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03-14-2009, 11:20 AM | #1 |
In Search of a Life
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03-14-2009, 11:25 AM | #2 |
Big Red Nuts
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USC 4-3 Under Blitz Schemes
By Pete Carroll Head Football Coach In order to be successful on defense you need to develop a philosophy. You have to know what you want to do, how you want it to look, and how you want it to feel. A philosophy is like a railroad track. You have a clear cut direction in which you are going. If you start to get off track it becomes real obvious to you. If you don’t know what you want and what you are about you won’t know when you are off course. If you do realize you are off course you won’t know how to fix the problems you are having without a philosophy. If you can’t write down your philosophy then you still have some work to do. If you don’t have a clear view of your philosophy you will be floundering all over the place. It you win, it will be pure luck. One year you will win, it will be pure luck. One year you will run a 3-4 defense and the next year you will run a 4-3 based defense. You will never get zeroed in on what is important. I am an example of a person who got zeroed into a philosophy early. I went to Monte ran what is known in coaching circles as the 4-3 under defense. That was his base defense that he had developed and perfected at What I can give you today is a real basic understanding of this defense. I am not trying to sell this to you as being the best defense. What I am saying is that for me this is the defense that I know best and can make work. The reason I run this as a base defense is that I know how to fix any problems that may be created. I want to start out explaining the basic front end coverage. Then we’ll go over some of the more basic blitzes we run from this coverage. When I went to the NFL with the Minnesota Vikings, Monte Kiffin was there and we got together with another coach named Floyd Peters. He was from the The 4-3 under defense has evolved over the years and adjusted over time. There are some different ways to do things from it. The presentation that I am going to give today is the “one-gap” approach. In principle we want to give our players a chance to know exactly what they have to defend. We also want to give them an attitude in which to do that. We want to be an attacking, aggressive football team. We don’t want to sit and read the play like you often have to with “two-gap” principles of play. We want to attack into the gap at the snap, get off the ball to play on their side of the field and get after the quarterback. The big problem with any “one-gap” approach however is that it allows a ball carrier to get into the secondary if one guy makes a mistake. No matter how aggressive the defense is there is a great amount of discipline that goes with this defense. You have to be very strict about your positioning and the placement of your players. You have to have the ability to maintain relative spacing between your players. The defensive end to the tight end side is responsible for controlling the C gap. He is an inside-foot to outside-foot alignment on the offensive tackle he is lining up against. If the tackle blocks inside then the defensive end has to close down with him in keep relative control of the C gap. The nose tackle plays in the A gap to the tight end side of the field in our defense. We have done a number of things with this position based upon the opposition at times. We have put him right in the A gap, we have cocked him on the center at times, and as needed we have even played him in a direct shade technique right over the center at times. The way we play him on base defense is as an inside-foot to outside-foot alignment or a 1 technique on the center to the strong side of the alignment. The front five players I mentioned are playing aggressive defense with their outside arms free. The only thing we can’t allow to happen is for them to get hooked or reached by the defender. This alignment leaves open the strong side B Gap and the weak side A gap which are played by the Mike and Will linebackers. The Mike linebacker is in an inside-foot to out-side foot alignment on the offensive guard on his side of the field. The Will linebacker is aligned against the offensive guard to his side of the field. He is basically a protected player in this alignment and should make a lot of tackles. He has to control his weak-side A gap and play relative to the Mike linebacker and the Free Safety. 4-3 UNDER DEFENSE VERSUS PRO SET If you look at this front it is basically an eight man front against the run as we’ll bring the Free Safety down hard in run situations. This is a stop the run first type of defense. We want to outnumber the offense to either side of the ball. We call this particular alignment of the front an “under” and the coverage “flex” in our language. The open side of the alignment is the flex side and the tight end side is the strong or solid side. Those are our terms for the tight end side and the split end side of the formation. |
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03-14-2009, 11:25 AM | #3 |
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The Mike Linebacker plays the first back out of the back field to the strong side. The Free Safety plays the first back out of the back field to the weak side. The Will linebacker plays the short middle. The gives us a man in the hole in the short middle area of the field. If we get a full flow by the backs to the strong side the Mike linebacker takes the first back and the Will linebacker takes the second back out of the backfield. The Free Safety becomes the short middle player. Before we go any further, let’s talk about personnel. You want to get your best players on the field. The open side Defensive End has to be one of your best football players. Size does not matter as much. We want an athletic player who can move around. If the offense spreads out a bit into a double set to one side we don’t make any adjustment except to match up better with the safeties. Everything else on the defense remains the same. Everyone is playing their gap control and support schemes. If the back goes in motion to leave an empty backfield set the linebacker to the side of the motion takes him. The remaining linebacker bumps over to the middle to balance the defense and plays football. If the offense comes out in a triples set the adjustment is made by the safeties. In this case pictured the Strong Safety goes out to cover the third receiver to the strong side. The Free Safety moves to the middle third of the field and plays the middle third. Everyone else stays the same with the linebackers playing the remaining back the same way. Trips to the other side would flop the role of the safeties. Or if one is a better cover person that the other you can protect accordingly. For a base defense to hold up you have to have some things that you can use to complement it. When you play USC every single one of my players is going to have a blitz pattern. The offense will have to account for every player on our side of the ball in their pass protection scheme. The Will linebacker is playing the hot receiver to the middle of the field. That means he is finding the third receiver and covering him if he comes out on a hot route. When we overload on the rush the ball with be thrown quickly. We want good spacing in our coverage people so we can react by changing up, and make the play for a short gain. coverage and the Strong Safety is going to the deep middle. The Sam and Will linebackers have the first two hot receivers and the Mike with have the hot third receiver. A very effective stunt from this defense is called “Sam and Safety”. On this stunt we are blitzing with both the Sam and the Free Safety. The defense line slants to the Free Safety side. The open side Defensive End comes off in coverage and everything else is the same. The Mike linebacker and the drop end have the first two hot receivers and the Will linebacker has the third. One of the problems we have when we drop the Defensive End in coverage is containment to his side. When we drop the end it means the 3 Technique tackle has to work hard to contain outside. That is not a good situation but we work hard to make it work. We also like to bring the defensive backs in the blitz scheme. If they can disguise the stunt they can get there in a hurry. We like to bring the Corner on a blitz as a change up from time to time. The Corner aligns in a bump and run technique. On the snap of the ball however he comes hard off the corner. The Free Safety cheats back and covers the deep outside third. The Strong Safety is covering the middle third and the strong side corner in this case is taking the outside third to his side. The rush end and the 3 technique rush the A gap and the B gap. The corner comes off the edge. The Sam, Mike, and Will linebackers play the hot zones on this play. You can mix up your blitzes according to your needs. This simplistic blitz scheme lets you bring pressure from a number of different areas. You can game plan the match ups the way you want with other combination as well. The important thing in this blitz pattern is that we are not changing anything in our basic schemes underneath. |
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03-16-2009, 03:02 PM | #4 | |
The Master
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All this arguing back and forth on what scheme we are going to play. This team had big holes last year. No matter what we do, holes are likely still going to exist. Pendergast is going to need to find out where those holes will be and try to minimize them hoping the opposition won't find those holes. They are bound to find them though. What we need to have as a goal is to get our players that will be with us on the right page. Our young players have just never gotten it. That needs to change.
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-Watching Eddie Podolak Quote:
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04-27-2009, 12:49 PM | #5 |
Big Red Nuts
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bump
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