“That scheme doesn’t work for me. When you play a good offense, a team that spreads you out, there’s just too many openings in zone coverage. You have to mix in man-to-man coverage. You have to become more creative on defense. You have to disguise, bring more pressure.

“Then I look at that secondary, and they’re playing really soft coverage, that bend-but-don’t-break defense. I hate that. I think you have to challenge your players more. You have to start blitzing, force the quarterback into making mistakes. I know you can’t stop everything. I know they were afraid of their speed. But sometimes you just got to go challenge them. And I just don’t see them doing it.”

“We played a lot of man-to-man coverage, especially when we won in ’03,” said Harrison, who played six seasons (2003-08) with the Pats. “They challenged us. I was in the box blitzing. We dared teams to throw. You weren’t going to run on us. We dared teams to throw. We had good enough cornerbacks, we felt like teams couldn’t have success. We disguised, we mixed in cover-2, we mixed in cover-4, and different cover-3s. Here, I just see a basic, plain defense. So if the offense isn’t scoring 25-30 points, you’re in trouble.”