Sweeps

Yea, what a mess. Blood all over the place; no referee in sight. It was the oldest of the old fashioned ass whippins, and the Christians literally lost their rear ends. I immediately went to the rules committee and lobbied for some rules changes. First of all, we put in weight restrictions. The Christians couldn't begin to handle those much bigger and heavier lions. Then, I had to work with the Christians' coach. He really needed to do something about the speed differential between his team and his opponents. Thos cats were quick. We used something real close to what you have posted on Coach Wade's Football For Youth board on speed training. But, none of it did much good. The Christians continued to lose despite all the work, the prayers, the converts, etc. Eventually they gave up this game and moved on to a new sport in the region which they called football, but it involved just kicking this ball around from one end of the field to the other - boring.

Now, getting back to the real subject - defense (on the offensive board).
Your comments about the Split 40 are correct. You asked what we do to a SE or open sided offense. We do what you suggested and we close the DE down into a 5 technique off the outside shoulder of the OT and walk of the OLB toward the SE and back him off the LOS abit. How far would depend on down, distance, the split of the SE, etc. Coach Mick has a problem in that the rules his league uses will not alow him to do this. Leaving the OLB inside doesn't stay with the concept of the defense. He could do one of 2 things. He could swap the DE and OLB and move the DE out somewhat, while the OLB stayed inside. Or he could put the OLB on the LOS, but split him about as much as he would split in the normal Split 40. Of the 2 choices this would be preferred. In theory, at least, the OLB is a different type of athlete than the DE and it may be better to have that OLB playing out there in space than the DE. There is an advantage in backing the OLB off the LOS and this would be my first choice, but MIck cannot do this. This restricts the open side OLB in pass coverage and makes it easier to crack block him inside. But Mick would have to study this and decide if he wants to do it this way.

One of my reasons for going to this defense in 1974 was the fact that coaches in my league would have a diffiicult time in blocking my 3 techs AND my ILB at the same time. I figured they would figure out how to get one or the other blocked, but not both.

Then we used two three techs (DTs on the outside shoulder of the OGs). And the ILBs were in each A gap. We figured we could handle a blast up the zero hole because we had 4 defenders to 3 offensive blockers. We liked the odds defending even a lead blocker up the middle with a ball carrier behind him just because of the sheer amount of bofdies in the area. We never had anyone beat us inside.

The theory was that the DTs would attack the OGs and keep them from releasing to the ILBs, allowing an aggressive scrape by the playside ILB to the flow of the offensive backfield. The backside ILB was to step toward flow, expect a block by the center and check for counters or reverses before pursuing on a deeper path than the playside ILB. One problem we encountered, thoughm,was that our ILBs werew too aggressive and the backside ILB would often run himself out of the play. We had to work hard in keeping him closer to home and to slow up his pursuit.

The DEs played in a 9 tech (outsid shoulder of the TE and we never boxed. The DE would play on the outside hip of the TE and never allow himself to get reach blocked. Also, if the TE attempted to block down, the DE squeezed down inside with him staying near his outside hip, now expecting someone to kick him out. We drilled the DEs almost every day on this simple move. They would face FBs & OGs kicking them out and trying to hook (log) them. They were taught to string out sweeps and tosses.

The OLBs played on the inside eye of the TE in s tight seven technique (inside shoulder of TE). They slammed the TE at the snap and made it tough for the TE to release inside to block our free-running ILBs. If we had a 2 TE alignment we played this both ways.

If we faced a SE on one side, we just closed the DE down and walked off the OLB. We continued to play the DTs in a 3 tech (outside shoulder of OG).

In later years we changed our DT alignment to a 1 tech on the open side (inside shoulder of the OG) and a 3 tech to the closed side (TE side) of the offense. Then we kept the TE side ILB in the same A gap, but moved the open side (or weak side) ILB into the B gap on that side. This provides some advantages and some disadvantages. One of the biggest disadvantages is it allowed a simple Isolation play to the weakside , say the FB leading the TB into the weakside B gap. The OG blocks down on the 1 tech, the OT blcoks out on the 5 tech DE, and the FB blocks the now isolated weakside ILB (hence the term Iso). The TB would carry. You do have help from the weakside OLB, but he is split somewhat and also somewhat off the LOS. You need great play by your weakside ILB who must read this immediately and plug (fill) the hole so as to stuff the lead blocker. Then if the back bails and bounces it wide, there is no blocking for that and thr OLB has a good chance to make the stop.

Boy, am I rambling. I'm not sure if I answered all DC's questions, but I hope I have. If not remind me.