Adherence To Fundamentals Transforming Patriots' Defense

It's called the "Giant Dime", and for the past four weeks in conjunction with a renewed emphasis on fundamentals, it has transformed the injury strapped New England Patriots' defense into the unit we were expecting to see all along.

In recent seasons' past, the Patriots have featured the Big Nickel alignment as their "Base" defense, the result of head ball coach Bill Belichick's methodical accumulation of safeties over the past half-decade and in response to a league-wide trend of employing uber-athletic, monstrous tight ends that have changed the way offenses approach the passing game.

Butler and Harmon are playing at Pro Bowl level

Unfortunately, with the injury bug running rampant in the Patriots' secondary - coupled with the loss of Logan Ryan to free agency, Justin Coleman to trade and Cyrus Jones to the IR - the Patriots are missing much of their trademark physicality and essential chemistry that makes them one of the toughest coverage units in the National Football League...

...which also means that the Big Nickel, tough and versatile as it is, just isn't enough, particularly given the injury status on the second level, which has left the linebacking corps lacking substance as well.

The answer may well be in an alignment known informally as the "Giant Dime" - called such due to both a need to separate it from - and visualize it larger than - the Big Nickel, and also because it originated with former New York Giants' defensive coordinator Perry Fewell - an alignment that utilizes three safeties in tandem with three cornerbacks in a dime look.

For the uninitiated, the Patriots' unofficial website lists their base defensive alignment as a 4-3 for the purposes of piecing together a depth chart, but in reality their typical formations render that a mere label as they characteristically morph into half a dozen different fronts to accommodate their Big Nickel - which as we already know is simply employing a third safety instead of a third cornerback in a five man (nickel) secondary.

As in the standard nickel, the third safety - typically a strong safety - replaces a linebacker in order to get an extra coverage player on the field. The difference between that and the standard nickel is that the strong safety reduces down into the box and positions himself like a weak side linebacker and provides more bulk to take on tight ends in coverage as well as lending a hand in run support.

The Giant Dime also utilizes a strong safety in that manner, but also brings another defensive back into the mix - either a cornerback or a safety - to provide enough players in the secondary to double team the opposition's biggest receiving threat while maintaining areas of responsibility underneath and in the flats.

And that's important because one for major issues that was absolutely killing the Patriots' defense in for first quarter of the season was running backs curling wide open into the flat and running for many yards after the catch, or gaining the edge on running plays because the receivers for the opposition were pulling the coverage out of the flats...

...leaving plenty of space for mobile quarterbacks and fleet-footed running backs to maneuver without any interference from pesky defenders.

Where the big nickel is still the Patriots go-to alignment - they have been in the configuration 83% of their defensive snaps - the past two weeks Patricia has been alternating between the Big Nickel and Giant Dime to counter what the New York Jets, Atlanta Falcons and Los Angeles Chargers have been trying to accomplish.

This particular version of the dime is more or less like a cover-six alignment, which gives teams with excellent safety depth the flexibility to shorten the coverage zones on one side of the field while maintaining press coverage on the other side to counter the opposing offense attempting to isolate a matchup advantage on the other.

A cover-six is a hybrid combination of a cover-four and a cover-two - two plus four equals six, after all - where the defense can use two deep safeties to prevent against the big plays that the Patriots' defense was giving up on a regular basis in the first quarter of the season while flooding the underneath zones with cornerbacks and linebackers to cause congestion and the resultant narrow passing lanes that require a quarterback to be extremely accurate or risk being picked off.

Since the football is almost always placed on a hashmark instead of in the center of the field according to what side of the field the previous play ended on, the placement of the ball dictates which side of the field is less exposed and in this alignment will typically run the cover-two side with one press-man cover corner and a free safety over the top...

...while side more exposed will run the cover-four, with two corners in an off-man zone with two safeties playing over the top. The Patriots are able to add their own little twist to the already twisted alignment because they have the game's best centerfielder to position as a single-high safety at the top of the alignment while two corners handle short and intermediate zones.

Because of the elite centerfielder playing deep, the Patriots can afford to still reduce their strong safety into the middle of the field like a linebacker to mitigate the effect of the tight end crossing patterns and to lend a hand in run support.

In this alignment, the defense rushes three while two linebackers and the strong safety form a rotation on the edges that, in theory, should be able to set the edge and prevent opposing running backs from gaining the flat in the passing game.

All of this is in response to the injury situation in the secondary that left Malcolm Butler as the only cornerback with any extensive experience and forced Belichick and defensive coordinator Matt Patricia to utilize their dime back as their nickle back and employ a career special teamer as their dime back.

So on the cover-four side in this formation, you have seen Jonathan Jones and Johnson Bademosi stacked with Duron Harmon covering their backs over the top and strong safety Patrick Chung shortening their zones in the middle of the field while Butler worked in man-coverage on the cover-two with Devin McCourty guarding the blue line.

They still give up plenty of yardage - ranked dead last in the league in yardage yielded - but the Giant Dime the way the Patriots use it reduces the size of the zones the closer a team gets to the end zone until there is literally no room for error for a quarterback inside the twenty yard line.

The results have been startling. Not only has it made it tougher for opponents to score in the red zone, the alignment has made it tougher to even get into the red zone.

Opponents are entering the Patriots' red zone on just one of every four possessions, scoring touchdowns on just one of every four of those trips inside the red zone, leading to an average points per game surrendered at a meager 12.75, good for third in the NFL during that span - not to mention

This formation in combination with an increased emphasis on fundamentals such as tackling and gap discipline up front have transformed the Patriots' defense from the worst defense in the league, statistically speaking, to one of the best in the second quarter of the season, as evidenced by the fact that during that time frame they have caused their year-to-date points per game to drop ten points, going from 32nd to 18th overall.

The one drawback to this scheme is that it does leave just three players to rush the opposing quarterback, which has resulted in just 16 sacks on the season, an average of two per game, which is a middle-of-the-pack number, but they have been generating enough pressure that combined with the dime coverage, they have been able to force the opposing offense off the field on third downs nearly seventy percent of the time.

The major upside to the cover-six is that it plays to the professed strength of Stephon Gilmore when he is ready to return, as he can take over the cover-two side of the defense that Butler is currently holding down, playing press-man with McCourty covering his back over the top.

As usual, the Patriots have figured out how to make the most of the personnel that they have, and even make themselves better by playing to the strengths of their personnel instead of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, like they did at the start of the season.