What needs to be identified is what kind of 33 they want to be. The modern 33 is quite different than the traditional big nickel, and the Patriots ran 33 last year. Fundamentally, the big nickel was a CYA coverage D. It was adequate against the pass and run, but excelled at neither. The 33 is a different beast all together. The majority of current anti-spread 33's are penetration based schemes. The most common of this is the 33 stack which aligns the backers and dline to facilitate penetration. It's a blitz defense up front. The safeties are aligned wide and are responsible for pursuit and outside contain. The pro (NE) 33 was a little different.
They took a lot of the old school Steelers zone blitz concepts and applied them. Like any other Belichick defense, this was predicated upon disguising coverage and blitzing. Many times the safety blitz read would be given in conjunction with a backer. The backer would check his rush and fall into the hot zone. Not to get too technical, but the corners would often play outside technique to encourage an inside hot. This is how most of the PD's the defense had happened.
Of course, these defenses are typically weak against well coached run blocking. The logical counter is to keep a normal or even heavy 34 dline on the field for this. The tradeoff, however is that you loose a lot of the penetration tallent that the scheme is predicated upon. I think that there are ways to mix in core run principles without overly sacrificing the penetration.
I think that this, at least in part, explains the enigmatic visits. Classic 3-technique type guys who are also a little stouter. Few classic noses, few classic 4-techniques. It's just in my mind the next evolution of the "tweener" positions Belichick has developed at drafted so well. Stout 3-techniques who are perfect for an adapted 33. The spread is everywhere, spread tallent is coming out almost exclusively, and with the current passing rules teams must adapt their defenses. I'm beginning to believe that Belichick will have heads being scratched this draft, only to fill the spots for the new NFL defense. Watch closely, I think we're seeing the birth of a new NFL buzzword/base defense.
