After doing a week of research and posting on both the offensive and defensive philosophies of the Patriots I noticed a strange disparity. Take the two quotes below:
Defense:
Despite the fact that the Bullough can be confusing, the system relies on a lot on “bend; don’t break” thinking. The idea is that the longer the offense is on the clock, the longer it takes them to score, and the more plays the offense risks an interception, fumble, or a fourth down.
Offense:
The Erhardt – Perkins system has at times had a reputation (whether or not earned) of being a traditional smash mouth offense that maximizes a team’s time of possession and does not as frequently call upon its running backs to serve as receivers
So does it seem strange to anyone else that their offensive philosophy (maintaining possession, long drives) is exactly what their defensive philosophy is trying to accomplish (force offense to continually execute on long drives)?
Perhaps my FBI isn’t quite large enough yet to understand this, because if this is true I would guess that Patriots practices are probably a whole lot of Brady et al driving down the field on the bend, don’t break defense. I cannot understand how philosophically the Patriots defense plays exactly into what their offense wants to do.
Maybe these articles that I found are not entirely accurate or over-simplified, but from my view it certainly seems like this is the defensive philosophy that the Pats operate under. And it seems obvious why a team that can execute consistently (like Peyton and the Colts) can carve this defense up once they get into a groove (see 4th quarters of 2009 and 2010) or the Jets playoff game where Sancheesy was flawless.
If there’s any part of this that is wrong, I’m guessing it’s offensive philosophy part of the equation. Perhaps it’s not really about maximizing time of possession, it’s about methodically keeping drives moving forward via whichever avenues the defense is susceptible to. Although I’m sure there are plenty of Patriots fans out there who’d like to see the “Bend, don’t break” defense broken.
Any one out there have any guesses/insight?
