AFM Home | Back Issues | May 2005 | Plattville

DEFENDING THE TRIPLE OPTION

By Nathan Cochran
Defensive Line Coach, UW-Plattville

At UW-Platteville we run a 3-4 defense because we believe it gives us the best opportunity to compete in our conference (See Diagram l).

Diagram 1.

We utilize speed because we are often undersized on the defensive line. Every year we face opponents (UW-River Falls and Augustana-Illinois) who run the option. We used a simple adjustment to our defense that allows us to defend these teams and not have to make drastic changes to our defense.

When you play option teams they force the defense to be assignment sound. You don’t want to take chances by blitzing and stunting because the offense can gash you if you get caught out of position. Option offenses are going to rack up yardage on the ground, no matter how good your defense plays. Unless your defense is an overpowering monster, the offense will get their “three-yards and a cloud

Diagram 2A.

of dust.” The focus when facing these teams is limiting production on first down, trying to keep them in third-and-long situations and keeping them out of the end zone. As a defensive staff we take these things into consideration when developing our game plan. We wanted to keep things pretty “vanilla” and play assignment-sound football.

We utilized a stack adjustment that gave us a 5-3 look in our defense. The adjustment gave us the ability to play eight in the box and left us the ability to be effective against the pass (Diagrams 2A, 2B).

We aligned our defensive tackles in a 5

Diagram 2B.

technique on the offensive tackles and our nose in a zero on the center. We believed this alignment gave us the opportunity to play games with our front people and still be assignment sound (Diagrams 3, 4, 5). The defensive line’s main objective is to tackle the fullback on the dive and to keep the offensive linemen from getting to our linebackers.

Our linebackers align five yards deep with their outside leg splitting the middle of the 5 Technique defensive tackle. In this alignment our linebacker can either play B-Gap and the fullback on Dive or they can scrape and play the quarterback to Pitch. Our outside linebackers align in a head-up 8-technique on the tight end (Ghost 8 if there is no tight end).

Diagram 3.

From this alignment he can play the quarterback or Pitch.

The biggest adjustment we make is our strong safety’s alignment. His alignment is seven yards deep and directly behind the nose. We move our strong safety into the box so it gives us eight in the box at all times. His alignment allows him to scrape inside out on most plays. The deeper alignment is also keeping him from running into the linebackers as he is scraping. His responsibilities are Dive-to-QB-to-Pitch.

Our corners have to stay sharp during the game. Because of the nature of the offense

Diagram 4.

we play a lot of man coverage with our corners. We feel that our athletes can lock-up with their athletes. The corners have rules for their alignment. For example, if the ball is in the middle of the field and the #1 wide receiver to his side aligns on or past the numbers, he is to align 1-2 yards inside of the receiver and 7 yards deep. We assess from our scouting reports that when the teams line their receivers up like this, they are not planning on throwing them the ball. It is also a hard throw to make and the corners can use the sideline as an extra defender. For blocking purposes, it does not allow the wide receivers to get a good angle on our corners and they can offer some run support once

Diagram 6.

they have determined that the play is a run. Our free safety plays deep middle. His job is to get depth and play the ball to the side it is thrown. His responsibility is always play the pass first (See Diagram 6).

Diagram 5.