Succesful Ways to defend the Air Raid Football Offensive System

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Defending the Air Raid

Mike Leach, Mike Gundy, Phil Longo, Lincoln Riley and Hal Mumme are a few coaches that implement the air raid offensive system. It is an offensive system that relies primarily on the short passing game with various pass concepts implemented.  The air raid offense is a great passing offense that has had success over the years. But teams are starting to adjust and coping with the offense  As teams become more familiar with it they have become accustomed to some of the plays and realized how to handle the reads and progressions. 

This article looks at how 4 teams defended the air raid, Kentucky, Iowa State, SD State, Utah and Duke.

Three things you are starting to see more of:

1. Teams are starting to only rush 3 men and play coverage. Don't blitz!

2. Play zone coverage , take away the seems and deep crossing routes and rally to the short passes check downs.  Don't let them throw the ball over your head, especially to the middle of the field. Play a middle of the field defender, but also play a lb in the short middle hook zone along with  your 3 man rush. Take away the shallow cross, mesh and 4 verts with the bender off the mike concepts. 

3. Dare them to run the football with soft boxes. Most air raid coaches won't have the discipline to run the football against these light boxes. That was evident in the 2 games I analyzed below. 

4. Tampa 2 and 2 hole are 2 coverages I would utilize. I also feel it’s imperative to play inside leverage and force the ball outside in 2 man. Another tough coverage is 2 man while only sending 3 rushers. These are a few defenses that can cause some issues.  

5. Mix in some pressures and show pressure trying to make the back stay in. You can do this with man or fire zones. Getting the back to stay in is imperative with how some of their progressions and reads are utilizied. This causes some issues in their concepts when you force the Rb to stay in. 

As discussed, one of the things you will see often now is teams playing 3 man fronts and only rushing 3 men. They are playing more zone behind it forcing the check downs and rallying to the football. The other factor is they are daring teams to run the football with light boxes and teams are choosing to continue to throw it. 

In 2021, you saw this movement in several games. I studied Mississippi State against 2 teams that had success against them.

Let's look at 2 games Texas A & M  who held Mississippi State to 14 points but only 7 points offensively  and Kentucky who held Mississippi State to 2 points and shut them out defensively. In both games, teams really sat back and played soft coverage.  Texas & M brought 5 man or more pressures 4 times. Kentucky brought 1 5 man pressure the entire game. That is a very low number of blitzes for 2 college football games. 

Lets look at Texas A & M.
Mississippi State threw the ball 47 times vs Texas A & M. 

Texas A & M ran the following pressure concepts:

3 man rushes on 30 pass snaps or 65% of the snaps

4 man rushes on  14 snaps or 30% of the snaps 

5 man pressure 3 times which was only 5% of the snaps. 

Coverage analysis: 45/47 snaps were zone coverage. That's 96% of the snaps in zone coverage.

As far as offensively , Mike Leach only ran the ball 11 times for 25 yards. They were very 1 dimensional and made no effort to run the football. It goes back to my earlier point, dare them to run the football.

Vs.  Kentucky

Kentucky dominated defensively. They shutout Mississippi State, had pressure all game as Mississipppi State threw it a whopping 70 times.

They were 45/70 for 275 yards but threw 6 interceptions and 1 was returned for a touchdown. 

Kentucky rant the following concepts:

3 man pressures   55/70     79%  

4 man pressures    14/70   20%

5 man pressures   1/70     1%

Let's look at the coverage analysis: In the Kentucky  game it was quite easy as Kentucky played zone 100% of the time. That is very rare in a college football game that a team plays the same coverage all game. 

Run game: Miss St ran the ball 9 times for 29 yards.  They had light boxes but chose to run the ball 9 times and throw it 70 times. That isn't going to lead to much success with that pass to run ratio. 

Passes attempted more than 10 yards: Mississippi State was 4/13 for 55 yards and 3 interceptions on passes that were thrown deeper than 10 yards. Kentucky did an outstanding job of playing coverage, and keeping plays in front of them. They forced Mississippi State to take the check downs and when Mississippi State and Costello tried to force the deep ball, Kentucky was opportunistic and got several interceptions.

In game analysis:

We will look at some of the coverages but you saw both some cover 3 and 2/4 deep coverages throughout.

Cover 3 Strong- Kentucky played a ton of cover 3.

Here Kentucky plays cover 3 and forces the check down to the back. 

On 1st and 10, they play it again, cover 3 to the field with the safety inserting and the sam LB buzzing the flat.  Costello works the man side and could have thrown the ball to #2 on the bottom of the screen but took the check down and ends up getting 5 yards. For much of the day Kentucky took away the deeper passes with coverage.

Here are 2 clips of cover 3 strong

Cover 3 Weak- Kentucky played some cover 3 weak as well. Here they play it with the weak safety inserting as a a curl defender. He ends up taking the crosser on a key 4th and 10. Nice design and coverage leads to the sack.

Cover 3 with 2 pressed CB with a 3 man rush

Here's how the cover 3 with the 2 cb pressed looked vs Mississippi State

Cover 2 fire zone to the boundary

Heres the clip of the cover 2 fire zone.

All in all, these 2 teams game plans were excellent and really gave great insight on how to defend air raid teams. They kept plays in front of them played coverage and it worked exceptionally well.

 

Iowa State
Iowa State vs Oklahoma

Iowa State played Oklahoma twice in 2020 and held Oklahoma to 25.5 points in the 2 games which was 12 below their average. Not a bad job. Here are some of the schemes they used. 

Here are a few examples of how Iowa State played Oklahoma in 2020. They played some hole principles but they brought the safety down to play the run and become a flat defender and used the CB to the 1 wr side as a deep 1/2 player.

Nice scheme on the interception as Oklahoma tries to run a nice option route/curl  with #2.

 

  2nd and 20

Here's a nice 4 man pressure. They run a nice scheme and drop the defensive end. Good  pressure with 2 lbs coming and dropping the de to the hole.  which allows them to still keep  a 2 shell look.

Here's another example of cover 2 hole. The deep hole and shallow hole are both covered, which really takes away the middle of the field.

The concept is very effective vs the air raid.

 In the last example they play cover 2 hole. Cover 2 hole is a coverage when you have a middle hole and shallow hole defender and traditional cover 2 with everyone else.

San Diego State vs Hawaii

Some will argue that Hawaii is run and shoot but the pass game similarities are there.

 

San Diego State cover 2 vs 3x1 formations.

Here's another 3x1 variation: Here you see the middle safety carrying 3 vertical. The middle safety has a rule of carry 3 vertically or playing middle hook.

Here's another example in 2019:

You can see the middle hook safety jumps #3 vertical. They do an excellent job with the deep half safety getting over the top but using the safety as the extra defender in the middle of the field really helps 

The middle safety plays hook and has 3 vertical. Other than that it's cover 2 with everyone else.

In the next example,

2nd and 2 in the red zone

 San Diego sends the Mike and the 3rd safety drops down to play the hook. He plays off the mike and plays the run as SD runs a game with the nose and the end. 

The safety comes free and makes the play.

 

Utah run fits vs the Air Raid

In the run game, you can do a couple things. Utah liked to use the Safety as  a c gap player which makes things difficult. How do you account for him in the run game.

There are certain fits in the run game. It often depends on whether your ends are 4i  b gap players. In the example below, it looks like Utah has the de in 4i and the middle safety is responsible for c gap.

Utah run fit film

In the run game, Duke did a fairly nice job containing UNC in the run game in their 2019 game. One of the nice fronts they used was an odd front, with a walk up LB to the B gap to the side of the back.

Duke runs a 4-2 front but subbed more of an athletic DE/LB type Chris Rumph, who became a 4th round pick in the 2021 draft.  They played a lot of man free with some cover 2 and other coverages.

They did two things with the LB:

1. Blitz him B and disrupt the counter/wrap game

(notice he always went to the side of the back)

Here's another example and they play a game with the front side DE and LB to the field away from the back. Look how hard the DE comes down inside with the scrape exchange with the DE. Nice design again by Duke

2. Scrape exchange him with the 5 tech DE

The scheme has some merit in disrupting the run game. Remember 2019 UNC backfield had 2 NFL RB Michael Carter and Javonte Williams. 

It caused some havoc in the run game but they were able to get some pressure with the front as they used it quite often in passing downs as well.

Here is one situation where they brought a 5 man pressure after forcing the slide. UNC thinks Duke is bringing 4 weak so they slide that way, allowing the LB weak to come clean.

Here's a nice game on 3rd and 13.

They show pressure and drop to a cover 2 Tampa version with the Mike really getting depth.

They run a 3 man game with the DE and Rumph the stacked LB.

Later in the game, they try to run GT counter at it but this time run it out of 2 back. The Duke defense puts Rumph to the strong side and there is no place to run.

Rumph beats the OG and puller and makes the play

Here it is when NC ran traditional zone read.

Bonus Duke Footage odd 3-3 front with the walk up LB

Duke did a nice job with it's 3-2 walk up LB front disrupting the counter game and causing issues in protection.

These are how 5 teams handled the air raid offense.

Cincinatti vs SMU Air Raid.

2020 Cincinatti vs SMU

Cincinatti held SMU to under 300 yards of offense in 2020.

They did it primarily with a 3-2 base but mixing in some nice coverages. They keep SMU off balance with some pre snap looks and then moved to both 3 man pressures, some, 5 man cover 2 looks and really disrupted the passing game.

Here they bring the weak safety and mike and use the nickel as a deep 1/2 player.

A few more teams will be added as we go!