If there's one thing Bill Belichick enjoys, it's keeping people guessing. So Adrian Phillips' comments on what the Patriots' defense will look like in 2022 should come as no surprise.
“The more we can do as a defense as a whole, it just makes the whole scheme a whole lot better,” Phillips said when asked about the versatility of the team's defensive back room. “You don’t know what I’ll be doing on a certain play.
“You don’t know what [Devin McCourty], [Jonathan] Jones, or any other guys will be doing on certain plays. Just being able to be that fluid and interchange stuff is great and that’s what we need to keep working toward.”
Phillips, like several other players, refer to themselves frequently as "defensive backs" rather than whatever position they primarily play. That's not just idle talk: aside from Devin McCourty, who now almost exclusively lines up as a deep safety (though he started out as a cornerback), you never quite know where you'll find guys like Phillips, Jones, or Kyle Dugger on a given snap.
They could line up as deep safeties alongside McCourty. They might be box safeties or line up as extra linebackers. They might be in the slot with a linebacker or big slot receiver.
Last year, the Patriots put the versatility of its secondary to good use as it transitioned between man coverage and more deceptive zone schemes, rotating its safeties constantly and tasking them with covering more ground in the passing game.
Belichick might be about to ask his team to do so again in 2022.
Take this March tweet from Jonathan Jones as another hint: "Positionless football is the future."
That might be what newly returned cornerback Malcolm Butler was referencing when he talked about minor "tweaks" to a Patriots defensive scheme that otherwise hasn't changed much since the former Super Bowl hero was last here.
After all, last year showed they had the capability and framework to switch between heavily playing man and zone coverage from week to week without much issue (though they still played man-to-man the majority of the time). So alternating between man and zone or employing one more heavily than another doesn't necessarily imply a grand scheme change; it just means the Patriots deemed a certain set of plays more likely to produce a win on a given week.
But the lack of elite man-cover corners, a relatively uninspiring linebacker room (on paper, anyway), and the safety room being arguably the best position group on the team, perhaps that's where the change comes. Using more "big nickel" sets with three safeties or even going fully "linebacker-less" and putting seven defensive backs on the field more often feels like a distinct possibility with all the speed New England will face this season.
Executing those personnel groups would give the Patriots a better chance to match the skill positions of Miami and Buffalo while also allowing the team to get creative with blitz packages. Of course, if New England can consistently get home with four linemen, sitting in zone and playing mind games with quarterbacks becomes a more available option.
Right now, the Patriots are still a ways away from unveiling this "position-less" defense properly. Don't forget, too, that Peppers is still recovering from the ACL tear that knocked him out of action last year.
But make no mistake: Belichick has been laying the groundwork for this shift for two seasons with the way he's been using both Phillips and Dugger. Now, with Peppers and newcomers like Jack Jones in the mix and the rest of the AFC East gearing up in their offensive arms race, he might be ready to go all-in.