3 Ideas to Help You Handle Chaos
Aug 22, 2023 1:24 pm
Coach ,
There was a time in the game where early season, the defenses were usually ahead of the offenses. However, in an era of rpo, read game, coupled with some very creative offensive minds, the defense has to work very hard to stay ahead of the chaos that offenses are trying to create.
Handle The Chaos
Today you can expect every twist turn and chaotic formations thrown at you from a good offensive coordinator. Offenses become more and more creative and the game shifts more and more in their favor.
Throughout these next 15 weeks we look into various concepts, strategies, and techniques that can help us flip the chaos and put it in the laps of the opponent's offense.
Today we will focus on three aspects: Situational defense and how to execute in the red zone and influencing specific downs, finding ways to guard yourself against RPOs and their various challenges as well as utilizing pressure and applying it against the opposing team's offenses.
3rd Down Defense
The name of the game is getting off the field and having the confidence to execute within any defense that you call. Obviously you will construct your call sheet and menu but, there should be a mentality around the situation.
Coach Jay Bateman, now the linebackers coach at Florida believes in having multiple packages built to handle third down. He builds it around the five defensive backs.
He builds it around the understanding that coverage is hard, but blitz patterns are easy. He explains his philosophy in this video:
Take Players Out of Conflict
The 3-3-5 defense is something that is increasing in popularity across the college and high school levels. Teams that tend to face passing threats and also view their depth in the LBing corp and secondary to be greater than their depth at the D-Line are beginning to utilize it more and more.
With the nature of having 8 pass defenders at any moment as well as those being more athletic in nature typically. This can cause a real predicament for passing offenses.
Another aspect of the 3-3-5 coming to the forefront is it’s ability to dictate where the ball goes and cause confusion for the QB-decision maker.
Coach Tyson Veidt like to keep the offense guessing by varying responsibilities. He is able to vary who the edge guy and who the support guy is. This helps in defending RPO as he explains in this video:
Pressure from Multiple Fronts
The ability to blitz and do it well as well as disguise it can be one of the most impacting effective ways to cause chaos for an offense. The mere perception that a pressure may be coming affects the nature of the QB and the timing of the play.
We know that Bear is a great way to force the run game lateral. It’s knock had always been the ability to get a great rush, but adding some pressures to it enables defensive linemen or linebackers to get free.
VT Head Coach Brent Pry explains it in this video:
We will do our best to stay up on trends which develop through the season and share ideas from our clinics which help provide answers.
Good luck this weekend!
Always be growing!
Coach Grabowski