The Copycat League That Can't Copy The Patriots

It's almost an annual rite for pigskin pundits and bobbleheads.

Why don't other NFL teams do what the Patriots do?

Despite being too old, too slow, with no playmakers and no defense, they just keep winning. Tom Brady is a system quarterback who dinks and dunks and checks down to his running backs. Blake Bortles can't do that? Okay, bad example. Anyway. With all the videotape and advanced analytics available to NFL teams, the modern nutritional programs, training techniques and sleep technologies, how is it no other NFL franchise has figured the Patriots out?

The Patriots lost 5 games this year and that was considered a down year for a franchise that wins at an outrageous 75% success rate since Bill Belichick became head coach.

How is it so rare the Patriots are punked by their competition?

Maybe it is as simple as (1) Bill Belichick is a pigskin genius and (1a) Tom Brady is the GOAT and (2) that's all you need.

If that's the case and you're a fan of one of the Other 31 then I guess you'll just have to count the days until Brady's 45th birthday. While I subscribe to the notion that Belichick and Brady are two of the best to ever do what they do, it isn't like New England is undefeated since 2001 or has a 18-0 record in Super Bowls. They're human. They can be beaten. They do win a lot, though, and if I was the owner or GM of one of the Other 31, figuring out how New England does what it does and following that blueprint - call me crazy - would seem like a worthwhile effort.

To be fair, the Texans, Titans, Lions, and now the Dolphins are at least making the effort in hiring former Belichick coaches as their head coaches. The Falcons, Buccaneers, and Lions (again) have GMs who worked for Belichick. So far, though, the Belichick Coaching Tree hasn't resulted in similar success and we're not expecting a Lions-Titans matchup in Super Bowl LIV, are we?

So, what is it that makes it so difficult for this famously copycat league to copy the Patriots?

Is it, in fact, really all that difficult?

Let's start with the one aspect of the Patriots Way that simply baffles me in terms of how it remains an advantage in big games: strength and conditioning.

There is absolutely no reason why other teams in the league can't train as hard as the Patriots do. The CBA establishes the guidelines and limits for practices and contact so you would expect this to provide a plumb perfect level playing field, at least in this aspect of game preparation. Yet time and time again, we've seen the Patriots still playing hard, still fresh in the 4th quarter while their opponents are obviously gassed.

We saw it in SB51. The Patriots ran 93 plays to the Falcons 46 and owned nearly a 2:1 advantage in time of possession. New England's offense should have been every bit as exhausted as Atlanta's defense. Should have, perhaps, but they weren't.

We saw it in the overtime drive of the AFCCG in Kansas City. Chiefs defensive linemen were just catching blocks in that final drive; their body language providing a clear indication of the inevitability of their impending defeat.

It wasn't quite so obvious in this Super Bowl but the Rams defense got hands on hips worn down by the Patriots offense. Even after Stephon Gilmore's interception it was still 10-3 with New England on their own 3-yard line. Los Angeles makes a stop there and Ryan Allen would be punting out of his own end zone. The game still hung in the balance. Then Sony Michel and Rex Burkhead gashed the tiring Rams defense with a pair of 26-yard rushes, running through gaping holes opened by an offensive line and fullback James Develin still imposing its will, winning the line of scrimmage, in a drive that led to Stephen Gostkowski's second and game-sealing FG to make it 13-3.

Any team on any given Sunday can get outplayed but getting outworked? That shouldn't happen. Ever. It's an easy fix and it's at the top of my list...

How To Copy The Patriots

1. Be the better conditioned team on the field.

Next up is something you hear from the Patriots coaches and staff on a regular basis, though most often during free agency as Patriots Nation clamors for Belichick to sign a big name talent or after Belichick uses a second round pick on a safety Mel Kiper, Jr. never heard of.

We're not acquiring talent, we're building a team.

I subscribe to the belief that the difference in the level of raw athletic talent from team to team in the NFL is so small as to be insignificant. Year to year, a few teams may find themselves with sufficient cap space to go "all in" and sign or trade for very talented players. (I'm looking at you, Los Angeles Rams.) On the whole and accepting these variances year over year, I would still maintain the difference in talent between, let's say, the Saints and the Cardinals, for example (and this may seem counterintuitive given the regular season results), isn't worth discussing. (I'll give you Drew Brees over Josh Rosen but is that about athleticism and arm strength or experience?) Now, it isn't like the Patriots are avoiding talent; they're looking for talent that fits their approach to playing football. They don't have "planet players" like a Julio Jones or an Ezekiel Elliott (or Todd Gurley) or Von Miller or Khalil Mack (or Aaron Donald); instead they have a deep and diverse group of "elite football players" (as Kyle Van Noy put it) at wide receiver, in the defensive backfield, at running back, linebacker, and across both sides of the line of scrimmage.

There are a couple of points here.

One is that you'd better know who you are if you're going to find "elite football players" who will help you build a team.

Belichick famously has detailed profiles describing the ideal player at each position on the team and it isn't simply a litany of height, weight, 3-cone and 40-yard dash time measurables (though it does include that); it specifies mental capabilities, accountability, leadership, toughness, commitment to the game, willingness to sacrifice for the team, and so on. This is why Belichick and his staff have been able to pluck "busts," malcontents, and washed up veterans from other teams and "transform" them into key contributors on the Patriots. Wes Welker, Dion Lewis, Rodney Harrison, Mike Vrabel, Rob Ninkovich, Kyle Van Noy, James Develin, Danny Amendola, Corey Dillon, and Randy Moss - to name just a few - were all somebody else's trash when the Patriots added them to their roster.

These are also market efficiencies that Belichick mines. Detroit was happy to give up Van Noy for a swap of 6th and 7th rounders. Belichick gave up a 4th round pick for Randy Moss. A 4th round pick! I saw a clip from a post-Super Bowl "Good Morning Football" where (I think it was) Kyle Brandt exhorted the GM's of the Other 31 to not trade with Belichick. Ever. Again. Don't do it! He knows your roster better than you do! He's not wrong.

The second point is that depth matters.

Injuries are a fact of life in the NFL. An injury to a superstar can cripple a team that had too little cap space for a backup after paying that superstar Top 5 money. When that star player suffers a torn ACL, the season may well hang in the balance. Losing Julian Edelman in 2017 hurt, as did losing Dont'a Hightower and yet, the Patriots still made it to the Super Bowl. When the Falcons lost Julio Jones in 2013 they fell to 4-12 following a year with Jones in 2012 that ended with a 13-3-0 record. Obviously, a lot more that goes into that as the Falcons weren't much better the next year with Jones back on the field; my bad for ever using the Falcons as a metaphor for anything other than tragedy. Besides, I really only need two words when it comes to the importance of depth: Matt Cassel.

Let's update the list…

How To Copy The Patriots

1. Be the better conditioned team on the field.
2. Know thyself (strengths and weaknesses) and know thy enemy.
3. Depth matters.

One more before we get to the hard stuff.

Know the rules of the game you play.

It never ceases to amaze me at how little NFL players - and coaches - know the NFL rulebook. How is that even a thing? I understand NFL players probably aren't spending their spare time on the couch with Thomas Pynchon but you're telling me NFL teams can't afford to hire someone who can read and provide a presentation with video clips explaining the rules to their players?

You will have to keep up, though, as the NFL likes to eliminate any rules the Patriots have used to their advantage (like the no longer legal "ineligible eligible" formation from the 2014 AFCCG against the Ravens). You can expect the overtime rules to change if the Patriots win the toss and the game on a TD one more time. Especially if it deprives pigskin pundits and bobbleheads from their chance to see Patrick Mahomes II have a chance to touch the ball in OT; to make a no-look, behind-the-back, on-the-run, 50-yard touchdown pass to Travis Kelce for the win.

But I digress. Anyway...

Reading is fundamental. Again, simple stuff. Anyone can do this.

How To Copy The Patriots

1. Be the better conditioned team on the field.
2. Know thyself (strengths and weaknesses) and know thy enemy.
3. Depth matters.
4. Know the rules of the game.

Alrighty then. That's the easy stuff. Why every one of the Other 31 aren't adopting a more disciplined approach to training their athletes, understanding the personas involved in the game, managing the salary cap, and studying how the rules of the game may provide them with tactical leverage in game situations is beyond me.

Now for some of the hard stuff…

I recall Belichick was once asked to describe the ideal football player and he answered...

Big, smart, fast.

The Patriots are not the most athletically talented team in the NFL but they are the smartest. And as noted above, they are hardly bereft of talented athletes but I would give the edge to a number of other NFL rosters over New England on pure, god-given talent. It's the intelligence of the players on the Patriots that gives them a decided edge on the field. Jason McCourty isn't the fastest player in the NFL but his recognition of what was happening on the field made it possible for him to cover those 20 yards in time and break up the almost TD pass to Brandin Cooks.

The intelligence of the Patriots players is the key to their ability to morph seamlessly from zone to man coverage, from three-man fronts to four-, five-, and six-man fronts, from a power running game to a spread passing attack, and do it from game to game, from half to half or even play to play.

Most teams in the NFL have an offensive philosophy and a defensive philosophy. Their coaches will say they want to be balanced on offense but even in that case, they have tendencies for their run game and their passing game. They believe in their respective systems and they're confident that if they play their game and play it well, they will win. There are plenty of teams that have had success with this model, but it isn't the model used by Belichick in New England.

Belichick and his coaches see the game as a series of situations - 2nd and short, 3rd and long, etc., with considerations for field position, field conditions, time remaining - and seek out advantageous matchups within those scenarios given the opponent they're facing on that given Sunday. Game plans change week-to-week and the players are expected to handle new assignments and do their job well even if it's completely different from what they were asked to do the week before.

How many times have we heard a professional athlete complain that coaches aren't using them right, that their talents aren't being maximized? Patriots coaches ask their players to sacrifice for the team every week but they also put their players in situations where they can excel and win.  

Maybe you're thinking finding smart football players isn't that hard. Don't forget that really smart people are outliers. In the great bell curve of life, half of us are on that dumb side of the curve. Even if you're in the half of us on the smart side of the curve, you're probably sitting somewhere closer to the top of the great waterslide of life than the narrow end of the smart side of the curve and the cool waters below where Tom Brady is chilling.

So draft captains, draft players from schools that actually have academic standards, pay attention to Wonderlic scores, refuse to tolerate "repeat offenders" who cannot correct errors, and understand that mental toughness may actually be more important than physical toughness.

How To Copy The Patriots

1. Be the better conditioned team on the field.
2. Know thyself (strengths and weaknesses) and know thy enemy.
3. Depth matters.
4. Know the rules of the game.
5. Smart beats stupid.

Football is still the ultimate team sport. If there's a single core belief to Belichick's approach to football, it's this: 11 beats 3.

When Belichick is at the "Belestrator" on Patriots Weekly breaking down a play, he will touch on the contributions of every player on the field; it isn't just about the throw and the catch, it's about the offensive line blocking up front, it's about the receiver who didn't catch the ball but carried the safety up the seam, it's about the running back who picked up the blitzing linebacker. It's about how the defensive lineman opened a gap that allowed a blitzing linebacker to bring the pressure that led to an interception.

It's about what all 11 players do.

Your team may have those classic triplets on offense but if the offensive line can't hold up and your WR2 can't get open, your team is playing 3 on 11. If your quarterback is Aaron Rodgers maybe you win some of those 3 on 11 games but those are hardly ideal odds, even with a rare talent like Rodgers under center.

And if you're team is star-oriented, you are now susceptible to the oldest trick in Belichick's own personal pigskin Book of the Dead: Taking away your best player to facilitate your journey to the afterlife.

Belichick will force his opponent to play left-handed (unless they're already left-handed in which case he will make them play right-handed); to rely on their second best option, on players who aren't used to carrying the load. Taking away the K in the K-Gun offense of the Bills, and taking away Marshall Faulk against the St. Louis Rams are classic examples but Belichick is still doing it today. The Patriots defense controlled Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce in the AFCCG in Kansas City and eliminated the Los Angeles Rams running game (and with it their deadly play-action passing game) in SB53.

How To Copy The Patriots

1. Be the better conditioned team on the field.
2. Know thyself (strengths and weaknesses) and know thy enemy.
3. Depth matters.
4. Know the rules of the game.
5. Smart beats stupid.
6. 11 > 3.

One final difficulty in copying the Patriots: The Clutch Factor.

Now, intellectually, I recognize that "clutch" is essentially a small data sample. The notion that some athletes have a "clutch gene" is objectively ridiculous and yet, I know what I see when I see it.

Bill Belichick is all about that action. He's about winning.

He's about winning Super Bowls.

He looks for players who have proven they can play and play well in big games. While much has been made of Tom Brady's checkered college career at Michigan, it's worth noting how he performed against Ohio State and in the Orange Bowl. Looking for the next Tom Brady? Find a kid who came up big in rivalry and bowl games. (This list, now a year old, is a lot of fun: Ranking History's Most Clutch Quarterbacks. Any list with Y.A. Tittle on it is worth your time.) Coming back from a 10-point deficit in the 4th quarter against the best defense in the NFL is clutch. Coming back from 28-3 in the middle of the 3rd quarter to tie the game with back-to-back 8-point touchdowns in regulation and then win it in OT is clutch. Leading a game-winning drive after playing like crap for three quarters is the very definition of clutch. With Brady, after 9 Super Bowls with 6 wins, I'm not so sure the "small data sample" argument applies.

The delightfully entertaining if moot discussion of Julian Edelman's chances for a bust in Canton is all about clutch. Regular Season Dont'a Hightower is good but he wasn't mentioned in any discussion for Defensive Player of the Year and yet Super Bowl Dont'a Hightower is a play-making superstar.

Want to be unceremoniously cut from the Patriots? Drop an easy interception in the Super Bowl. (Yes, I'm looking at you Asante Samuel, and yes, I'm still bitter. Let's move on.)

Quick Aside: This reminds me of another one of Belichick's strengths which his ability to recognize his own mistakes, correct them, and move on. You don't hold onto a 1st round pick hoping that he'll finally get it in his third year. Trade or release him. That roster spot is too precious to be wasted on hope.

How To Copy The Patriots

1. Be the better conditioned team on the field.
2. Know thyself (strengths and weaknesses) and know thy enemy.
3. Depth matters.
4. Know the rules of the game.
5. Smart beats stupid.
6. 11 > 3.
7. Clutch is real.
8. Acknowledge mistakes, then correct them immediately.

Trends matter.

You need to recognize them, then take advantage of them. When everyone in the league was playing a 4-3 defense, Belichick played 3-4, reasoning that he would have his pick of nose tackles like Patriots legend Vince Wilfork to anchor that defense, not to mention giving opposing offenses a look they weren't used to seeing on Sundays. When the league noticed Belichick's success with the 3-4 and more teams began to adopt it as their base defense, Belichick moved to more 4-3 concepts. The league goes pass-wacky? Belichick anticipates it and drafts a running back in the 1st round and puts a power-I running game on the field, steamrolling the smaller, quicker defensive linemen that were put on the field to rush the passer.

2018: Fullback is the new Nose Tackle.

Game to game, these same principles apply. New England went into SB53 wit a reputation as a man-to-man defensive team. Going man-to-man seemed to transform the defense during the regular season. The more they played man-to-man the better they seemed to play. The defensive backfield gave the front seven leverage. They were getting after and pressuring opposing quarterbacks even if they weren't racking up sacks. So what do they do in the Super Bowl? Switch things up and play zone; quarters, Tampa Two, while still mixing in just enough man coverage to keep Sean McVay and Jared Goff guessing. They played a six-man front I don't remember seeing at all during the regular season. They ran twists and blitzed and sacked Goff four times.

It was brilliant, of course, not simply because it was different or broke tendencies the Rams may have scouted but because it was designed specifically to take away the strengths of the Rams offense. The Patriots were obviously zagging when they were expected to zig.

How To Copy The Patriots

1. Be the better conditioned team on the field.
2. Know thyself (strengths and weaknesses).
3. Depth matters.
4. Know the rules of the game.
5. Smart beats stupid.
6. 11> 3.
7. Clutch is real.
8. Acknowledge mistakes, then correct them immediately.
9. When the league zigs, you zag.

Remember, the NFL is doing everything it can to create parity (through the draft, the schedule, the salary cap, unwarranted suspensions) so victory has to be found in the narrowest of margins. If you're shrugging off Belichick's devotion to left-footed punters and the slightest of advantages that provides, you're playing to lose.