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Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. Today's Friday, December 3rd. I'm Robert Mays. Great show for you guys today. Shook Potty is going to be joining us a little bit later for our weekly pick segment. We're going to dig into the Friday 5 today. We pick five topics, questions, big things heading into the week. We're going to chat a little Washington offense.

We're going to dig into the RPO world.

The dolphins are living in.

Talk about Nate dumping on the charters in a way that was unfair on Sunday's show,

a little mea culpaw from both of us. And we are going to talk about just how bad the Jaguars are failing Trevor Lawrence.

Before we do any of that, I want to talk about the New England Patriots and how they have

built an absolute bully on defense this season.

You look at it, they're playing the bills this weekend, Nate, on a Monday night in a huge

game.

They are first in a weighted defensive DVOA. This is a time as a flat circle sort of situation with Belichick just building another monster on that side of the ball. As you've watched the last couple of Patriots games, as you've dug into the tape of the game they had against the Titans last week, what has jumped out to you about the way that the pads are playing right now? It's like Belichick got his guys and he's unleashing him. And we think of Belichick is the,

you know, a bit of a DB guru. Like he really is. It's like he can get undrafted corners playing

like defensive player to the year of candidates. And but honestly, he's always had a type up front.

He likes big thumpers. It's like I'm D-line and linebackers and watching this team play right now when they get these three, four sets and

just how they like playing the Titans was perfect, but it was a great little snapshot. We watched

him play the Saints before this year. We watched them or earlier in this year. We watched

play the Cowboys. We focus on those types of games. We've taken a look at their offense a lot. But watching this defense is kind of, it's kind of a nice scene, a little familiarity. Like, you know, kind of seeing like, hey, this is a little old school right now. And seeing like that kind of like crop up a little bit. Like they're in like an old school three, four fronts where it's a head up nose and they have their D ends lined up over the tackles either either head up on right and even wider sometimes. They're in five texts. Yeah, I know. And that's old school. When you break down like as a quality control guy, you break down defensive fronts, break down coverages and everything of opponents. And there's just ways to tag everything.

So you say like three, four odd, which is just, if you're thinking of a three four front, those guys are four eye, which is inside the tackles. If they're in a three tech and they're covering the guards, it's bare. But then there's another adjustment, which is three, four, five, which is three, four, with five techs. And you don't see that much. I think about two years doing it with the Raiders.

I marked down two plays in two years where I saw that.

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