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Archives for August 17, 2016

Tweets of Note: Patriots Final Training Camp Practice #16

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And that’ll do it for training camp. It’s been just under three weeks and now practices won’t be open to the public as the team transitions to more of their usual schedule. It’s good that the Pats escaped this portion of the summer, including two weeks of joint practices, without a season-ending injury to anyone important. Of course there’s still plenty of time to go before the season starts, including three games, but making it this far is a good sign.

The final joint practice with the Bears was little more than a walk through, so there were no fights and no great plays to report. Still there was plenty to take away as far as tomorrow night’s game is concerned.

Here are the final Tweets of Note…

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Breaking Down Patriots’ Preseason Defense

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Screen Shot 2016-08-16 at 10.16.31 AMEveryone knows the Patriots preseason defense is vanilla ice cream. You’re not going to unveil some revolutionary new tactic or formation when it doesn’t matter. And Bill Belichick is never one to tip his hand if he has something interesting brewing.

It seems like every season everyone gets so wrapped up in 3-4 vs. 4-3, who’s standing up, etc. that we get confused trying to figure out something that is far less complicated than we’re all making it out to be.

Here’s the biggest thing to remember — the Patriots were in sub defense for 84 percent of the snaps in 2016. They’ve been trending that way since 2009. So any discussion of 3-4 vs. 4-3 applies to less than 15 percent of the snaps. And the truth is that the techniques in both these defenses are the same. Just because one guy is standing up or has his hand down doesn’t make much difference.

For all the talk of “Ninkovich is playing linebacker!!”, here he is, playing linebacker in the 4-3 under in 2011, just like McClellin was doing last week.

Patriots Preseason Defense

So here’s a look at the vanilla base schemes the Patriots defense ran against the Saints, using the plays right out of Bill Belichick’s 1997 Jets playbook.

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