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AMERICAN FOOTBALL MONTHLY THE #1 RESOURCE FOR FOOTBALL COACHES
Article CategoriesAFM Magazine
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The BuzzHow to find, teach and dominate with the Buzz defensive end.“Ideally, we want this position to be fast enough to put an offensive lineman on an island by using his speed and hands, be physical enough to spill a kick-out block, and athletic enough to drop into coverage occasionally.” by: Adam Howard © More from this issue 
Learning how to adjust to the strengths of your athletes without straying from your defensive philosophy is essential at the Division III level. At Baldwin-Wallace College we do not eliminate players from our recruiting pool based on what they look like or their size. Our goal is to recruit quality people who are productive in the classroom and on the field. As a result of this philosophy we may have players who don’t fit the traditional mold of their position, but have abilities that counterbalance their size. Every spring we spend time evaluating the strengths of our players to determine what players we can count on for the following year, and we also evaluate what we need to change in our defense to try to play to these strengths. After the 2002 season we realized that our Sam linebacker had a great motor and that he was great at working within a limited amount of space. We decided that we were better served to move him to defensive end (Buzz) and use his speed. Making a decision to move a player his senior year wasn’t an easy decision. You have to know specifically what it takes to play every position on your defense to be able to accurately assess a player’s ability to play that position. We have come up with a method to identify the priorities of every position on defense. We use this method to organize, teach and keep records of the specific techniques and responsibilities of each position. We use an acrostic to help our players memorize their priorities. I asked every defensive coach to list in order the responsibilities of their positions and to come up with a phrase that will help them remember their priorities. For example, the defensive end’s phrase or acrostic is All Great Honors are Given to Reliable Players on a Mission. In order for our defensive linemen to have success they must Align properly, Get Off on the ball, use their Hands, control their Gap, React to block patterns, Pursue, and Make the Play. Based on the previous year, our Sam linebacker lacked the ability to fulfill the responsibilities of a linebacker in our defense because he had trouble dropping into coverage, but he had a great motor, used his hands well, was strong enough to control a gap, was fast enough to react on the run, and he proved to be productive at the point of attack. He possessed all the abilities to perform for us at the defensive line, but lacked some ability to fulfill all the responsibilities we require at the linebacker position. As a result, he finished the year with 13 sacks and was named the defensive lineman of the year in the Ohio Athletic Conference. Since the 2002 season we’ve taken a more objective approach to evaluating what we expect from each position, which has helped us to place players in positions based on their abilities and how they fit into our defense. Once we’ve identified a player’s strengths then the next phase is to plan specifically how we can put that player into a position that will allow him to use his ability. The Buzz position in our defense is our defensive end that lines up to the side of the offensive strength. Ideally we want this position to be fast enough to put an offensive lineman on an island by using his speed and hands, be physical enough to spill a kick-out block, and athletic enough to drop into coverage occasionally. One major advantage to having a defensive end that is athletic is that we don’t have to make personnel changes when we want to go from a 4-3 alignment to a 3-4 alignment. We simply shift our front toward our most athletic defensive end. See Diagrams 1-4 for some examples of fronts that we used to put the Buzz in different positions:  Diagram 1.  Diagram 2.  Diagram 3.  Diagram 4. The next phase is to identify what techniques the Buzz will use from these different positions and identify the most useful drills to hone the skills of this position. We organize the drills in order of the acrostic we designed for the position which provides the player with an easy to learn progression. Above is an example of the Buzz acrostic. Each day the position coach will be responsible for working on each of these areas and filling out the drill record. Based on our emphasis and the game plan that week we will determine what drills would be most beneficial that week. For example, if we are facing a team that relies on the power off tackle play, we’ll spend more time working on spilling the kick out block with the Buzz. This sounds simple, but it’s easy to go back to drills that you’re comfortable doing every day, even if they are not relative to the types of plays they’ll see that week. We say we’ll work on each phase of the progression every week and we’ll decide during our game plan meeting where the percentages of our time will be spent based on the style of offense the opponent runs. As the season progresses we have an objective measurement of everything we’ve worked on up to that point. This allows us to be critical based on facts. If we find that our Buzz is at the point of attack, but he’s just not finishing plays, we can refer to our acrostic to see how much we’ve been working on that phase of the position. This also helps the players to gain an understanding of what it takes to play each position, and relate the drills specifically to the area in which we are focusing. The acrostic also serves as a great method for the position coaches to stay organized throughout the season. We use this method with every position on defense.
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