Drills to Perfect Your Pursuit of the Screen Pass.

Relentless hustle and pursuit, along with proper angles and leverage, are keys to successfully defending the screen. We stress the importance of 11 players giving maximum effort running to the football every play. Accountability and repetition are keys to be successful in this point of emphasis. All 11 players are graded every game or scrimmage play to be held accountable. Our coaches confront and demand hustle and pursuit in practice repetitions.

We invest time prior to our individual portion of practice to drill hustle and pursuit. We have a variety of pursuit drills that not only emphasize and give us crucial repetition at pursuit, but also work on other specific parts of our defense. They include:

•  Angle Hustle and Pursuit Drill

•  To-the-Pile Hustle and Pursuit Drill

•  Effort Hustle and Pursuit Drill

•  Blitz Hustle and Pursuit (cover 0) Drill

•  Fire Zone Hustle and Pursuit Drill

•  Screen Hustle and Pursuit Drill

The Screen Hustle and Pursuit Drill is ideal for an aggressive defense to learn responsibilities vs. screens, and also teach the importance of pursuit vs. the screen. Once the ball is caught in a basic running back screen, it becomes a pursuit drill. Success in defending a screen comes down to the speed in which your players recognize that it is a screen, how they perform their responsibility and how well they pursue.

In film meetings while watching screens, prior to running this drill, we stress characteristics of screens with our players so they can recognize them quicker.
General Characteristics of Screens

Offensive line:  Releases block, or doesn’t block anybody and works upfield.

Running back: Lets defenders by in pass protection, sets up for screen.

Quarterback: Drops back deeper than normal, or backpedals.

Wide Receivers: Run lazy routes - routes that are not a part of any route combination, or start to stalk block.

Individual team screen characteristics can be found from film study.

Defensive Responsibilities vs. Screen

Pursuit: It is imperative for players to take proper angles and run to the ball. Recognition and hustle are key elements in making sure that a screen is not a big play. Pursuit is part of all players’ responsibility and for some, once the screen is recognized, pursuit becomes their sole responsibility.

Re-trace and find recipient: Players with interior pass rush responsibility should generally be the first ones to recognize the screen. Offensive linemen will show pass, then push or let defenders by. It is important for the defensive line to realize that they did not beat their man but were invited upfield because of the screen. These players should re-trace their steps, see the direction of the offensive linemen working upfield and find the recipient of the screen.

Force: The ultimate flat player of your coverage should be the force player. The force player is responsible for turning the play back to the inside. He must make sure that the ball carrier is not able to run up the sideline. Many times he will have to take on a lead blocker and physically turn the play back inside.

Attack inside out:  This is usually the inside linebacker to the side of the screen; that is, in zone terms, the hook to curl player, or the next guy playing an underneath zone inside of the flat player. He must take a direct path to the ball. He will more than likely have to take on a blocker, in which case he needs to be physical. His leverage on blocks is defined by the ball carrier.

Post man: This is the deepest player to the side of the screen. If the ball gets to him, he will need to make an open-field tackle. He can give ground to play off of a stalk block and should keep the ball in front of him.

Touchdown prevention: This is usually the corner away from the screen. Once he recognizes screen, the play becomes like a toss sweep away from him. He should sprint with a deep angle, intersecting the ball carrier on the sideline inside of the far pylon. If a screen pops, his effort will determine whether the play might score.

Contain/pursuit: To make sure that the ball is thrown, contain players will continue to rush the quarterback. Once the ball is thrown, they find their pursuit angle.

Drill Set-Up

Equipment: 2 trash cans, 4 hand-held shields and a football.

Scouts needed: 4 lead blockers to hold the hand-held shields (2 on each side), 2 rabbits (one on each side), 3 offensive linemen (use coaches, or scout team offensive players).

Using the 10-yard line going out as a line of scrimmage, set the ball in the middle of the field and set the trash cans up where the offensive tackles would be. Set the hand-held shields one and two yards outside the tackles on the LOS, respectively (Diagram 1).

Drill Procedure

You start and end all of these pursuit drills with a huddle. This is a good way to talk to the whole group. Make a defensive call, break the huddle and line up with a predetermined strength call. The coach running the drill will be the quarterback lined up in the shotgun. At this point, nobody knows the direction the screen is going (rabbit and lead blockers will not know the direction until the ball is thrown their way). We give a hot color or number in our cadence to let the offensive line know the direction that the screen is going. The center will snap the ball at any time after the direction is determined. The quarterback will go through a cadence and receive the snap.

Once the ball is snapped, the QB will take a deep drop looking both ways and finally throw to the rabbit on the side that the screen is going. At the same time, the offensive line is taking one step in pass protection, then pushing by the interior defensive linemen and releasing upfield in the direction of the screen. The defensive players should see it as a pass to start, then recognize that it is a screen.

When the ball is caught by the rabbit, it now becomes a pursuit drill with two blockers. The other rabbit and lead blockers are not in the drill when the ball doesn’t come their way. The outside lead blocker should find the force player and block him with the hand-held shield. The inside lead blocker should find the next player inside and peel around to block him inside. The rabbit should take the ball and run outside and look to split the two lead blockers, then work up the sideline and sprint until the whistle.

The defense should perform their screen responsibilities and sprint to the ball. Once a defensive player gets to the ball carrier, he should two hand touch him in a football position and then jog behind. The whistle will be blown when the touchdown-prevent player gets to the ball carrier. At that time, the defense should get a breakdown and sprint back between the two trash cans, go around the outside of them, and form a huddle.


Example of Drill Responsibilities

This is a four-down cover 3 example:

Defensive front:

Our interior defensive linemen are key in recognizing and defending the screen. This drill may be the most beneficial to them because it helps them understand being pushed and retracing for the screen. A coaching point for them is that it is not pass interference if they make contact with the receiver of a screen before the ball gets there although it is illegal for them to hold a receiver. The point is that the recipient of the screen must be behind the LOS or the offense would be called for an illegal receiver downfield. For the sake of the drill, we do not allow them to knock down the rabbits. Our ends must contain rush, then turn and sprint once the ball is thrown (Diagram 2).

Diagram 2.
$ E - Contain, make sure that ball is thrown/pursue
T N - Feel release (push by) re-trace steps, follow direction of OL/pursue

Linebackers:

The linebackers start the drill by taking a read step, then pass dropping while recognizing the key of the offensive linemen working upfield for the screen. It becomes an angle pursuit drill for the inside backer and alley player away from the direction of the screen. The flat player to the screen side should take on the outside lead blocker and force the rabbit inside, then pursue the rabbit. The inside backer to the side of the screen should take on the inside lead blocker and force the rabbit to cut. He will also pursue the rabbit when his responsibility is taken care of (Diagram 3).

Diagram 3.
H - (Screen side) force, make ball carrier cut inside, do not give up the sideline
Q - (Away from screen) pursue
S - (Screen side) attack inside out take direct path to the ball and be physical
M - (Away from screen) pursue

Defensive Backs:

The free safety will drop to the middle third. Once he recognizes screen, he breaks downhill and pursues with an inside out angle similar to defending a sweep. The corner to the side of the screen is the “post man”. This means that he can give some ground, but he has to make sure that he stays over the top of blocks and gets himself in position to make an open field tackle on the rabbit. The backside corner will drop to his third and become the player to prevent the touchdown. He will take a deep angle to be sure that the rabbit does not score up the sideline (Diagram 4).

Diagram 4.
C - (Screen side) post man, keep depth, sort out blockers and be in position to make open field tackle
C - (Away from screen) pursue/touchdown prevent
FS - Pursue

Diagram 5 shows how it looks with it all put together.

Variations:

There are countless changes and tweaks that you can make to this drill limited only to your imagination. For example;

•  Change the defensive call to change player responsibilities.

•  Change the hash.

•  Give the defense a different formation to defend changing player responsibilities.

•   Have the rabbit run inside instead of outside.

•  Sprint out throwback.

•  Use wide receiver screens. 
 


 
About the author: Tim Driscoll is in his 10th season at Michigan Tech, serving as both assistant head coach and defensive coordinator. He previously served as defensive coordinator at Minnesota-Crookston. Driscoll also coached at both Jamestown College and Northern Michigan. He holds both a Bachelor’s Degree and Master’s Degree from North Dakota State.

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More Articles on this subject are on AmericanFootballMonthly.com

QB/Run/Screen Options off the Zone Run Game – December, 2012
Packaging the Inside Zone with the Bubble Screen Out of the Stack Formation – April, 2010
Stifling the Screen Pass – June, 2008