Mike Dussault

We’ve played a mixture of odd fronts and even fronts, but I just felt like from a starting point—given the lack of spring opportunities to practice and meet, and the shortened training camp in terms of actual number of practices—that from a teaching standpoint we felt like there would be more carryover teaching our base defense and nickel defense really as one front. …we felt like in trying to evaluate young players, asking them to learn one system in a 3-4 and then learn another system in nickel [was too much]. As you know, we were in nickel defense just as much as we were 3-4 defense because of teams using multiple receivers on early downs and two-minute and all those kind of things. …There are so many intricacies to a 3-4 defense that I just didn’t know if we’d be ready to handle them this year. Probably wouldn’t have been, to be honest with you.

https://www.patspropaganda.com/weve-played-a-mixture-of-odd-fronts-and-even/