Developing a Defensive Philosophy

What is your defensive philosophy?

I've covered so many of the great coaches out there that I decided to write an article on my beliefs as a defensive coach. I hope you find it interesting and take something away from it.

Background

I've been fortunate to coach this game for over 30 years and have been the Nassau CC defensive coordinator for the past 3 years. Through those years, the game has changed.  Football has evolved and as a defensive coach you have to evolve. We live in an 11 world with a heavy emphasis on rpo's and zone read systems. We see QB designed runs more and more as well as zone slice, tight zone, wide zone and more over the last five years. 

 I went from being a true cover 4 team to a press quarters team that plays quite a bit of man free and cover 2 as part of the package. We will also incorporate some 4 man sim pressures and some 5 man cover 2 and 3 pressures. Three years ago we played quarters 40% of the time on 1st and 2nd down. Now we play zero % on early downs. That's a huge change as we try to keep up with the changing offensive systems. 

 On 3rd down, I will get into our mug pressures and odd dime package which has been very successful for us. We show many different fronts and mug looks but from a coaching perspective it is easy for our kids as the coverages are all the same except for the joker who subs into the game.

We have several goals which are predicated on the following:

1. Stop the run

2. No easy completions in the pass game. Take away the quick and rpo game on early downs. We will challenge on the outside. 

3. Play great situational football

This past year:

We held 6 opponents to under 10 points

Top 5 in 3rd down efficiency holding teams to 23% efficiency

Allowed 12.7 points per game

Held teams to a 43% pass completion rate

Allowed 2.71 yards per carry

Philosophy

Overall, we are an aggressive defense, playing a tremendous amount of press coverage in early downs. We will play some press quarters, cover 2 and man free. We have the ability to go from a press team to off coverage with simple calls. But the basis premise is to play press and really teach our kids an understanding of what routes will beat them vs press coverage. Our foundation starts there. Understand routes vs the coverage but also what to expect with bunch, trips, condensed and stacked formations. 

The reasoning is we will not give easy completions on early downs. It's an easy 6 yards when you play true quarters or soft cover 3 and qb's have been trained too well to take it in the rpo game. I played true quarters for a number of years and decided that press quarters is the way to go. Our pass defense has greatly improved as a result.  Now, understand the routes you are going to get, fade, comeback, slant are a few and drill it everyday. The bigger issue is working with safeties and linebackers on those #2 wheel, deeper outs and routes in pass defense drills.  The system has worked well for us the past few years.  

Disguise

We disguise things from a 2 deep look. Everything starts 2 high and we teach our kids to disguise as long as possible. I also give the cb the ability to work in and out pre snap to create a cloudy picture on the outside. You will often see them moving around before the snap but primarily you will see a 2 deep look presnap. Disguise, disguise disguise.

Personnel Groupings

Defensive game Planning starts with being able to handle different personnel groupings and being able to get aligned and in the best defense vs these groupings.

See my article on game planning 

https://coachkoufootball.blogspot.com/2021/04/game-planning.html

We live in an 11 world and then teams will either go 12 or 10  as their secondary formational group for the most part with a little 20 mixed in their. We game plan a tremendous amount based on what they are in and what they run for each group. What are their bae runs based on down and distance on the early downs. 

I believe in not having a ton of checks and lining up and playing football. I am more about not worrying so much about our adjustments, but under the philosophy that teams need to adjust to you. We will bring some zone pressures and man pressures but are very aggressive. We do have our 3x1 checks and will use them as necessary but don't go into a game with more than 2.  

We have a choice system on early downs, meaning we will usually package 2 coverages, and based on what they come out in our safety can call the appropriate coverage. I give our safety the ability to make the check and we live with it.  This is very effective when seeing 12 and 11 as teams will run certain plays based on their formations from these sets and back alignment. 

Fronts

Early downs

On early downs my scheme  a traditional 4-2-5, some shade and bear looks with the ability to go to some under fronts vs 12 and 21 with the tight end on the line of scrimmage. We have some rules involving the safety in corner back in run support

3rd down

On 3rd down, we will get into our mug looks and play our 3-2 dime  and 4-2 package. The great thing about what we do on 3rd down is we can play any of our base coverages in the dime package. We sub a DT out for our joker(3rd CB) and can play any coverage out of it.  It has worked great for us. 

Some of those coverages includes cover 2, press quarters, man free, 2 man and our fire zones. We also play some hole coverages where we play a 3rd safety in the hole. We have a few variations that I like to play. 

The simpler you keep it for your players the more effective they will be. 

This is my defensive philosophy in a nut shell. If you would like to discuss it with me, reach out on twitter and would be more than happy to share my thoughts.

All the best,

Coach Kou