Bill Belichick was caught off-guard by the Dolphins’ Wildcat offensive formation in September.

journal / Glenn Osmundson

Last time, it took them by surprise.

This time, the New England Patriots’ defense better be prepared for the Wildcat, or the Miami Dolphins will be running all over the field with it once again.

In stunning the Patriots, 38-13, in Foxboro on Sept. 21, Miami unveiled the Wildcat, an offensive package in which quarterback Chad Pennington split out wide and running back Ronnie Brown took the snap from center, keeping the ball, handing it off to fellow back Ricky Williams or passing.

Brown scored four touchdowns and passed for another on the afternoon, and New England looked like it was scrambling to catch up the whole time.

“When you look back at the film, I think they did a good job of coming in with a scheme that nobody had really seen or prepared for and they caught us a little bit,” New England defensive coordinator Dean Pees said via conference call yesterday. “I give (them) a lot of credit to do that, and obviously it’s been a problem for a lot of teams that they played after us that did have a chance to look at it, so it’s a good scheme.”

The Dolphins have used the Wildcat in each game since, so coach Tony Sparano knows it won’t catch the Pats off-guard this time.

“There’s not the element of surprise, but there hasn’t been an element of surprise with the Wildcat since we played the Patriots, honestly,” Sparano said. “When you’re playing your division teams and you’re playing them the second time, there really are no secrets. You do what you do, and they know it and we’re sitting here and it’s Week 12; there are very few secrets.”

But Bill Belichick is not going to be fooled.

“They have pretty much changed something every week,” with the Wildcat, Belichick said. “They do something different off of it each week, either change the formation (or) add a play or two. They run it out of different personnel groups, so they have done a great job changing it up, making it hard to defend, getting the ball to players who can make plays.”

With Pennington split out wide, he becomes a target for defensive players, and Belichick was asked if it’s worth it to try and rough him up a little bit as a way of dissuading the Dolphins from putting him in harm’s way.

But Belichick doesn’t think it’s worth it.

“You are just playing with one less guy if you do that. You really can get the player who is in that vicinity [of Pennington], you could really get him involved in the play and play 11 against 10,” Belichick said. “If you want to take that player out of there and go hit Pennington you could do that, but I think most teams have tried to play that extra play rather than give one up. A couple of teams have gone up and pushed him around a little, but like I said, you are just giving up one for one on a guy that probably can’t make a block out there.”

New wrinkles, new plays, new formations mean that New England’s scout team will have to work even harder than usual to give the defense the best look possible.

“It is always important, and certainly it will be important this week,” Belichick said. “But whatever plays the other team is running, whether it be runs, passes, blitzes, stunts, zone coverages or man coverages, the better look you get at it in practice, then the better prepared they will be on Sunday to do that.”

smanza@projo.com