It’s not breaking any new ground to suggest that the NFL has historically been a “copycat league.”
Big, strong-armed quarterbacks were long the norm across the Shield’s landscape, and smaller, mobile quarterbacks were many times relegated to making a decision between a position change or a passport to Canada. Physical offensive lines became vogue for a period of time, before giving way to more athletic lines that could pull and react to a wave of pass rushers who relied on bend, rage and speed following the emergence of Lawrence Taylor and Derrick Thomas.
The West Coast offense crafted by Paul Brown and Bill Walsh has been adapted and morphed over the years to fit whatever age the NFL happened be in at any given time, and we’ve seen team after team trying to emulate “The Patriot Way,” even though they were missing two fairly important ingredients — the Patriots quarterback and coach.