new england patriots

I’m excited to get my Patriots paws on Chris Brown’s new book The Essential Smart Football. I’ve linked many times to Chris’ site in the past, it’s one of the few places on the internet that really dives into football x and o strategy, and he’s always posting great Patriots/Belichick stuff. As you can see below it looks like the book will feature the same.

The Essential Smart Football features analysis of football’s top strategists and their schemes, including:

• Urban Meyer’s spread offense
• Tom Brady’s no-huddle attack
• Bill Belichick’s hybrid defense
• Mike Leach’s pass-happy “Airraid” offense
• The most popular scheme for running the ball in the NFL
• Nick Saban’s school of defense.

Here’s the big question, and why I stupidly left Hightower off my Big Board. I’d probably throw Ninkovich in to this competition mix as I think Hightower could be an intriguing SLB option in either a 3-4 or 4-3.

But again, I don’t think base defense fit is really a big deal. It’s about sub-defense now and in a 4-2-5 or 3-3-5 there are a number of spots that Hightower could potentially fit that Spikes doesn’t necessarily fit. However Spikes was coming off the field less and less in sub-defense, and his improvement in that area was demonstrated by his interception in the AFCCG. He might be a little slow, but Spikes has great instincts and has repeatedly shown it, not only in college, but now in the pros as well.