The Counter: Breaking down the Patriots' defensive scheme with NFL Twitter's Betz
Betz joins the show to discuss defensive scheme and what makes Bill Belichick so good.
This week, with Chris Korman out, we were joined by a special guest co-host: The infamous Betz (@alltwentytwo) of NFL Twitter. Without a lot going on in the NFL world this week, the discussion focused on defensive scheme and Bill Belichick’s scheme in particular.
Some topics we hit on during the episode:
- Betz being called out by one of his football heroes, Hal Mumme
- His ‘scheme > talent’ take and how that applies to Belichick’s Pats
- My article on the Patriots defense and the concepts behind it
- The schematic evolution of NFL defense
- Betz lists his favorite NFL defenses to watch
- Betz puts together his ideal defensive scheme
The discussion centers around my post on the Patriots defense. I would recommend giving that a read before listening to this episode, as we review some of the concepts I cover in that post.
If you’re unable to read it, here are some helpful visual aids for the two main concepts we cover: Divider rules and position maintenance.
First the rules for the divider:
And the rules for position maintenance:
And here is an illustration of position maintenance in action:
My series on the NFL’s defensive evolution from last offseason is another helpful appendix to the conversation I have with Betz. We cover a lot of the ground that I covered in the four-part series.
You can find (and subscribe!) to The Counter at the usual spots linked below. Thanks for listening.
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