If you listen to Bill Belichick tell it, the Patriots' heavy use of outside zone plays so far at training camp is more coincidence than a true tell of the unit's intentions.
"Just happened to work out the sequence that we put in the zone runs first, but we've put in plenty of gap plays and we'll run those, too," he said before practice.
Of course, the significant use of Sean McVay-style concepts like tight splits for wide receivers and frequent zone plays to the outside rather than the gap and power concepts we're used to still feels notable because of how little New England has used them in recent years.
Wednesday was more of the same: outside zone after outside zone, followed by a couple inside zones, when the team repped running plays in shoulder pads. (For more on practice, check out the latest recap episode of "1st and Foxborough.")
But the team's play-action plans featured a more traditional Patriots concepts, specifically "duo," which similarly uses double teams to attack defenses so in a more downhill fashion than a horizontal one. If outside zone is the fastball of the McVay offense, "duo" functions like the changeup.
Not surprisingly, the Patriots' offense looked more comfortable running those types of run fakes than the ones they attempted Tuesday, which generally resulted in plays getting blown up.
That wasn't all, though.
New England is also working in curveball concepts like split zone runs and play-action -- bringing a blocker across the formation to handle an edge defender and occasionally having that player leak out into the flat for an easy catch -- and the types of run-pass options (RPOs) Jones heavily relied on during his time at Alabama. (Note: we're not talking about read-option, which involves quarterbacks running the ball. This is basically just quick play-action.)
Therein lies the silver lining that could emerge as this team tries to figure out its offensive identity: there's just so much material to draw from.
At the very least, having a vast variety of plays at their disposal will give teams more to think about, especially if the Patriots have more balance in their zone vs. gap running ratio as opposed to being inordinately heavy at one or the other. If you're going to have a skill group that is more "good" than "great," being good at lots of things is better than only having one trick in the bag.
It also allows New England to see which of those things it does well and either eliminate things it can't run at all or tighten them up, which the offense spent most of Wednesday doing with some slightly more positive results.
Somewhere in there, the Patriots should be able to find a few things that work and then build on that as they find out who they are in these post-Josh McDaniels days.
