Let me introduce myself. I coach football at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon at the freshman level, entering my second season at Thurston. I have also coached for one year at Centennial High School, in Gresham, OR.
I started this blog partially to work through my own coaching philosophy and partially to force myself to study. I intend to post at least once a week about what I am learning and what our team is experiencing during the season. So here goes nothing!
At THS, we recently changed defensive coordinators, and with that, defensive schemes. Our old defensive coordinator, Bill Smith, coached at Thurston for 40-plus years, and his defense has always been the Bear, or 46 defense. Now, the Bear is excellent against two-back and even pro-style teams, but we found ourselves getting carved up by teams in our league that spread the field, whether it was option-read concepts or quick passing plays.
Our new coordinator, Dietrich Moore, who has coached at Marist and South Eugene HS previously, as well as playing at the University of Oregon, wanted a defense that would better defend teams that spread the field. And we think we have found it in a defense with 3-4 spacing and two-gap principles, called Ohio. We picked this up from a coaching clinic at the University of Oregon, and it was so convincing that we decided to change our original plan. And Dietrich, being a former player, can ask Nick Aliotti for advice at any time. Pretty nice to have that kind of advice available!
OHIO
We call our base package Ohio, for really no reason other than that was what Dietrich came up with. We are excited about the potential of this defense because of how much emphasis it places on the perimeter. And the key to this defense is the defensive linemen.
When a defensive lineman two-gaps, they are responsible for both gaps on either side of the lineman they line up on. It is a difficult concept to teach when your team has been in the Bear for many years. Just the instruction on two-gapping itself merits another blog post. I fear it will be difficult for us this season to break our old habits, but we will see. You will also notice, when we reference 3-4, that means we have three defensive linemen and four linebackers, for those not familiar with this kind of terminology.
Here is what Ohio looks like, complete with two-gapping defensive linemen.
This defense has another benefit that you may notice. We line up according what side of the field we are on. The Sam is always to the wide side of the field, or field, and the Liz is always to the short side of the field, or boundary. And every player lines up either to the field or boundary (except the nose). This creates balance, five players on both side of the field, and minimal adjustments. You will never see one of our players running across the formation to stick with motion, which Dietrich wanted to avoid. Let's a take a look at what our run fits look like.
Run fits
Some teams are spill teams, meaning they try to clog the middle and spill everything to the outside. We are not. We use our Sam and Liz as force players, meaning they want to set the edge and allow nothing outside of them. They must force all the action inside. The linemen are two-gapping, which means striking their man hard, separating, and looking for the ball.
Let's look here a simple stretch or outside zone to the boundary. You will notice the Liz setting the edge, allowing no one outside of him. The Will is looking for the C gap. Both the Mike and Will are C gap players. They try to overlap with the two-gapping defensive lineman. The Mike is taking two shuffle steps before finding the ball. If he is unsure, he finds the B gap. The End is striking his tackle hard with leverage and power, pushing him back. The Nose is fighting across the center and not getting reached. The Stud here is fighting across the tackle and not allowing him to cross his face, thus negating the tackle's down block.
Notice here that the free safety must be involved. Once he is sure the play is a run, he is filling the backside C gap. The corners and rover, once run has been established, are flying to the ball.
Now based on the run fits, the weakness is the A gaps. Blast, iso, other runs that attack up the middle can have success against this defense. I will discuss the ways to defend these types of runs at a later date.
ESPN's film room has a nice breakdown.
Check it out starting at the 3:00 minute mark.
You will notice the Trevor Matich has picked up what the Ducks (and now Thurston Colts) want to do: force action into the C gap, where there are at least three players in the very near vicinity, with many more rallying to the ball.On the backside, the free safety must fill the backside C gap, as shown in the run fits drawing.
Coverages
As far as coverages go, our varsity will play what we call Autozone, which is another gem we picked up from the Ducks. The way we play this is simple. If a team lines up in any kind of 3x1 formation, the secondary is automatically in Cover 3. (3x1 means three receivers on one side of the formation and one on the other.) If they come out in 2x2, automatically Cover 4. If a team starts in 3x1 but motions to 2x2, it is an automatic check to Cover 4. If they start in 2x2 but motion to 3x1, then check to Cover 3. Pretty easy. There are also several ways to play Cover 4, which I admit I do not fully understand at this point. I do know it often looks like different coverages but all works out to Cover 4. If the offense motions to empty, that will be a check we make based on offensive tendencies during the season.
So that's our base package. We have a few different pressures (pressures, not blitzes) in Ohio, and we also utilize fire zones, something I will explain in more detail in a future post. We also will continue to work the Bear front against two-back teams and for goal-line defense.
Follow me on Twitter at Coach_JPhillips and check back to this blog for future posts. Make sure you leave a comment if you are unsure what something means, or have any questions. God bless, have a great day!
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