots for how they want to use their defense and how they want to defend NFL offenses. The only thing we can do is look at what they did in the past and try to figure out what this means for the future.
While there is a bit of overlap with certain positions on defense I think it can tell us a lot about how much value Bill thinks these groups have and how much he plans to play them this year. This can give us a bit of a look into how he plans to build his roster and why he invest in the positions he does.
In 2018 the Patriots had 1,043 defensive snaps. That means the players on the field we needed a total of 11,473 defensive snaps. Pro Football Reference accounts for 11,472. Maybe they missed one or maybe I made an error in my math or maybe for one snaps the Pats screwed up and only had 10 guys on the field. In any case I was curious just how often BB wanted certain groups on the field or where he thought the talent on his roster was.
CBs had 2,943 snaps, Safeties had 2,548 snaps, LBs had 2,347 snaps, DE had 1,951 snaps, DTs had 1,678 snaps and offensive players had 5 defensive snaps (as DBs). Guy is listed as a DE but I counted him as a DT.
In other words on average the defense looked like this: 5.27 DBs, 2.25 LBs and 3.48 DLs.
No big surprises here really but it is a little informative. While the Patriots are considered a 4-2-5 teams they are just as likely to have 3 down line men as 4 on any given snap. When they don't have that 4th DL they are just about as likely to put another LB or DB on the field.
The Patriot were a bit more generous with their LBs last year than maybe some people suspected. On average we can assume he used 3 LBs 1/4th of the time and 2 LBs 3/4th of the time.
We also see within groups BB has not only devalued DL compared to other teams but DTs in particular. This may have been in part due to his roster. Anyway I just figured since I looked this info up I may as well post it and you can decide how useful or useless it is.
While there is a bit of overlap with certain positions on defense I think it can tell us a lot about how much value Bill thinks these groups have and how much he plans to play them this year. This can give us a bit of a look into how he plans to build his roster and why he invest in the positions he does.
In 2018 the Patriots had 1,043 defensive snaps. That means the players on the field we needed a total of 11,473 defensive snaps. Pro Football Reference accounts for 11,472. Maybe they missed one or maybe I made an error in my math or maybe for one snaps the Pats screwed up and only had 10 guys on the field. In any case I was curious just how often BB wanted certain groups on the field or where he thought the talent on his roster was.
CBs had 2,943 snaps, Safeties had 2,548 snaps, LBs had 2,347 snaps, DE had 1,951 snaps, DTs had 1,678 snaps and offensive players had 5 defensive snaps (as DBs). Guy is listed as a DE but I counted him as a DT.
In other words on average the defense looked like this: 5.27 DBs, 2.25 LBs and 3.48 DLs.
No big surprises here really but it is a little informative. While the Patriots are considered a 4-2-5 teams they are just as likely to have 3 down line men as 4 on any given snap. When they don't have that 4th DL they are just about as likely to put another LB or DB on the field.
The Patriot were a bit more generous with their LBs last year than maybe some people suspected. On average we can assume he used 3 LBs 1/4th of the time and 2 LBs 3/4th of the time.
We also see within groups BB has not only devalued DL compared to other teams but DTs in particular. This may have been in part due to his roster. Anyway I just figured since I looked this info up I may as well post it and you can decide how useful or useless it is.
