Matt Patricia's front follows the same principles that Belichick had for his old 34 defense: contain the edges, don't overpursuit, hold gaps and let the LB make plays.
1. IZ is going to get eaten alive. The best success you can get running against them on pulls over and over and over again. Run power, counter, trap, wham and soften the front up. It's the absolute fundamental base if we want to achieve something.
2. This is quite literally the game for Carson Beck to turn into Captain Checkdown. Patricias defense does not allow anything intermediate or deep. You quite literally have to be stubborn with the checkdown until they start collapsing down and play outside of their comfortable depth. This may be a game where we see tons of pony personnel.
3. In the run game = get light with personnel. Don't go heavy, that's his bread and butter. Patricia can't defend the run out of 11 to save his life and teams haven't exposed it enough yet.
4. Don't even attempt to throw screens to the perimeter. Their DBs sit off, read and attack full speed the moment they recognize it.
5. Patricia is spamming Rip/Liz Match and he doesn't care. He has the athletes to play it. It's known around football but really difficult to beat when its executed correctly. Use bunch formations, trips, anything closely aligned and set natural picks for receivers to get free. Spread is the opposite of what we want - we need traffic and lots of it.
This will be another low-scoring affair offensively. Don't expect a ton of explosive plays.
