Offseason Education: Patriots Schemes

In an effort to help some of my fellow Patriots brethren gain a little more football knowledge this offseason I’ll be bringing occasional links and articles that can help clarify some of the finer points of the game.

Today we have this link about the Patriots strategy from Wikipedia. This is about as basic as you can get, but it’s a good place to start. One of the biggest points I’d like to stress, especially as we get closer to draft time, is that there are different types of 3-4 defenses in the NFL.

The Patriots are looking for defensive lineman who can hold their ground against two monster offensive lineman, whereas the Steelers are looking for defensive lineman who can get upfield, and also drop occasionally into coverage. Both are 3-4 defenses, but the philosophies are much different.