Defending the Spread

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Permalink Reply by John Boris on June 19, 2009 at 12:55pm

I have thought about this as we are a spread team and we try to get people into the defense that suits us best. Mainly we look for a 4 - 2 box arrangement which is like your 4-6 maybe, not seeing the alingment I couldn't say. But back to your question you have to have an automatic in place that will allow you to shift into a better coverage. When you say spread you mean at least two wide outs and I mean wide to the numbers. Also at least one slot receiver. The spread forces you to man up so if you wer in a 4-6 your two OLBs will have to cover the slots or wide outs. If they go 4 wide then you have to cover the wide outs. If you play off too much they will throw underneath or run underneath. If they get you in the 4-2 box look they will run at you with zone, counter trey, blast and ISO.

You have to be disciplined no matter what defense you are in. You will get hurt if you get caught in a blitz where it leaves you vulnerable at a certain point of attack and they guessed right.

So I would setup that automatic call to go to. If you have the luxury of film you can pick up what the offense is trying to do so you can adjust a 4 - 6 or 4 - 2.

We ran a 5-2 with a monster against spread teams. The DL plays at the feet of the OL. The monster (rover) is the x factor and is either blitzing or playing the strong side. The defense is designed to contain you and string out any outside play. The OL plays gap control and puts on a good pass rush if they read pass. DL & LB read run first and DBS read pass first. We did a lot of cover 2 with man locked on underneath. The other key to the defense was pursuit. We played a team that was no huddle-spread. They loved to run screen pass and slants. This defense took that away from them and we ended up beating them.

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Permalink Reply by Coach Will on June 24, 2009 at 12:10am

Thanks, that was very helpful. I play a SS about two yards of of the LB and on the strong side. Usually the SS is my automatic. if I call a cover two, on command the SS drops with the FS and the LB's shift accordingly to fill the spot where the SS just left. So we go from a 4-4 look to a 4-3 cover 2 in 1 sec. I was thinking of when faced in a 3 or 4 wide situation, either the OLB's jam the slots and play curls and flats leaving the safties to pick up the receivers after the jam or a real twist, bring up the safties to cover slots and drop the OLB's to a mid level zone to back up DB's. What do you think?

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Permalink Reply by John Boris on June 24, 2009 at 3:30pm

That sounds like one way to do it. Another thing you could do is walk out your D End to one side and have him cover while the SS takes over for that D End. We did that with our rover taking the D ends responsibility. But again that was based on situation and what stunt package was on. When a team goes 4 wide they are forcing you to cover the wide outs and get you to have six in the box so they can run at you. Also they are trying to ge the mismatch. We will usually look for the weakest D Back and try to match our best receiver against that D back which in a 4 wide setup you can do.

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