Dave Aranda Ron Roberts Baylor Football Defense Pressure Package

 Dave Aranda-The innovator of 4 man simulated pressures

Dave Aranda is well known throughout the college ranks for his simulated pressure package. This is a package that involves bringing a LB as a 4th rusher and dropping a defensive lineman into coverage. It's a term used to bring a 2nd level defender yet drop a defensive lineman to replace him at the next level. The nice thing about it is you can bring the defender and still have all your coverage responsibilities taken care of with 7 players playing zone concepts on the back end.

They run a ton of split field concepts with the pressures and have various coverage checks, which I don't have all the answers to but if you study them you will see several variations and concepts in which they check coverages with what looks like different tags depending on formation. 

Coach Aranda will utilize simulated pressure concepts both when playing zone and also in man free situations. In man situations he will use the DE to cover a running back or play a zone underneath while everyone else is in man.

He will also run some what is called creeper pressures. A creeper or what I call a show pressure is basically a mug look with either 2 or 1 LB showing pressure. From here, you will get some type of pressure with a LB or Safety that isn't aligned on the line of scrimmage. 

That is really the major difference between a creeper and simulated pressure. Coach Hoover gives a good breakdown here. 

Let's look at some of the concepts as he runs them from both his tite front and 4-2 package:

Tite Front:

Baylor plays it a few ways:
One is standard with 2 4i's with Pitre to the field.

Adjustment #1

They can adjust either side and play an eagle look as demonstrated below on the right hand side.

Adjustment #2 

Bear  Adjustment

vs. Oklahoma State, Baylor played some snaps of Bear front.

 Also, they can play a base 4-2-5 and run their pressures out of this look. Often they play it with  3 technique and a shade NG.

4-2 front

4-2

Part 1 Zone Coverage Concepts

Coach Aranda will play a ton of zone coverages with simulated pressures. They will bring 4 rushers drop a defensive end into coverage quite often. Coach Aranda wants to be solid on the back end so this system has been effective. You will rarely see a flat out cover 0 pressure from Coach Aranda.

Zone 4 man Simulated Pressures with zone coverage:

Front:4-2

The first one we will look at is a cover 2, 4 man pressure.  

The DE to the boundary drops and plays the curl as the will LB plays the middle hook.

The Mike is on the pressure to the field.

Mike blitzes de usually drops opposite. 

De drops to the weakside opposite the pressure.

Here are 2 clips of the coverage below:

They run the same coverage vs Kansas. 
Front 4-2. Bring the sam and play the de to the boundary as a curl defender. The LB's play it with mike pushing to the curl and will pushing to the hook.

Sam blitzes de drops opposite to the flat. 

You can see the mike pushing to the curl and the will pushing to the hook.

Another 4 man pressure with a safe cover 2 behind it. 

Front:Tite Front

Blitz #2 is brining the sam linebacker and dropping the defensive end to the boundary.

The coverage is a cover 3. If they run the ball, then the DE will play the run. 

They run this from their tight front as that's what Aranda likes to run vs 12 personnel formations.

Sam comes the OLB drops opposite. 

The OLB forces the give and then comes underneath.

Nice job of forcing the give as the c gap player then ripping underneath to make the play.

Here is a 2nd version of the blitz vs Iowa State. They guess right and the DE is there to make the play in the flat.

Front:4-2 show

Vs. Kansas State-they bring the same Sam pressure concept and play cover 3 on a few occasions.

2nd and 15, Mike showing so technically a mug/creeper pressure. But the 2nd example they bring the sam from depth without showing. 

Here comes the sam off the edge and they drop the De opposite. 

Front:4-2

scenario #2 

They bring the sam from depth and play cover 3. 

The same blitz in the diagram below. Bring the sam and drop a de. 

They play cover 3 and run the sim pressure. 

Nice design and safe blitz concept.

creeper/mug pressure concepts

Front:4-2 nickel

CB Sim Pressure

Creeper and mug pressures are when the defense shows pressure and brings some type of blitz with the show look. Baylor is excellent at this concept.

One of their favorite pressures is bringing the boundary CB.

3rd and 9 Vs Iowa State, they brought the boundary cb and play cover 2..They bring the cb to the b gap and play cover 2 with the defensive end to the field dropping into coverage.

The same concept but with a game. 4 man sim edge pressure but again 7 guys in coverage.

They get a 3 man snag concept

In the next situation, they bring the boundary CB but play cover 3 on 2nd and 10. They have 2 curl defenders and the DE drops to the flat. The De is in good position but misses the tackle on what should have been a short gain. 

Another 4 man concept with the CB. Still a 4 man pressure.

CB comes off the hash ad gets decent pressure.

Both clips are in the videos below:

One last blitz with the CB.

They get 12 personnel with an Ace formation. 2 tight ends on the ball. They bring the CB to the boundary and would be cover 3 if they throw the ball. The cb comes unblocked and makes a nice play on the handoff.

Another blitz to the boundary with the CB

CB makes the tackle on the play.

Nice design and concept.

Man to Man coverage concepts:

Sim pressures with man coverage:

Baylor will also run some of these presssure concepts with man coverage.

Here is an interception vs Kansas State.

They bring the mike LB and play man free with the DE as a rat defender. He disrupts the crossing route here which leads to the interception.

They send the mike and drop both DE into rat coverage. 

good rat principle on the te. The DE is a rat defender with 2 safeties free.

RB stays in to block.

Good defense by Aranda. 

These are just some of the simulated and mug pressure concepts you will see from Dave Aranda at Baylor that has been a huge part of his success.

LSU vs Miami 2018

While at LSU he ran some of the same concepts 

Vs Empty 

He’s in a tite front and brings the mike. 

They play man free with the de/olb as rat defenders.Mike comes clean on the pressure. 

They go tite front and bring the cb to the boundary. They go 3 under 3 deep and get the interception. Miami anticipates man coverage and gets baited into the throw. 

Other Resources about Coach Aranda' Defense:

blitzology notes-tite front, split coverages and more.

http://www.blitzology.com/search/label/Dave%20Aranda

Aranda 2 read  https://throwdeeppublishing.com/blogs/news/one-coverage-that-solves-a-ton-of-problems

https://throwdeeppublishing.com/blogs/news/the-bay-and-the-bayou-justin-wilcox-and-dave-aranda-s-defenses

https://www.andthevalleyshook.com/2018/3/21/17134160/lsu-football-2018-film-room-dave-aranda-defense

https://www.crimsonandcreammachine.com/2021/11/11/22771405/oklahoma-sooners-football-baylor-bears-defense-dave-aranda-jalen-pitre-siaki-ika-matt-rhule

Aranda Youtube video on defending the spread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sWXmFi430o

Aranda vs Oklahoma Offense Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ_okR73kzA

How Dave Aranda's Baylor Defense stifled Oklahoma's Offense-Part 1

 Part 1-run defense 

This article focuses on how Baylor defended Oklahoma on early downs and effectively defended the run. Part 2 will look at passing downs and how they handled 3rd down. 

In 2021 Baylor played Oklahoma and defeated them 27-14. Dave Aranda and Ron Roberts put together a great game plan to stifle Oklahoma and really slow down it's high octane offense. They really mixed up their defenses nicely, played more 4-2 fronts and made some nice adjustments with their tite front. 
Baylor held Oklahoma to 14 points, with 7 of those coming late in the game with the game considerably out of reach. 

A couple key points in the game:

Scoring Offense: Oklahoma averaged 36 points per game on the year. Holding them to 14 was quite a feat. A credit to the coaching staff for taking away what Oklahoma does best. 

Rushing Defense: Baylor held Oklahoma to 82 yards rushing on 29 carries. That's less than 3 yards per carry. They held top back Kennedy Brooks to 14 carries for 55 yards, less than 4 yards per carry! That from a player that averaged 6.9 yards per carry and close to 100 yards per game. 

Pass Defense: Oklahoma was 13/22 on offense for a very low 178 yards. They also allowed no passes for TD's and had 2 interceptions. 

3rd down: Oklahoma was 2/9 on 3rd down. That's 22%. Oklahoma averaged 41% on the year. 

Total Yards: Baylor's Defense held Oklahoma to 260 total yards. That is impressive.

FRONTS

Let's look at some of the schemes Baylor used vs. Oklahoma. Baylor and Aranda are well know for their tite front but they used it very sparingly in this game.

On 1st and 2nd down, they ran the following fronts:

4-2 front 37 times. That's 37/47 times for 78%. That isn't including goal line. 

They were in an odd look for 10 snaps. 

They ran their traditional tite front 3 times and a tite front with a 5 technique opposite the back, 7 times.  They put the 5 technique opposite the back to help them with Oklahoma's run game.  They also moved at time with this front.

4-2 front vs 11 personnel (te flexed)

4-2 vs 11 TE to the boundary. They set the 3 technique to the field

They emphasized spilling everything which you can see below in the videos.

Tite front adjustment (5 technique opposite the running back). They would often move or slant away fro the back. This disrupted the Oklahoma run game(counter, wrap). In the situation below, they move the defensive tackle Nose Guard, defensive left tackle and left defensive end. 

Run game:

One thing they did was take on pullers and really bring the De down and spill everything. This was very successful in disrupting the counter  run scheme Oklahoma loves to run. In the next 2 examples, Oklahoma comes out in 12 personnel and you can see the spill technique.

Example #1 

Oklahoma tight wing and runs counter to the wing side.

Example #2

Oklahoma in 12 with the other TE split to the field with the on the line TE to the boundary. 

They bring the field TE in motion and try to run counter to the boundary. Baylor spills it and does a great job keeping it to a 2 yard gain. 

Here a few clips of Baylor doing a great job spilling the ball and playing it well on the outside and the secondary.

Here they play the same concept under the tite front. They still get it bounced and hold the Sooners to no gain.  Nice job by #52 spilling it.

The other thing that was effective was their run blitzing on 1st down. They brought the sam linebacker and played man coverage behind it. This helped take away some easy access, rpo, quick game type throws.

They start the game with a run blitz with the sam. 

Next time, Oklahoma goes play action but the sam pressure gets the qb to pull it down.  

After the first 2, they bring the corner to the boundary the next time. Oklahoma tries to take a shot but the safety recovers and makes a great play.

On the next first down, Oklahoma goes flea flicker and Baylor doesn't bring pressure. Nice coaching by Aranda taking off the pressure and mixing it up on 1st down. He guesses right and Oklahoma has no place to go with the ball.

On early downs later they bring pressure again. On the play below they bring the sam and get the pressure home as the RB misses the block off play action. 

The early down perimeter blitzes of either the Sam or the CB was a very effective part of the game and highly effective.

Here are the concepts discussed above on film.

Coverages vs 12 

Short motion Adjustments

When they got short motion or jet they would pass it off and the LB away from the jet motion would filter back into the box. It gave them a +1 advantage. You can see it in the example below. 

Pass coverages

Early downs:

They played a ton of man free and 2 man this game. These were two of their mostly used coverages. They matched up well and the man scheme was very effective throughout the game. 

But overall the key came down to 3 things:

1. spilling the ball in the run game.

2. Playing a ton of man coverages

3. Early blitz and pressures that disrupted their offense.

 

3rd down

Oklahoma was 2/9 on the day vs Baylor.

As discussed, saw a ton of man coverages:cover 2 man and man free.

Here they play 2 man on a key 3rd and 8 in the 1st half.

They get double coverage on the 1 wr and do a nice job downfield. They get off the field on a key 3rd down.

A nice job overall and a great job by Aranda and staff.