PatsPropaganda

Really hard to compare Romeo Crennel, Dean Pees and Matt Patricia, because defenses are so much more tied to what offenses are doing.

The biggest thing is just the overall talent level on the defense. Crennel had a veteran group in their prime. Pees got that group for end of their run, and squeezed every last bit of play out of them.

Now Patricia has basically had to re-build the defense, obviously with the help of Belichick. But I think that Crennel and Pees had it a little easier given the talent levels they had to work with.

While there has been plenty of evolutions schematically, as discussed yesterday, with the nickel defense essentially becoming the new base. Crennel could roll out his 34 for most of the game, rotating the linebackers a bit between Roman Phifer and Ted Johnson depending on what needed to be stopped. Otherwise, it was a veteran crew who could not only disguise their intentions, but execute with physicality and win one-on-one matchups.

Now Patricia has to stop modern NFL passing games and his secondary can’t put a hand on the receivers more than five yards past the line of scrimmage.

But the defensive rebuild is a huge area of focus on this blog, and when you look at the key additions over the last few years, you can see how things are taking shape.

Major moments of the defensive rebuild

2008 – Jerod Mayo drafted.

2009 – Rob Ninkovich, Kyle Arrington added via FA.

2010 – Brandon Spikes, Devin McCourty drafted.

2011 – Ras-I Dow.. nevermind…

2012 – Chandler Jones, Dont’a Hightower, Alfonzo Dennard drafted, Steve Gregory signed as FA, Aqib Talib traded for.

As you can see the core they’ve put together over the last few years should really be coming together this season. I have high expectations, it’s a similar time frame now as it was in 2001 for Bruschi, McGinest, Ty Law, Lawyer Milloy, etc.

I think that all three of the offensive coordinators have added their own twists on the offense, but each was largely reflective of the personnel that they had. 

Weis’ version of the offense was very much the traditional Erhardt-Perkins, which relied on power backs like Antowan Smith and Corey Dillon and consistent and safe quarterback play.

As the league evolved, with the rules making it harder to cover receivers, eand Josh McDaniels became the OC they went to more spread concepts and the Pats passing game took off in 2007 and 2008 (even with Matt Cassel). In 2009 the Pats ran out of options around Moss and Welker. As Belichick said “you take away Moss deep, get up on Welker, and we’re done.”

So in 2010 we got Bill O’Brien and a return to more of the power football we saw with Weis, using Rob Gronkowski, Aaron Hernandez, and Wes Welker. Once it was clear Moss was no longer the threat he once was they brought back Deion Branch. Then you had four of the smartest weapons Brady has ever had, and the result was an MVP year for him.

They weren’t as explosive as 2007, but they were more surgical. Had their defense not been in year two of the rebuild they likely could’ve won a Super Bowl that year, or at least made it past the Jets.

They built on that in 2011, taking the precision to another level by amping up the no-huddle. And while Branch began to fade, Gronk and Hernandez began to shine, and they went back to the Super Bowl.

With McDaniels back in 2012 they tried to do even more of that, but they were unable to find another receiving threat to replace Branch and the injuries to Hernandez and Gronk added up.

Now the Pats are in a re-build on offense somewhat. They have these elements I’m sure they’d love to build on, like using Gronk’s versatility and the no-huddle, but for now they have to get the new WRs up to speed before they can really start to establish an identity.

For each offensive coordinator, the team has been as much influenced by the style of play in the NFL and their personnel. I think McDaniels especially is an innovator, but Weis and O’Brien both did a good job using what they had and putting together strong offenses.

It will be interesting to see what the 2013 team’s identity becomes, but it will take some time.

Michael Holley’s book War Room really touched on this with some good behind-the-scenes stuff. Really, it was about the only super interesting Patriots stuff in the whole book.

Essentially I think the 2006 AFC Championship game made it clear to the Patriots that the league was heading toward more and more and scoring and the Pats were going to have to keep up.

As they picked up Stallworth, Welker and Moss, it was up to Josh McDaniels to figure out how to use everyone, so a lot of the credit of the 2007 offense has to come to him. You look at those first two months and they were really unstoppable.

But like all football trends teams started to catch on a bit to what they were doing. It took a team like the Giants, who could get excellent pressure rushing just four guys, while using seven in coverage, to ultimately knock them off.

Of course 2007 was also just the right mix of an elite veteran defense making their last stand, Brady, Moss and Welker in their prime, and the whole Spygate saga that lit a fire under the whole team’s collective ass to not only win games but to totally dominate teams and prove that video tapes had nothing to do with why they were winning games.