Springing the small ball trap
Small ball tactics transformed the NBA playoffs and they could still have some revolutions in store for how defense is played in the game of football.
I would venture a guess that Bill Belichick believes the linebacker is the quintessential football players.
Fair enough for a guy who’s rise in the profession coincided directly with coaching Lawrence Taylor.
Who's the quintessential defensive player?
One of my takeaways from reading “It’s better to be feared” by Seth Wickersham and deep diving the Bill Belichik/Tom Brady New England dynasty, was that Belichick clearly thought linebackers were the quintessential defensive football players. I had previously noted his appreciation for sub-packages and getting loads of defensive backs on the field who could play man coverage, but I eventually found that he regarded those guys as being role players who existed to serve his main guys. His main guys were generally the two primary safeties and the top 3-4 linebackers, all of whom were consistently ultra-smart and versatile players he’d move around based on the opponent.
Belichick’s Patriot defenses were always built around fielding highly versatile and well coached linebackers who were often converted Edges from the college game. By the 2000s and particularly the 2010s Belichick didn’t really believe in putting a dominant edge rusher to one side of the formation as his pass-rush strategy but trained his linebackers to fill multiple roles against run or pass and to manufacture a pass-rush as needed from different angles with the blitz.
He may be right that a big and versatile linebacker is as good as it gets for offering a defensive coach options and tools for stopping offenses…but last week I raised the possibility that the expanding role of skill athletes and the passing game has made the safety the Uber-hybrid of defensive football. With that contention came the suggestion that packages such as “the Dollar” package, which plays three D-linemen, a sole linebacker, and seven defensive backs, might be the future of great, hybrid defense.
Today we’re going to investigate the tradeoffs of the Dollar package and how it works against the sorts of counters offenses like to bring against it.