The Pats have an insane amount of passing plays at their disposal
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We know Bill Belichick is so detail oriented and wants his teams to be ready for anything, but this crazy.
According to Tom Brady, the Patriots have up to 1,000 passing plays at their disposal.
"I would say there’s a pretty core group of plays that you have," Brady said, "but we have, I don’t know the numbers, but there’s over the course a season, pass plays, there’s probably anywhere from 500 to 1,000 that are designed and you’ll probably call 500-600 of them, and there will be repeats within that.
"There’s definitely repeats. But we change quite a bit week to week. I think that’s why you need really smart players on our offense to be able to adapt to the changes that we make based on the matchups that we see, or the coverages that we’re going to face, or how the team has played us in the past."
That's just ridiculous. Do the Patriots hire someone to just create plays in Madden and see if they work? It's either that or Belichick is more of a nut than I thought. I really wonder how many team's playbooks are as expansive as the Pats'.
There is, however, a bit a copycat nature to how many plays the Patriots employ each year. Brady praised his coaching staff for studying what other team's do and implementing it into what New England does.
He outlined a play that the Chiefs ran with Kareem Hunt in Week 1, and then said they ran the same type of play to James White last week against New Orleans.
"We have a big plan at the start of the week, and we kind of narrow it down over the course of the week, and then by the time we get to game day we’re really confident in the things that we’re calling," Brady said. "Like the play I threw to James, the Chiefs did run that, that was the touchdown play that they had to Kareem Hunt, that long one where they got behind the defense.
"But you see different things over the course of the league. Our coaches do a great job studying -- things that are working, things that are confusing. It was a little different variation of what the Chiefs did, but similar action, and we got some confusion on the defense and they really missed James coming out of the backfield. Had I not thrown it to James, I had Dion Lewis over near the sideline and no one was on him either. It’s just a really good play and perfect call at the perfect time."
This is one of the many things that have made the Patriots so great over the years. They have their own ideas, but they can also take things other people do and perfect them. It speaks to the genius of Belichick and his coaching staff, and it speaks to the level at which the players execute. Not everything is perfect (thanks, Chiefs), but very few things in life are.
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