DC46 (Dum)

A thousand words or less??? Well - OK. Bottom line is you've got to stop the plays your opponent can run. You don't have to stop the ones he can't run. The average youth coach has an 8 play offense. Some coaches have 50 - but you don't have to worry about them. They've already lost before they even step on the field due to inadequate reps and probability of mental overload. So check around for a couple of different 8 play offenses, draw them up, and come up with a defense that stops all 8 plays foreach one. You design your defense based around mobility and impact. Low mobility players are on the defensive line. Low impact players are way in the back playing pass. Your studs are all in the second row, with maybe one in the middle of the field behind them (Fred). The second row players are your linebackers - mobile players with impact. So if you have four studs you can play either three linebackers and one Fred (5-3) or four linebackers and no Fred (5-4). But it's pretty hard to cover the field with less than three linebackers (Unless you have my DC Pro 4-3). The maximum number of linebackers you need is four. So if you have five studs, you would play four linebackers and one Fred - or a 4-4. If you have three studs you're going to be playing without a Fred - say 8-3 (GAM), 6-3, or (shudder) 4-3. If you have less than three studs then you either have to play the DC Pro 4-3 or say "hello" to last place. You cannot cover the field with two studs but, if you had to, you'd run a 5-2 or a 6-2 and learn to accept defeat graciously against the better coaches. Once you've used this simple system of counting studs to arrive at your defense, you need to understand the theory of offense. The theory of offense says you must have as many blockers in front of the ballcarrier as the defense has defenders. This brings us to the Theory of Defense. The Theory of Defense says you must have one more defender in front of the ballcarrier than the offense has blockers. In theory this is easy to do because the maximum number of blockers a ball carrier can have is ten - and the defense always has eleven. So the defense begins with the one man advantage. But along comes the Theory of Offense which solves that problem by simply not blocking the furthest defender, on the line, away from the ball carrier. 99% of the time, this is the backside DE. You can see how the Theory of Offense works by looking at my DC Wing T. There are always as many blockers in front of the ball carrier as there are defenders in front of the ball carrier. In fact, in most cases there are more blockers than defenders. This is because the DC Wing T adds an extra blocker to the playside. It does so by any of three different ways. They are 1) Line up an extra blocker to the playside (unbalanced) or 2) Put a blocker in motion to the playside or 3) Pull a backside lineman to the playside. Most youth teams try #1 first. You can counter #1 by aligning the same number of defenders on each side of the ball as the offense has players on each side of the ball. So if there are four offensive players to the right of center, you need four defenders to the same side. And if there are three offensive players to the left of center, you need three defenders opposite them. This is called "mirroring". Notice if one of the offensive players on the right of the center gets the ball, he'll have three blockers against your four defenders. The Theory of Defense is preserved. Next on the common to "to do" list of offensive coaches is to put a man in motion. Your solution, of course, is to have someone follow him, either by "man coverage" or "bump down coverage". So now if the offense brings a fifth player over to the right of center by motion, you also bring a fifth defender. Again, the Theory of Defense is preserved. Dead last is for the offense to pull a guard from the backside. It's dead last because it takes about an hour to teach a guard to pull or two hours to teach both guards to pull. In he meantime, while the offensive coach is training these two kids for two hours, what is the rest of the team doing? So it is the option of "last choice" - which is a "good thing" because it is the hardest one for us defensive coaches to defend. We either have to have a defender follow the pulling guard or we must keep him from pulling. But before we contemplate these solutions, let's review the BOTTOM LINE. The "bottom line" is that is you've got to stop the plays your opponent can run. You don't have to stop the ones he can't run. So if your league doesn't pull guards, you don't need to be able to defend against it. Or, if they don't use motion, you don't have to defend that either. However, I guarantee you they will line up unbalanced. So you will have to think about that. You can either move your defensive line towards the unbalanced side or move your linebackers towards the unbalanced side. These are the basic fundamentals of defense in less than a thousand words. You want to play as many Fred's and linebackers as you have studs and you want to have as many players to each side of the ball as they do. Think on it and get back to me.