Systematic Defense

 If there is one thing that I will always always always believe when it comes to the game of football, it is that systems are better than schemes. What I mean by that is that your defense should be flexible enough to mold to any offense that you face. The way that I have seen defenses become systematic, and the way that I have made my own defense systematic is through simple rules, simple concepts, and easy play-calls, all of these take the heavy thinking out of the sport for the kids. When we boil down sports, especially in high school, we have to remember that we are coaching angsty, hormone driven teenagers. We do not really have to outthink the opposing play-caller, we just have to get our angsty hormone driven teens to out play theirs. I say that jokingly, but really football at the high school level comes down to execution and skill. To me, the best way to maximize the talent you have on the field is to create simple rules that are universal and spell everything out for your athletes. 

I believe rules based football is the best thing to include when designing you defense. These rules should be consistent and span across the entirety of the football field. A kid should have their assignment and know their assignment is that 99.99% of the time. For the linemen it is easy to have these rules. In a 4 down system we only have to assign a single gap to a player, our LBs take the rest. For example, you can tell your ends that they always have the edge, tackle always has strong B, and Nose always has weak A. No matter the front, these are the assignments that we have. 

We try to keep to those same rules for our stunts. So if we want to slant strong, then the ends still stay to the outside (weak end is playing outside for BCR) nose is still crashing the A gap, and the tacle is still crashing the B gap. We are not asking our guys to move gaps, we are just asking them to take an angle in their attack and get penetration. I use this a lot because I like neutral fronts (2s and 4s or 2s and 5s.) If we have to change gap assignments for a stunt, we make it as simple as possible. For example on slant weak, the tackle is now strong A, and the nose is weak B. They know their slant is based solely on the call from the mike LB. They don't have to think about it. They hear strength is left, they now they are going to the gap to the right. Make it as simple as possible for those guys up front. 

The Lbs main job when it comes to assignments is to make the DL right. They have to understand that a mistake by the guys up front can be fixed by them. The rules for LBs is just like the DL, they have a single gap responsibility in the run game. The gap rules are usually ends have edge, tackle has SB, nose has WA, mike has SA, will has WB. If you have a sam like in a 4-3, that is your free hitter for extra help. These assignments NEVER change out of our base alignments. The rule for LBs is we never send two guys through the same hole. If your hole is taken up by a lineman or closes, find another hole. The DL and LBs work as one. They have to know each other's assignments and adjust for them. If the line is slanting weak, I have to know that know as the Mike, I have to take the Weak A. If I take strong A, i'll have two guys in the same hole and the WA gap is wide open. We are able to execute on this because we know the call "slant weak" we visualize where the lineman is going and we adjust for it. By keeping things simple, telling a guy you are responsible for one gap and one gap only, we allow them to play fast with minimal thinking. Keep your rules simple and let your guys execute on them. 

The secondary is where I think it is extremely important (and easy) to have rules based systematic football. I have been a part of defenses that were too complex, no one had any idea what they were doing. In my mind, I think you need only 2 base coverage plans, and 2 specials that you want to carry. Whether that is man or zone is up to you. I like Cover 1 because of its simplicity plus the extra security of the safety playing overtop. My secondary knows that we have base rules to follow no matter what the offense throws at us. For us, corners always have #1 counting from the outside in. The down (strong) safety has #2 weak, the nickel (or Sam) has #2 strong, the will takes #3. The Mike or sam backer depending on your scheme has rat coverage, he drops into the middle of the field and spies the QB. We follow these rules no matter what. So if we get 20 personnel, we still number from the outside and play our assigned man. We apply the same concept to motion. If your man motions over we don't spin our safeties, we just have you run with him, that is your man. If we get trips we flip the down safety and he plays #2, Nickel now has #3. It is simple and allows our guys to execute. Simple is fast, and simple is easy to understand. In just one paragraph I was able to explain our entire coverage scheme. This allows us to become masters of our base scheme and add in wrinkles like double teams, blitzes, and zone checks. Do not have 15 different coverages to match whatever scheme you see from the offense. Instead, build your defense to be flexible enough to fit any scheme. 

One last thing I want to comment on is how you call plays. I have never understood the whole stigma behind play calls being secret. Why make things more difficult for your guys to understand? Code names and picture boards are really cool to look at on Saturdays and Sundays, but that's what those guys do for a living. We shouldn't expect a high school kid, who has class all day, who might work a job or has a ton of chores to do when he gets home, to take the time to not only learn the defense itself, but what the secret code names are for things. For me, I spell things out for my guys. My front is based on the number of the technique. tackle is the first number, nose is the second, ends always play outside shoulder unless we have a rule that says otherwise for that front. The next call is the blitz if there is one. I don't get fancy, I signal in the name of the backer, and then tell him the letter gap that he is going. Lastly, I call the coverage, which is simple because 90% of the time it is the same thing. In a nutshell, one of my calls could be 31 Mike A 4. It is that simple. We take out that extra step of kids decoding the signals. Admittedly, I sometimes like to use a code word for the coverage just because I don't want to make it super easy on the QB or OC to tee off on my coverage. This is always something that is relevant to the kids. 

I know this isn't really groundbreaking stuff, it is just my thoughts on how to make defense a little simpler but cutting off the things we don't really HAVE to have. It is cool hearing guys in the NFL spout off huge play names. I remember thinking Jon Gruden was some kind of wizard when I would watch him send in calls to Qbs on his QB camp show. We have to ask ourselves though, where do we draw the line between functionality and coolness. I can scream spider Y-2 Banana all I want, but if the kids have a breakdown trying to figure out what I mean, what's the point?