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Warren Central\'s Overload Blitz

Maintaining an aggressive mentality while being able to adapt to the multiple looks from different offenses.
by: Scott Marsh
Defensive Coordinator/Linebackers Coach, Warren Central H.S.
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For years the hallmark of the Warren Central defense has been an aggressive pressure mentality. For many years, most of that pressure was tied into man-to-man coverage. However, as the game has started to change and we are seeing fewer 21 personnel offenses, more shifting, more motioning, and more quarterbacks who are running threats as well as passing threats, we have evolved into a zone pressure defense. This has allowed us to keep our aggressive mentality while being adaptable to the multiple looks that we see from offenses in this day and age. We still believe that pressure wins games, but we also believe that we want eleven sets of eyes seeing and being able to tackle the football.

Generally, we run a combination of over and under fronts with one-high or two-high safeties. One of the staples of our zone pressure from a two-high look is the overload blitz. We feel that the overload blitz allows us to put maximum pressure on the offense while still staying gap sound vs. the running game as well as putting maximum pressure on many different protection schemes. On a week-to-week basis we will go into almost every game with a couple of overload pressures in our game plan.

Most of the time, our overload pressures will come from the wide side of the field and out of our under front. This alignment gives us a five technique (Anchor) and a shade to the field and a three technique and a five technique (Evil) into the boundary. Safeties align on the hashes in our normal Cover 2 shell. Our overload will come by sending two of three different people off the edge from the field. We can send any combination of our field outside linebacker (Rover), our field inside linebacker (Brick), or our field or free safety (See Diagram 1). By having two of those three taking edge fits, this allows us to run six different blitz looks with only one coverage concept behind it. We want to be multiple while staying simple and sound in coverage. We spend the greatest amount of time teaching this.

Diagram 1: Overload Alignment

Our overload pressures have several constants: We will ‘long stick’ the field end and cross-face the nose into the boundary. The outside blitzer will be the contain/force player and the inside blitzer will have what we call a ‘C Scrape’ blitz. We will drop the boundary end either underneath the #1 receiver or into the middle hole depending on the formation. The long stick end is taught to read the guard. If the guard is blocking down, close hard off of his rear end to spill. If the guard turns out to you, you are crossing his face into A gap. The C scrape blitzer is keying the feet of the offensive tackle. If the tackle steps with his inside foot first, the C scrape player is closing off of the rear end of the tackle and spilling any lead block against the run. If the tackle steps with his outside foot first, the C scrape player takes a B gap fit on the blitz. The contain blitzer is an outside fit no matter what. Consequently, this allows us to get a two-on-one against the offensive tackle on any fan protection scheme (See Diagram 2) or a two-on-one against a back on any full slide protection scheme. Against a full slide protection where the back is securing the edge, the C scrape player takes an inside fit on the back and the contain rusher takes an outside fit (See Diagrams 3 and 4).

Diagram 2: 2 x 2 Set/Overload vs. Fan Protection

Diagram 3: 2 x 2 Set/Overload vs. Full Slide

Diagram 4:Overload vs. 3 x 1 Formation

Behind the blitz, we are executing a three-under, three-deep coverage by spinning the safeties and dropping the boundary end. We will have two seam players and one hole player. The seam players are taught to carry any vertical by the #2 receiver to a depth of twelve yards, pass it on to the deep safety and shoot to the flat. Again, we feel that the most important part to teach is the coverage aspect. We spend the bulk of our overload installation refining the coverage off of one blitz look and add the multiple blitz combinations later.

The zone pressure is an important part of what we do and makes up about one third of our defensive snaps. We still believe that pressure wins games and we believe that players want to play in an aggressive defense. The zone pressure, and specifically the overload blitz, has given us the best of both worlds.






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