AFM Subscribers Ask With Joe Willis Part II • Head Coach • Cedar Park High School (TX)

What is your thought process as far as setting the front and linebackers to the back or away from the back when the offense is in the shotgun? Stephen Harward, Assistant Coach, North Harford High School, Pylesville, Maryland.

When planning vs. a one-back offense, there are a couple of things I want to know before we shade the front to or away from the RB. 1) Do they bounce the back? If they have the potential to check and bounce, then I am going to lean toward slant calls vs. shades. Those slants can be executed off of “heads or head-up” alignments and can be very disruptive to inside zone. 2) As far as which way I want slants or shades working depends on the RB and the QB and who we deem the greatest threat. If the QB is the greater threat, I recommend kicking the front toward the RB, which tends to funnel the ball inside.

I think you must explain and rep your plan so that everyone in the run support understands where the ball will end up with that call. Obviously, if the RB is the greatest threat, we would tend to kick or slant the front away from him to funnel the ball to the “backfit” LBs. Keep in mind that as a base front we would play 4i techs vs. an open one-back sets in the gun.

I think there is merit to moving or shading the front, but for us that would fall into the category of a stunt. I don’t know of any OL coaches that are fired up about running inside zone to “Bear” fronts, and outside zone is difficult without attachments. Either way you look at it, the offense is looking for a bubble to run at the defense. Make them guess where that open gap may be.
 
With the proliferation of the zone read option out of 2 x 2 and 3 x 1 alignments, what stunts, dogs and edge pressures do you use to take away the quarterback and still be sound in the “back-end”? Do you use a cover 4 concept with these schemes? Jeff Schaum, Head Coach, Warner College.

To build on our 3 x 1 plan with a blitz game, I will add to it by saying we call stunts based on two factors. First is the idea that we will move fronts and coverages based on the width of the field. About 70% of the game is played on a hash in our league and only a few coaches really know how to utilize boundary deployments. That being said, we are going to have a small menu of calls that marry up front and coverage and add LB pressure with secondary overlap. My favorite two calls over the years are our Raider and Whip.

Raider brings the field outside linebacker into high-shoulder pressure, slants the front to the boundary and rotates the field safety down with boundary safety disguise and 3 to 1 or 2 to 2 control. The Whip stunt brings the boundary outside linebacker with a field slant and cover 6 over the top.

Every component of these two calls is built into one word.  All 11 know where we are weak and all 11 know where we are strong. The players that will be stressed understand the threats when the call comes. The other benefit of these type of “offensive called defensive calls” are that you can build in the ultimate QB accountability for both the run threat he presents as well as the disruption of the pocket he likes to throw from.

While we would use these as primary QB control calls on the hash, our YoYo call would be an example of an inside linebacker movement and blitz from the middle of the field. Like the Raider and Whip calls, it is a zone concept with the two inside linebackers working up or down into an edge pressure based on variables such as the RBs position in deployment. It is a stunt that we typically pair with cover 2, but we use quarters as a base rule vs. 2 x 2 sets with a rule regarding the width of #1 and separation of #2.

Aside from these three examples, I also like to zero things out and bomb a mobile QB with both an inside and outside linebacker from the same side and a full line slant away. One LB is executing a pinch or low shoulder and the other is on the high shoulder of the QB. This allows you to account for both in the read game. We typically loop the nose back through on a retrace action in this stunt. I will say that zero is always the best way to maximize pressure through the front, but how sound you are in the backend is relevant to your matchups.

In the zone blitz package, my only advice would be to put the stress of the coverage on your best player. If that is your FS, 3 over 3 or any middle of the field coverage can work. If your inside linebacker can handle the Tampa drop, then you can edge pressure and still double over the boundary. I also tend to think that sound coverage is a product of time and not necessarily dependent on covering all zones as long as you cover the deep ones. 
   
We are a small school of 180 students. We have 8-9 kids that go both ways and we rarely have an athlete over 180 pounds. Can you give a breakdown of what you are looking for in a kid when you assign them each position? Rick Dahlstrom, Head Coach, Aviano High School, Aviano Air Base, Italy

First of all, it is awesome that you are allowing those young men to experience the game while their parents are serving! I understand that you play in a seven team league and I bet that is greatly rewarding.

When we look at where we want certain body types, it really boils down to three categories, and sometimes even at our level we have like-body types playing at all 11 positions. Your best athletes in terms of skill must be your stand-up players. We want our best cover guy to play the boundary corner, our best safety to play the boundary/box safety. Moving down to the front, our best overall LB will be our Mike (field ISLB). He must be a guy that can carry a vertical route and be fast enough to play “the spill” on field run. We want our smallest LB to play our Raider (field OSLB) and our most physical inside linebacker to play our Buck (boundary ISLB.) Our Whip is a hybrid type of player who could be a down guy, but also needs to be able to drop and defend the boundary flats. Our DEs can be “try hard” guys for the most part, but we want our 2-gap down player to play the nose.

There are years that we play all three guys in all three spots. I believe your best secondary cover guys go to the boundary and your best cover LBs go the field for the most part, but if you are going to mix in man coverage, some of the secondary profile could change.