Transcription
All right, offensive coordinators, welcome back to the channel. Today, we're going to do a little bit different here. We're not looking at any offensive concepts. We're going to take a look at the other side of the ball. We're going to look at the defense and find out what they want to do to try and stop us.
So, there's a ton of different things they can do structurally, right? The way that they line up, their fronts, and also some things with the coverage. Today, we're going to really dive into the fronts, okay? And then also a little bit of the coverage that they can kind of pair with that. But if we want to be able to defeat the defense, we have to understand what they're doing to try and stop us. So, let's go ahead and get into it.
All right, so here we go. We're going to start with the over front. This is from a two by two formation from the offensive side of the ball. So, what they're doing, the over front really is essentially taking this three technique. This is a four-man front. One, two, three, four. It can do a four-three, four-two, four-one, doesn't really matter how they set that up. But the over front, okay, over front has this three tech here to the strength. And if things are balanced like this two by two, they can just put this guy to the field, right? And then the benefit of doing this, why would you set this up as a, as a defense here? Well, think about the gap responsibilities. He's going to take C gap. He's the A. He's taking C. And then this guy can leap back into the B gap, but also be able to play any RPO, play the bubble out here from the number two receiver. If he had to take the A gap, it's just a little bit further, right? Maybe he has to cheat his alignment in, okay? If he's not the fastest guy, they have to cheat his alignment in, right? That's what you would do in an under front. Okay, we'll get into an under front in a second. But essentially, here's the under front. We have the, we have the nose here, this tackle here, and then he would have to take the A gap, right? He'd have to take the A gap. So the over versus a two by two in this spread offense that most teams run nowadays is a really good way, uh, to handle this from a two by two set. Okay, he's going to be taking A gap as well. And then the other benefit to this is that they can completely remove this guy from the box. Think about gap responsibilities. Everybody has to have one. So you can have your safety take any support, right? He can be a, he can be a support player. So we got C, B. He'll take A. He'll take A. He's C. He's going to take B. Throwing it wrong. Okay, he'll take B here. And then he does not have to have any run gap responsibility. So he can play pass first, right? That's a huge benefit. Now, any RPOs, you know, if we want to run a bubble here, it's going to be useless, right? He's going to just play this 100% of the time. And if, let's say we're going to run inside zone to the left, okay, this is what a common thing is. We're going to run inside zone with a bubble, right? Everybody's blocking. So let's say we want to help backside. We get this double team here, okay? We read this defensive end. We're running the inside zone. He ends up crashing. Now we pull. We're not going to be able to throw the bubble because he's just gonna widen out and take this bubble. And then they'll have this guy come down and play QB, right? So this is, this is how they can, they can set this up. Make him the dive player and him the pitch player, right? And essentially, it's just that the QB is going to be playing that role here, okay?
So, what offenses can normally do in this situation? Instead of running this to the boundary, okay, away from running the ball away from this, uh, this nickel here, you can run it to that guy, right? You can run it to this guy, and then you actually put someone in a bind, okay? So now he's got two different responsibilities here, okay? That's the person that we want to pick on, uh, in this, in this situation. Now, what they could do is, is bump this guy in, take away his pass responsibility, shift down into a one-high safety look, and now they can play, right, a normal three-deep, four-underneath type of, type of play. And essentially, now they have a six-man box. We only have five blocking. So they're going to be able to play any run play with good numbers and have the advantage, and also take away the RPO. Okay, RPO is really not that effective versus a one-high safety look, okay? So that's one way that they can kind of, uh, defeat that. But if they end up doing that, right, let's say they, they go with that method.
All right, so we're here. Anytime you get a one-high safety look, the flats and the seams, that's really what we want to target here, okay? Because they're going to have a safety covering the middle of the field. They've got this, these are all covered here, and they've got essentially, I mean, he'll be a flat defender. But anytime you have number two release vertical here, he's got to take it, right? Same thing on the backside. If he releases vertical, weak side safety playing the flats is going to have to take that before he jumps and gets to the inside hip here, playing the out or the hitch or whatever it is that you have down there.
All right, so now we're going to move into an under front. Okay, notice I put this not as a two by two anymore. Now we have a three by one. A lot of times teams will play a, with a three by one, a lot of times they'll play an under front, okay? Because look at what it does in terms of gap responsibilities here. What we have is we have now he's going to be taking A. So he's here and here. We take A. Everybody's covered here. He can bump back into this B gap here, okay? And then they have the ability to have this guy come down here and play. Again, they can keep him out of the box, not having a wrong responsibility, and then on the backside, they can have a two, uh, kind of a little bracket here, whatever you want to do here. It could be, it could be a cloud type of look, it could be a cover two type of look, it could be cover four. And essentially, because he has nobody here, and maybe, maybe this guy is not too much of a threat vertical, you know, if it is, a lot of times this weak safety will take three vertical. But if they're not planning on him attacking vertical, then they could jump this guy back down into the box and just kind of have a little bit of a, either an inverted two or just a cover four where they just have this, uh, they just, sorry, the mic will end up taking three vertical here, and weak side safe can be really good, a nice bracket on this backside single receiver if they want to do that, right? And then gap responsibilities. Okay, we're here, here, here. All right, we're able to take this. It will take this. He can fold in here. He's not having a run gap responsibility. He's just an extra defender on the outside. Same thing, right, in here, okay? So this is a, this is a really good way to, to play a three by one look. A lot of teams will, will go with this option, okay?
Now, the, the thing that you end up with, imagine this guy is no longer as a tighter look. Let's say he's a receiver, he's out here. The, the game, you know, the, the person who's going to be in an issue for the RPOs is going to be this mic now. And this is what the majority teams do in the spread. You'll see this. Any team that's, that's heavy air raid is going to run some type of version of an inside zone. You can face this backside defensive end. And now you're just reading this mic, right? If you play stick, we hand the ball off. We have bodies on bodies. Everybody's able to play, okay? We have to handle this backside safety somehow. A lot of RPO teams will run some version of, you know, if you don't play him in the flats, if he bails, and they have something they can take on the outside here, you know, hitches, slant outs, whatever, uh, and then essentially what you have is, it's just the game here. He's going to commit. We throw the stick. If he, if he goes here, then we can just hand the ball off. We got the numbers. And then, you know, we go from there, okay? Uh, and then, you know, with this, the other, the other way that they can handle is they can drop this guy down here, roll him here, and now again, they're back into their one-high safety look, right? So, uh, all of these, all of these setups, and most defenses like to stay in a two-high look, at least disguise that, and then pre-snap, sorry, post-snap, if they want to roll post-snap, then they have the ability to do that. But a lot of teams like to stay in this two-high safety look, uh, and, and, you know, give the illusion that this is dead on the back side, uh, and also give the illusion, right here, there's, there's no RPO that can really be taken. The only thing that that is, uh, really like a big problem here is going to be this mic, right? And this mic here.
So, another thing aside from the stick is a three vertical, especially if you have a dude right here on the backside. Anything where he presses vertical, maybe a corner, or even just a straight fade. If they want to help, this is the, this is the problem that defenses are in with this. Is if you got a guy who can run three vertical, say you run a smash combination or anything like this, number two presses vertical, it occupies this backside or this playside safety here, and then how is this handled? Is he helping here or is he helping here? Right? If they have a stud corner, maybe they just say, we'll lock this up. But if, if this guy is better than this guy, defensive coordinator will say, okay, well, let's help. And then Mike is responsible for number three vertical, and that could be a problem for defenses. So you're gonna have to play this game of where is he helping? Right? Is this guy better than this guy? Right? And is this guy better than this guy? And then it's either this or this, but either way, you'll have some type of shot that you can take, uh, with this here, especially if you're running stick and then you go with a little stick knot or something like that. It's a really good opportunity.
And before we jump into the next front, let's go ahead and take a look at some of the run plays that we can have here, right? So let's say we want to run power to the right, okay? How would this really play out? So we're here, down blocking up to the backside backer here. We can take this, we can handle these guys right here. We're going to pull for the front side backer. And then right here, we're either going to drive this guy out if he goes upfield, or we either, you know, drive him in. Either way, we're gonna have to read. We either go inside that kick out, or we go outside the down block by the Y. And then we're pulling for this front side backer. And then everybody else just gets audio on the body here, and then we're good to go. We can run power that direction. We can run a power read. Let's say, you know, really, really athletic quarterbacks, you'll be able to do this, uh, pretty well. So what you can do is, same exact blocking scheme here, right? The only thing that changes is that we're going to bluff this defensive end rather than trying to dig him out or or drive. And then we're going to arc release. All right, we're going to take outside leverage. Everybody's blocking outside leverage, or he can take the safety here. If he flies down, the corner oils, right? And then we're just going to be running outside zone here. Shuffle, shuffle. We can read this guy. Our backside puller is still pulling to this mic. So we have, if we, if the quarterback keeps it, we've got a guard who's able to block for this. If the running back is given the ball because the defensive end spills, then our Y can block the mic with outside leverage. So we have him handled inside leverage and outside leverage. It's really nice. All right, now we're going to shuffle, shuffle, read this defensive end. If he goes upfield, quarterback fakes it, keeps it, and runs the power. If he crashes or spills, let me get rid of all this nonsense here. If he goes outside, quarterback shuffles and keeps it. If he ends up spilling, and we're going to hand the ball off and let it be a foot race here, you know, we have numbers, uh, with, with this here. The only guy who's unblocked is going to be this free safety. And again, if this guy shoots down real quick and he's able to realize it, we could have him come off and take off and leave this corner to make the tackle.
All right, now we're going to get into the three-man front. This is an Okie. So essentially, in a three-man front, a lot of times you're gonna have is a center who is, uh, he's got somebody head up, zero tech, and then two five techs here. Size. Now, in this situation, you know, we just have a Sam, Mike, Will, or Jack, or Nickel in this situation here. This guy's a DB. It doesn't really matter. It's, it's the same idea here, okay? And then let's look at gap responsibilities and also kind of how, how you can really use this defense to your advantage, okay? So in this situation, you can really move this guy wherever you want. You could, I've seen teams also line him up wherever this, uh, wherever this tight end is going to be. He could technically not be here and be over here instead. And then essentially, what we have, a lot of teams will do a, a double gap. But I don't know too many teams overseas who do that. I know a lot of teams in the international community that run a three-man front, but normally they're just, you know, single gap responsibility. So the way that it would work, you know, in, in, you know, the case that I'm used to is something like this, where he's going to be responsible for this guy. He's here. He's here. Again, he's not going to be in there. And then we just make this guy come down and be responsible for this D-gap here, okay? Gap responsibilities. We haven't really talked about it, but letter-wise, but ABC, it's kind of big. That's a C gap right here. And then D and backside, it's a B and C, okay? And normally I tag these with minus A if we're running the ball to the right here, or if we have, we go, you know, in this case, we have boundary, short side of the field, and then wide side of the field. This would be everything on this side of the ball is negative minus, and then everything over here is okay. So they can kind of do this however they want, uh, in terms of gap responsibilities. If you, if you take this Jack, put him over here, then you could have the same situation we had with the trips, where essentially you have this type of bracket coverage, and he can be responsible for the C gap in this situation here. And now you have everybody handled in terms of gaps, right? So you can make him crash in here. You can take this. He can take this here, here, and here. And now he's going to be extra anyway. So now in this case, we have two guys who are here that are extra. So this is, you know, one way that, uh, that they can set it up.
And the thing from an offensive coordinator's perspective on a three-man front, I really like this, um, I really like this as if I were playing as a defensive coordinator, if I was coaching as a defense coordinator, because you're able to disguise what you're doing a little bit more with a three-man front. Okay, this Okie front, I think you can actually get pretty good leverage with some things, but making these guys crash inside, which we'll talk about in the, in the next one here, we'll talk about an eagle front. But having these guys crash inside makes it a little bit more difficult. Um, but, but you do have the ability to mix things up, right? You can have these guys loop over and have a lot of stunting going on. So the gaps aren't so clear as they are. So we look at the under front again, these are pretty clear gaps, right? Clear gaps, players are able to understand kind of what's what just from looking at it. But when you get to a three-man front, this could cause a lot of confusion, especially if you're going against a, if you're going against a team that is not very well studied on their blockage games, right? And normally what you want to do as an offensive coordinator is you want to say, okay, when we go the four-man front, we have these rules. If we have a three-man front, we have these rules, okay? So that's one way that you want to handle that.
All right, and now we get to our Eagle front here, okay? And this is the one that that's kind of, I wouldn't say taking over, but I see a lot more now than I used to. A lot of teams are running stuff because now what you do is you put these guys at a 4i position. So they're not outside leverage anymore, right? Take a look at the difference here. Okie front, Eagle front. Actually, let me get rid of this guy here. Okie and Eagle, right? A little bit of a difference. But what it does, it kind of bounces everything outside. These, uh, defensive ends, a lot of times we're trying to read a C gap defender if we want to run anything, or we can say we look at a pin and pull concept, right? Let's, let's go ahead and draw something like that up. What we could have, we're going to run this to, to the left here. We could have a double team to the backer. We kick this guy out. We pull for the front side. And then we run up in here, okay? If you want to do this more, this will work better if we spread. So we widen this Jack out. He's not in the box. And then essentially, we have that. It's an easy, easy thing here. But once you get into the Eagle front, now things are a little bit different. Imagine we take this Y and we put him out here, and this Jack widens out as well. If we want to run this here, we can't drive this guy out. So what we have to do is, let's say we're going to run that pin and pull, the same type of concept here. Jack, get them out here. I get rid of this Y. Now what we have is we have this double team to the mic that stays the same. We're going to have to drive this guy inside, which is not the easiest block. And then we can't pull inside. We have to pull outside. This is going to automatically balance this. And then again, this is a difficult block for us to get inside leverage of this guy to kick him out. So it just makes things a little bit easier. And yes, it's also kind of predictable of where the ball is going to bounce because most of the time it's not going to be inside, okay? So this is the, this is the, uh, the benefit of being able to run this, this 4i type of look here, okay?
So the way that this can be handled, I really like this in terms of just saying, hey, you know what? If you're going to play that and make us bounce it outside, then fine, we'll be able to do that, right? If we want to run, it's ever going to run an outside zone or something like this over here, essentially what you have is we can take this and this up to this, try to reach this guy, and this should be able to, we should be able to get this, and then this becomes a lot easier to reach, and then we're here, right? That's an outside zone to the right or to the left here. And then again, we're blocking MDM with this. So, you know, understand what they're trying to take away. They're trying to force everything outside. Okay, fine. You're going to force us to go outside, then let's design some plays that allow us to take advantage of that, right? That's the idea that, you know, that little battle that you want to have back and forth.
All right, so now we get to our last one here. This is a bear front. This is a short yardage, goal line type of, type of defense here. And essentially, a lot of times it comes down to, hey, we're going to get some type of man with this, right? We're going to get some type of man with this, and then we want to cover every single gap, cover every single gap. And now these backers here can kind of be a little bit more free with with where they're going and just kind of reading and attacking and plugging into any hole that gets open. And it makes it really, really difficult to to do any type of gap scheme, any pulling, uh, where, you know, you're trying to get, let's say a double team here. Yeah, it's difficult for the, for the center to be able to take this. A lot of times you want to be able to have this back block here because now we have good leverage. But now we don't have a good situation with this, uh, with this defensive end. And if we do end up, you know, working something like this, it's just a little bit more of a mess, becomes a little bit more jumbled of a mess here. And they also have a plus one advantage here, uh, in terms of the box here. So what defenses will do in this case, it's essentially saying, you're either going to dominate us and you're going to score, or you're going to be forced to win one-on-one matchups on the outsides. And anytime a defense feels confident that they can just do this and they can stack the box, right? And that's where you have to come up with, uh, with some crafty solutions here. You know, maybe some type of pit play, or you're, you know, running something like this, a little under. But either way, you have to have some type of rub route so you can win on the outsides here if you're unable to win in the box here.
The other thing you could do is is a duo, uh, where, you know, we're taking playside leverage, get this double team up to this mic. We have to try and either drive this guy in or get inside and kick him out. And then we're running in here. We're not going to be able to block this, this safety, uh, but it is what it is, okay? If you can, you can go with maybe an outside zone or something like that, but you have to have some creative solutions to to these fronts. So you can say, you know, we can run it, but we can also throw it. So you need solutions here. Any type of double move would be really nice. Easiest is really a fade if you have a dude who can just win some type of, some type of rub out, even, even a, you know, pick play, something like this, and link this guy out. Gotta have some solution, uh, for these, for these scenarios here, so they can't just line up and say, go ahead, we're better than you, right? We're better than you, and, uh, you won't be able to score on it. So gotta have some solutions.
All right, so that is about it for the video. Hopefully, you got some good information from that. You have a better understanding of what the defenses are going to try to do to take away what you have, right? So based on your formation, you know, you line up in trips, right? They're going to line up in something, right? If they're, if they're a four-man front, it's either going to be an over or an under. If they line up in that over front, right, then now we have a good situation on on the backside here because we know that Will is going to be responsible for the A gap, okay? All the way over, so he can't play the slant on the backside. They'll have to roll the safety down and they'll have to roll into a one-high safety look, and now we can go to the, the playside flats. If they line up in the under front, now the mic is going to be in a bind, right? So make sure that you can go through these scenarios and understand them at a pretty deep level, because when you get on the field and you're calling plays, you need to see the, see the adjustments, make sure you know exactly what they're doing so you can find a way to to beat that, right? Find a way to attack what they're doing. Every defense is designed to beat something, right? To take something away. But anytime you take something away, you're opening up something else, right? It's the same thing on the offensive side of the ball, right? When we have specific pass plays and send out five receivers quick, we're not trying to throw deep, right? We're not trying to do that. We're trying to get a quick passing game. So there's always, every, everything is always going to have a positive and a negative. You got to understand what the negative is to that defense so you can find a way to beat it. That's it for this one. I'll see you guys the next one.