Let us hope....

During a recent event, Bill Belichick had this to say about how the Pats do things.....

“One of the things we’ve tried to do is be a little bit of an outlier in some respects,” Belichick said, via NESN.com. “When I came to the Patriots in 2000 as the head coach, we played a 3-4 defense, and we only had two teams in the NFL, us and the Pittsburgh Steelers, who played a 3-4. We had quite a bit of success, won three Super Bowls in four years, and by 2005, half the league was playing a 3-4 defense. So, when I came here trying to find a nose tackle like Ted Washington, it was easy because no one else wanted him. Five years later, if we were looking for a nose tackle, there were probably five other teams in the draft ahead of us. “We’ve kind of had to find different players, different schemes, whether it be tight end-based offenses or whether it be going from an odd to an even front defensively, whatever it happened to be, trying to find different ways to capitalize on the talent that’s available.”

 You see that. Belichick is the guy setting the trends in the NFL. Finding value in things the league is not doing presently and making them work for his team today.  He is talking about finding a surplus of underutilized, thus cheap, talent and finding ways to win with that talent today. He has done this his entire time with the Pats as noted in his quote but one part was left out. What he is doing offensively today. Small, shifty and quicker WRs. Teams all over the league are trying to find bigger taller CBs to counter all the Megatron wannabes. How do you beat a bigger CB? Smaller, shiftier and quicker WRs that get into and out of their cuts faster, running sharper routes that the bigger CBs can't handle. That is building a team on the front edge curve. (case in point, Antonio Brown is debate-ably the best WR in the game today and he is 5-10, Pitt is pretty good at this too)

Let us hope that Quin is of this same vein of thought and planning because our last guy ABSOLUTELY wasn't. Case in point, drafting a TE 10th after the entire league has had years to move to bigger CBs and faster LBs to cover those TEs. Mayillen was a shameless copycat as is most of the league. He had the vision of a newt and the foresight of a six week old puppy.

So, let us hope that Quin is a Bilichickian leader instead of a Mayillen copycat. Of course, he is limited because he has a head coach with the creativity of said newt but that won't last too long. If Caldwell is still coach of the Detroit Lions after this coming season, I am going to be pissed, astounded and perplexed. I will also be highly skeptical of Quin. (ok, I am already highly skeptical of Quin....)