Bill Belichick: Building the foundation of a great defense

[Prime Time]

Despise the man all you want(and yes there will always be an asterisk by his name due to cheating), but the man knows how to coach a winning team. Here he speaks about how he got his defense to improve.

Since Kroenke and Snead have made mention of how they wanted to follow the Patriots plan for success, McVay and Phillips might want to heed his advice.

It's not enough to have talented players on defense. They also have to be mentally able to carry out the game plan. They then have to be coached to play cohesively together.
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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...plains-defensive-improvement-in-simple-terms/

Belichick explains defensive improvement in simple terms
Posted by Mike Florio on January 23, 2017

Getty Images

For much of the 2016 season, the defense seemed to be a major weakness for the Patriots. Over time, however, the defense steadily improved.

On Monday, reporters asked coach Bill Belichick to explain the biggest factor for this development.

“Preparation, practice, execution,” Belichick said. “There’s no magic wand. You’ve just got to go out there and, look, there are five eligible receivers. Usually we get at least four of them out running pass patterns. In man-to-man coverage you’ve got to cover them. We’ve got to rush the passer, contain the quarterback, stop the run.

Zone coverage; it’s a short throw. You’ve got to be on the receivers tight or a good quarterback can get the ball into those windows. Again, good execution of zone coverage, getting to the receivers, filling up those spaces so it’s hard to throw the ball in there.

It really just comes down to playing good team defense in both the running game and the passing game and on the goal line, which gets into a whole new set of defensive calls and techniques. We’ve had a couple of big stops down there, too, over the course of the year.”

More specific improvement occurred later in the year, as the stakes of the games increased.

“As the season goes on and you get into games like we’ve had the last few weeks, Miami was a playoff team; that was kind of like a playoff game,” Belichick said. “Baltimore, Denver were those big kind of games at the end of the season.

Then the last two we’ve had — I think that’s where teams, players, units, I mean, that’s where those levels really get identified because you’re playing against the very best teams, the very highest level of competition. Some of that really remains to be determined in this year.”

Part of the challenge for the Patriots defense was to adjust to lineup changes, including most notably the in-season trade of linebacker Jamie Collins.

“We made some changes during the year,” Belichick said. “We always make changes. It’s a process you go through. You put players in certain situations and certain groupings together and some work better than others, or maybe you see more potential in a certain player or group of players or combination of players than others.

And you decide to move forward more with that or maybe you do it less because you don’t feel as good about it or players develop or improve or whatever it is and it’s just an ongoing process. It doesn’t happen overnight.”

It also doesn’t happen automatically.

There’s no switch that you can flip,” he said. “It comes through a lot of hard work, a lot of meetings, a lot of communication on how we’re going to do things and then a lot of on-the-field execution at actually doing them at a good competitive level so that we can gain confidence in each other as a unit as to how that’s going to happen in a live game situation.

Working hard, continuing to improve and guys taking whatever opportunities they get and either moving forward with it or possibly somebody else getting an opportunity and moving ahead of a player at a point in the season. That’s just a competitive situation.

We’re going to play the best players and basically everybody will get a chance to do it somewhere along the line, and the players that play the best will play more and the players that don’t do it as well need to improve and need to change their playing time status or they’ll continue to not get the playing time behind somebody else who is performing better.”

These are simple, obvious concepts, and it’s refreshing to hear one of the most successful coaches in league history underscore the importance of the meat-and-potatoes aspect of playing defense.

The specific schemes and the knowledge regarding what an offense may do are critical to the success of a defense, but Belichick has accurately explained some of the key aspects of building the foundation of a great defense.

 

[LACHAMP46]

Interesting read...while I liked Kyle van noy...I like Shea McMillen too...on tape...not the combine warriors I usually focus on. They could play...esp. Kyle, in college. But I never expected them to be able to replace Collins....who WAS on my RADAR. Ran that 4.5....and had some great tape. Jones neither.
NE just gets it done....Belichick is a great coach. He's stood the test of time. It's great to be alive when one of the best to ever do it is at the prime of his career. Wanna see Vince Lombardi? Look at Bill Belichick.

 

[Prime Time]

But I never expected them to be able to replace Collins

Apparently he didn't fit in for various reasons. Freelancers don't stay on that team long. A coach's loyalty to his players is only important up to a certain point. They traded Collins to the Browns, who now have 5 ex-players playing in the Super Bowl. Something is obviously very wrong with the Browns front-office staff.
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http://www.sbnation.com/2016/11/1/1...ichael-lombardi-inconsistent-effort-belichick


View: https://twitter.com/mlombardiNFL/status/793131852882022400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw


View: https://twitter.com/RapSheet/status/793443068959686657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

“He’s trading a guy who is very talented, but very moody, very inconsistent with his effort, and so for him to pay that player that type of money sends a message to the locker room that, look, I tolerate this and I reward this.” Lombardi said.

 

[LACHAMP46]

Apparently he didn't fit in for various reasons. Freelancers don't stay on that team long. A coach's loyalty to his players is only important up to a certain point. They traded Collins to the Browns, who now have 5 ex-players playing in the Super Bowl. Something is obviously very wrong with the Browns front-office staff.

I thought it was strange...the guys they released. Especially Alex Mack. I wonder is Hue behind this? Similarly, why would they want to extend this type of guy? I wonder, did the Patriots defense get better when Collins was released? I know they'll miss him when trying to match up with Coleman & Freeman.

 

[Prime Time]

http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/01/23/...-belichick-gameplan-strategy-patriots-falcons

What Would Belichick Do?
Fifteen years after slowing the Greatest Show on Turf and ascending to genius status, the Patriots coach faces another historically great offense in the Super Bowl. This time around, he’ll try to slow the Falcons with a different brand of defense
by Andy Benoit

On the morning of February 3, 2002, Bill Belichick was considered a middle-tier retread coach who, remarkably, had gotten a good-but-far-from-great Patriots team to Super Bowl 36. By the end of the night he was deemed a genius, on the path to living legend status, for he was the one who figured out how to stop the 2001 St. Louis Rams offense—a.k.a. The Greatest Show on Turf. (The key: repeatedly knocking the crap out of Marshall Faulk.)(My own comment: as I recall they held him on every play while I screamed at the refs to call a penalty).

Two weeks from now Belichick will coach his seventh Super Bowl for New England. He’ll face the best offense his AFC champion teams have seen since that epic Rams unit. The Falcons are the NFL’s best-coached offense. They’re quarterbacked by a smart, accurate field general. They have a superstar wide receiver and two of the league’s best all-around running backs.

Their offensive line has been together for every significant snap. Add it all up and you get a group that does more things out of more looks than any other in football. Or, to put it plainly, you get an offense that has averaged 37.5 points a game since its Week 11 bye.

Belichick’s 2001 Patriots were known for changing identities. One week they might be a blitzing 3-4 unit; the next, a zone-based 4-3. It was a malleable scheme, rich in deception and disguise. This came to define Belichick’s reputation. He was the coach whose game plan you could never predict.

This wasn’t an inaccurate assessment, but it was imprecise. Really, Belichick is a coach who commits fully to having a cohesive team. As he said in Ron Jaworski’s book Games That Changed the Game, “It’s not about collecting talent, it’s about building a team. Some players fit better into one system or style of play than they do in another.”

* * *

In 2001, Belichick’s defenders fit best into a complex, amorphous system. His lineup featured smart, cagey veterans (including some of whom were in athletic decline and had to rely on “brains over brawn”). Guys like Mike Vrabel, Tedy Bruschi, Roman Phifer, Otis Smith, Lawyer Milloy and Willie McGinest.

But over the last several years the Patriots have had a completely different collection of defenders. Younger but more physically gifted, they’re better equipped to outexecute opponents than outsmart them.

With the immensity of Atlanta’s offense, it’s tempting to think Belichick will fight fire with fire. The Falcons do a lot of things, so we’ll see the Patriots do a lot of things, many of which will be unexpected. After all, they’ll have had an extra week to prepare for Matt Ryan and company. But if Belichick really felt his current defense was built to play this way, we would have seen it by now.

Instead we see a defense that mostly sticks to straight man or zone, rarely employing hybrid coverages. A defense that, like any, occasionally blitzes a fifth rusher, but far more often is content to rush the usual four.

A defense that changes its fronts frequently, particularly against the run, but doesn’t go too far out of its way to disguise them. In simplest terms, the Patriots just line up and play. They rely on sound, fundamental execution.

This is how they must approach the Falcons, and it must be done very physically. Line up in straight man-to-man and hit your individual opponent in the mouth. If the Patriots aren’t flagged four or five times for various illegal uses of hands—be it holding, illegal contact, hands to the face, maybe even pass interference—they’re playing too soft.

The Falcons are too well-schemed to play zone against. And the Patriots, having just an ordinary, straight four-man rush and limited blitz packages, will struggle to get to Ryan. Unable to disrupt the quarterback’s timing, they must disrupt the timing of his receivers. Lay hands on those targets. Put the onus on the officials to throw flags in the most-watched television event of the year. Human nature says they probably won’t—not repeatedly, anyway.

Playing straight man coverage will negate the inverted formations that Atlanta likes, where tight ends and backs shift outside of receivers in an effort to turn the defense inside-out. In man coverage it becomes more about individual matchups, regardless of where in the formation the matchup occurs.

One thing that’s never changed about Belichick is his belief in taking away the opponent’s two biggest weapons. For Atlanta, that’s Julio Jones and whomever is at running back (Devonta Freeman or Tevin Coleman). There’s no single Patriot who can handle Jones, so defend him with two. Put a safety over the top and let him fight through the press-man of either long-armed corner Eric Rowe or sturdy hands-checker Logan Ryan.

For the running backs, introduce them to Patrick Chung. Yes, it’s unusual to put a slot corner/hybrid safety on a back. Generally that defender takes a tight end or possession receiver. But Chung’s versatility means he can take Freeman or Coleman wherever they line up, be it the backfield, slot or out wide. This will offset the advantage Atlanta gets from moving its backs around.

And on third downs, when stopping the run becomes an afterthought, maybe even have top cover safety Devin McCourty take the running back. That’s actually what the Patriots’ game plan called for against Le’Veon Bell in the conference title game.

If you double Jones with a safety and don’t blitz, that leaves you one more safety to play with. It’s here where Belichick can be multiple through coverage changeups and disguises. It should be his smartest safety doing these changeups and disguises. (The guess here is that’d be McCourty.) Have him play deep and over the top on the other side of Jones, allowing the man defenders to be even more aggressive.

Against formations where Matt Ryan is inclined to throw between the field numbers, have the safety rotate down over the middle. Though he hasn’t done it very often this season, Ryan will sometimes fail to account for this defender and throw into traffic. And every now and then, have the safety take one of the linebackers’ coverage responsibilities so that that linebacker is free to blitz.

Eventually the Falcons will start getting a bead on New England’s man concepts and we’ll see pick routes and intertwined crossing patterns—concepts that force man defenders to back off. New England’s defense is familiar with this. It’s been a high-percentage man-to-man defense over the previous two years, so these concepts were regularly featured by their opponents.

Plus, they’re something this defense sees when going against Tom Brady’s offense every training camp. Really, those man-beaters are just another dimension of a timing-based offense. Which is why it’s worth emphasizing again: In man coverage, the Patriots need to be physical. Even if that means tempting the flags to come out.

 

[Rmfnlt]

We’re going to play the best players and basically everybody will get a chance to do it somewhere along the line, and the players that play the best will play more and the players that don’t do it as well need to improve and need to change their playing time status or they’ll continue to not get the playing time behind somebody else who is performing better.”

^THIS^ is what I hope McVay does!

 

[Merlin]

Hold players who don't execute accountable. Sit them. Trade them. Anything but continue to give them playing time and for F's sake don't sign them.

I hate Belichick but respect him. The guy is well grounded in what is important. I mean look at the Rams under Fish with the excuses, the payday for bad players or guys who haven't earned it, etc. The continued playing of guys who F up and make mistakes, instead of sitting them until they actually EARN their job back. It was just a mess.

I pray this organization starts paying attention to how the Pats do things. It's Belichick that's the guy who centers it all up there, not Brady, too. Brady could go to a bad team and they'd lose until he retires. Belichick could go there and rebuild it from the ground up. The dude is the man, the greatest. He's a cheater, yes, but he's still the greatest.

Now I feel dirty. Time for a shower.

 

[DCH]

Hold players who don't execute accountable. Sit them. Trade them. Anything but continue to give them playing time and for F's sake don't sign them.

I hate Belichick but respect him. The guy is well grounded in what is important. I mean look at the Rams under Fish with the excuses, the payday for bad players or guys who haven't earned it, etc. The continued playing of guys who F up and make mistakes, instead of sitting them until they actually EARN their job back. It was just a mess.

I pray this organization starts paying attention to how the Pats do things. It's Belichick that's the guy who centers it all up there, not Brady, too. Brady could go to a bad team and they'd lose until he retires. Belichick could go there and rebuild it from the ground up. The dude is the man, the greatest. He's a cheater, yes, but he's still the greatest.

Now I feel dirty. Time for a shower.

After his fumbles against Houston, Belichick made Dion Lewis carry a football around with him all week, and any player that could slap it away from him at any time would get a chunk of Lewis's bonus money.

High school drill but being used on grown, professional players. He also yelled something about "Great day to work on ball security, ain't it Dion?" when it started raining at practice. No regard for players' egos at all. You want to freelance and try to improve your stats in a contract year? Fuck you, you're a Brown now.

 

[Rmfnlt]

He also yelled something about "Great day to work on ball security, ain't it Dion?" when it started raining at practice.

Very Parcellsian.

Makes sense.

 

[Prime Time]

https://theringer.com/new-england-p...offense-super-bowl-li-ca0b471ea5cb#.rpufdhh3n

Bill Belichick’s Defense Is Great*
The New England Patriots have the NFL’s best scoring defense, but they played the league’s easiest schedule of opposing quarterbacks. Are they for real? Their matchup with Atlanta’s league-best offense is going to give us an answer
Danny Kelly
Staff Writer, The Ringer

Tom Brady is incredible. At 39 years old, he’s thrown 28 touchdowns and just two picks this season, leading the New England Patriots to his record seventh Super Bowl. He’s a four-time Super Bowl champion, a three-time Super Bowl MVP, and a two-time league MVP.

He’s probably the greatest quarterback ever. (We can argue about that another time.) And yet, despite all those accolades, Brady serves as an ancillary story line to the most important matchup of Super Bowl LI: the no. 1 scoring offense in the NFL vs. the no. 1 scoring defense in the NFL.

Even after losing superstar tight end Rob Gronkowski to a back injury, Brady’s offense was efficient and enterprising en route to finishing the year third in scoring — but it’s stuck in the long shadow of the Atlanta Falcons juggernaut.

This time around, New England’s success hinges not on Brady making big plays — that will help, of course — but on whether or not the defense that gave up the fewest points this year (15.6 points per game) can do anything to slow up an Atlanta squad that tied for the eighth-most points per game (33.75) of any team in NFL history.

We’ve been waiting all season, but we’re about to find out whether this Patriots defense is for real.

Atlanta’s offense channels Mike Tyson in his prime, unleashing overwhelming force from the opening bell. After doing it again against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, they’ve scored on their first possession for eight straight weeks.

It doesn’t stop there. The Falcons score at an incredibly consistent rate, turning drives into touchdowns a league-leading 34.9 percent of the time. In turn, they’re better than anyone else at taking advantage of opposing miscues.

With a missed field goal, an Aaron Ripkowski fumble, and a stalled drive on their first three possessions, the Packers quickly found themselves behind 17–0 before they could get themselves off the ropes. That put Green Bay into comeback mode; the Packers had to abandon their original game plan and go to a sped-up, pass-heavy approach, allowing Atlanta pass rushers to pin their ears back and rush Aaron Rodgers with abandon.

They sacked him twice, hit him seven times, and with an escalation in blitz frequency, overwhelmed a normally stout Green Bay offensive line. After months of God mode, Rodgers’s first touchdown pass didn’t come until the score was 31–0 and the game was basically over.

The Patriots are going to have to withstand Atlanta’s opening salvo to avoid falling into the same early hole; Rodgers was playing as well as any quarterback ever has, and even he couldn’t do it. That’s where the resistance of New England’s D will be key — except resistance from coach Bill Belichick and defensive coordinator Matt Patricia’s group is anything but a given.

New England’s title of “no. 1 scoring defense” comes with an asterisk. After facing the easiest schedule of any defense in the NFL — a lineup led by an astoundingly mediocre group of quarterbacks — the Patriots defense entered the playoffs essentially untested by any of the league’s best offenses.

Despite the impressive raw numbers, New England’s defense finished the year just 16th in Football Outsiders’ DVOA, which, among other things, weighs its rating based on opponent quality.

In a perfect sequel to the regular season, all the Patriots had to do to advance to Sunday’s AFC championship game was beat Brock Osweiler, who might be the worst quarterback they played all year. However, the way New England dispatched Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers’ high-octane offense helped to erode the idea that the Patriots don’t deserve to be counted among the best.

They stifled Roethlisberger for most of the game, and he finished with 314 yards, an interception, and a garbage-time touchdown as Pittsburgh scored just 17 points. But even in resounding victory, a caveat exists: New England may have finally shut down a top-tier quarterback, but that quarterback went without one of his favorite targets and one of the best players in the league, Le’Veon Bell, who left early in the second quarter with a groin injury, a factor that taints what could’ve been a statement performance by New England’s defense.

A matchup with the mighty Falcons offense offers no such stipulations. Devin McCourty, Malcolm Butler, Dont’a Hightower, and the Patriots defense will face what is objectively the league’s best offense, and it gives them their chance to put to rest any doubt regarding their place among the elite. Moreover, it’s a test that New England must pass if the Patriots have any hope of winning it all.

The defining question for Super Bowl LI isn’t whether or not Brady has what it takes to take down Atlanta’s defense. (Hint: He does.) It’s whether or not the Patriots defense can slow the fully laden freight train of a Falcons offense that’s hurtling toward them. If they can, Belichick and Co. can take that asterisk off of their title of “no. 1 scoring defense.” But at that point, they probably won’t care: They’ll be lifting a trophy and celebrating a title that sounds even sweeter.

 

[TexasRam]

Complete bull crap. Smoke and mirrors.

Belichick isn't a coach. He's a con artist.

The man was a loser coach until he turned to an elaborate system of cheating that was exposed by former coaches former employees and other insiders.

The man had library's of illegal video tapes of other teams. Thousands upon thousands of tapes that he used to win Super Bowls. The evidence was so overwhelming that there was no defense. Belicheck should have been permanently kicked out of the league and their trophies recalled but Godell knowing the potential harm it would do to the public perception of the NFL DESTROYED EVERYTHING.

The rest is cover up. The proof is in the pudding. Deflatgate surfaced where Tom Brady is slapped on the hand after lying about his cheating ways.

These are Facts. Belicheck's Patriots gain an edge through various forms of cheating. They are dishonest Cheaters.


I for one am not reading an article on how his success is related to coaching. It is not. He wins by cheating.

Wake up people. Stop giving the man credit, he's a proven Cheater.

 

[-X-]

After his fumbles against Houston, Belichick made Dion Lewis carry a football around with him all week

Yeah, he stole that from the movie "The Program."
James Caan made Omar Epps do that.

 

[Prime Time]

I for one am not reading an article on how his success is related to coaching. It is not. He wins by cheating.

Wake up people. Stop giving the man credit, he's a proven Cheater.

I understand your passion. I can't stand the man or his team either. But the Patriots are headed to yet another Super Bowl and this is posted in the NFL section because it's of interest to some, maybe many of us. A long time ago I figured out that I can still learn things from people I neither like nor respect. I hope the Falcons whip them in the Super Bowl.

 

[DCH]

Yeah, he stole that from the movie "The Program."
James Caan made Omar Epps do that.

I always thought that was Mike Tomlin