Flexbone v "Defense of the Week"

[kc361]

Coaches,

We face quite a few teams that completely abandon their base defense during the week that they play us. One team (that is normally a 5-2 Cloud team) played us with a 4-4 and 6-1 Sky.

So, the situation is...
You are facing a 4-3 team. But, you are anticipating a "defense of the week." You are not sure which defense. How do you prepare (game plan and practice plan).

Thanks for the input, fellas.

kc

[bobbyd]

If I am playing a 43 team I would anticipate they would bring backers up to a 6-1 look. We would prepare to block 3 los players on midline. At times we have scout defense lineup anywhere and make our players think of their rules. I also try to find out if they have ever played option team,maybe a scrimmage. See what they do on goalline ,some people will play option team in goalline. See how they play trips ,endover, 4 wide against non option teams,generally teams will lineup the same way against a formation.

[coachveer]

Coach-
Is the 6-1 just with the Sam and Will walked up. Or are they reduced one way or another in an Over/Under front?

[bkoption]

We run into this siutation a lot! one thing we do from the off season on, is work our base pakage against every front we see. Our offense especially our O-LINE has seen it all so they don't get freeked out, they just use there rules and go.

I always make them refer back to our most basic rules. for example if we are running inside veer, we all know that the dive read is the first downlineman outside of a 3 technique. In that sense it doesn't really matter where they are if we can identify the dive read and the pitch read. Everyone else has to be dealt with.
We usually end up with about 5 distinct fronts, not counting subtle variations like the DT inside/outside shade.

The other thing that we always do is after the offenses first series we huddle on the sideline (we are geneerally a 2 platoon team) and identify the defense (both front and coverage) then we adjust and go from there. There are weeks we know that we may not have any idea what they are going to be "in" until we get into the game. Sometimes not until after we watch the game film!!! We always seem to get teams who run a 4-3 against everyone else in the world but against us they come out in a 5-3 or a double eagle 50. It gets ridiculous. Every now and then we will get a team who just goes super un orthadox and we can't even clasify the deffense. In the past we would lean on our power game until we got it figured out. Know I think it will be our "new" passing game that will take that part of the load.

[Rebel Yell]

Bk- would you think that a threat in thepassing game area would make more teams play their base stuff and less "garbage defense". That is our hope. we are spending a ton of time developing our passing game for that very reason. it has not been easy,but we will get it done.

[coachjimd]

rebell yell,
That is my thought too but im having a hard time figuring out how to steal that extra time....what is your focus in the pass game??

[bkoption]

I think it will because the threat of the pass should force the defense to make sure they are sound in ALL aspects, not just to the option. With the pass we are hoping to acomplish a couple of things. 1. remove defenders from the box 2. limit the number of possible fronts we may see

I am sure the option will help out the passing game in a sililar manner.

As for the practice time, that is the million dollar question. We have dedicated much of our spring to implementing, developing and practicing the new parts of our offense (the forward pass