Those who know me know I worship at the alter of NFL Network’s Playbook. There’s no slant (especially not “Quick Slants), just broken down film showing who’s good/bad and why. Today Brian "Baldy” Baldinger, he of the loose, dangly pinky, came on EEI and had some not so sweet things to say about the Patriots 34 defensive scheme. Here’s a sampling:
“I don’t believe the style of defense that Bill [Belichick] is playing right now can win championships,” Baldinger said. “I don’t believe that you can sit there in your zone defenses with your strict and straight 3-4 defense. There’s not a lot of disguise to what they do. It makes it a little bit easier on quarterbacks."
Look I get what Baldy is saying, but what’s he’s leaving out is that it’s a lot easier to scheme and disguise when you have a veteran defense. We saw plenty of that when Bruschi, Vrabel, Harrison et al were playing. Did Belichick suddenly decide that a straight forward style of defense was better? No.
It will take time before the young players on defense have mastered the basic techniques required to play defense at the NFL level. Even I can see they are playing simple defenses, but I would guess that as the season progresses there will be more and more disguise and complications added in.
We must be patient Patriots Nation. Championship defenses are not built from scratch in two seasons.