I've been looking a little bit more about how the Packers and Mike Pettine run their defense, as the DC Patrick Graham was their run-game coordinator last year, and I think there is an interesting kind of synergy there between the Patriots style that Brian Flores(as well as others) have. I think some of what Mike Pettine has done with the Packers might be more "doable" for the Dolphins in the short-term: The common base is a pretty normal 3-4(which the Patriots don't really use anymore). They're usually in a condensed front- often in a Bear front with two 3-techniques and an NT, but they often shift it to one direction or the other, to where you might see the DE 2-gap over the Center, and the NT and other DE shifted tight to the other side. This one has a DE 2-gap to help compensate for the unbalanced formation, and everyone else slide that way. They'll pretty commonly carry those principles over to Nickel, where they will stick with three interior linemen(who are pretty consistently true interior players, including an NT). Here you've got the normal "Bear" front. It's got a little bit less flexibility than the Patriots Diamond and Ruby fronts- they aren't as free to shift into a normal 4-2 style Nickel because they're usually presenting three interior linemen, because they don't really have the Trey Flowers who can play inside or outside of the Tackle- but either way they similarly like the one-ILB looks, and they like the guy freed up from having a gap to flow to the ball. They also lose a little bit of the flexibility by having their ILB and OLBs not all being capable coverage guys- you can see the ILB have to cheat over to not lose leverage on Frank Gore being off-set. The Patriots don't really worry so much about that, as if Gore were to leak over into the left side the OLB could take him and the ILB and/or OLB would be free to rush, or the like. Here's the 3-3 Bear with a bit of that shift stuff: The interior guys are shifted towards the strong side, with a 5-technique, the NT 2-gapping the Guard, and the DE playing all the way over at a 1-technique. They also run a bunch of normal 4-2 Nickel or 4-2 Dime looking fronts: Here they're running a Dime with Josh Jones subbed as an LB, and the NT out on the field 2-gapping in front of him to facilitate him being in that position. The edge guys are usually in 2-point stances, but sometimes you'll see a DE out there. I think they lost kind of a little bit of the flexibility with Muhammed Wilkerson going out early. I think the key point is Patrick Graham has a bit of experience in a defense that is similar in some very broad strokes to the Patriots stuff that they'll probably *want* to run, but might not have all the pieces to run. As a result, I think we'll see a lot of this stuff leak into 2019 at very least- because it requires less specialized parts.
