Sirius/Kirwan & Ryan: Belichick gives insight into going 4-3

Now here’s an explanation of why the Patriots switched from a 3-4 to a 4-3 that nobody had heard yet. Belichick explains that due to the shortened off-season and training camp it just seemed easier to install their nickel front and use that as the base than try to get into all the intricacies of the 3-4.

We’ve obviously written and talked a lot about the switch and usually we attributed it to wanting to get more pressure and be more attacking. I’m sure those were factors as well, but to hear BB say how big the lack of teaching time was in the decision was a little bit of a bombshell to me.

“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,” Belichick explained (short audio clip here).

“We wanted a lot of carryover between our run responsibilities and run fits, and some of our pressure defenses and things like that. We’ll transition and build into some of our odds fronts, but 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.

"So we felt like it would be a better opportunity to evaluate our players and not try to over-install and put in a ton of defense. Try to cut it down a little bit and see if we could execute it better. Certainly, we have a long way to go but I do feel like we’re making progress, and I think our players at least understand what we’re doing.

"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.”