No Fly Zone: Containing the Air Raid Offense

With the growing number of high-powered aerial offenses, how do you stop the onslaught?
by: Dan Weil
© More from this issue

          
Let’s say you’re going up against a team with a potent air raid offense – a team like Texas Tech, or Boise State or Louisville. How do you stop these pass-happy attacks? We asked five coaches of college and high school teams around the country with outstanding pass defenses.

The coaches have a wide variety of suggestions — from constantly changing your formations to physically intimidating the opposition. They offered strategies of how to pressure the quarterback; details of preparation throughout the week, including drills, tape sessions and strategy meetings; and they told us what kind of adjustments they make during the game.

To top it off, each coach listed the three most important factors to stop a powerful passing team. Here is what the five coaches had to say:

They agreed that it’s important to give the opposition multiple looks. For Doug Madoski, defensive coordinator at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona, the key is playing to the strength of his defensive personnel. This year, he feels the Fighting Artichokes are strong “everywhere on the field.” So he sees mixing up coverages as a viable strategy to combat opponents’ aerial assaults.

“We’ll constantly adjust our formations,” he said. “If on one formation by them we run a cover three, the next time they use that formation we’ll run a cover two. At one point, we may play a zone coverage on one side of the field and man on the other side. Then another time, we’ll play man across the field, and another time we’ll play zone across the field.”

Madoski also likes to mix things up along the defensive line. His ends are fast, with 4.5 times in the 40-yard dash, but also are strong, weighing about 280 pounds. So they can play inside as well as outside, allowing Madoski to run plenty of stunts. “We try to move them across all four positions, allowing them to work on different things against different people.”

Scottsdale has a ploy similar to the way Bruce Smith was used toward the end of his career. On second down, Madoski will pull a defensive lineman who’s a good pass rusher, replacing him with someone who is adept at stopping the run.

“The sub will go in to set up a move by the good pass rusher,” Madoski said. “By putting in a guy who’s a bull rusher, we give the offensive lineman some power to think about. Then we put the finesse guy in, knowing the offensive lineman will be conscious about being strong. And then the finesse guy can run right by him.”

The overall idea is to make the offense react to the defense, instead of the other way around, Madoski said. “Most offenses want to pitch and make us catch,” he said, using a baseball analogy. “We want to pitch and make them catch.”

Of course coaches will structure their defense to combat the strongest elements of the opponent’s passing game. Tom Horne, former head coach of Valparaiso University (IN) first looks at whether the opponent prefers short or deep passes. If it’s a short-passing game, he’ll use a cover two, with five defenders covering potential receivers underneath, about five yards off the ball.

With a short-passing team, “you still have to look for the run, so with that formation, you have nine people around the football,” Horne noted.

Against a deep passing team, “you’re all cover four,” he said. “The safeties and corners all drop off – to about 10 yards off the ball.” To stop a team that mixes short and long throws, “you want to give corners reads, so they know when to stay short and when to go vertical,” he said. “That’s based upon down and distance and pattern recognition by defensive players, which is coached.”

Coaches agree that putting pressure on the quarterback is vital to slow down the passing game. For Conley Langford, defensive coordinator at Miles College in Fairfield, AL, a good pass rush starts with attitude. “You have to have guys with a desire and determination to get to the quarterback,” he said.

As for strategy, multiple coverages are again important for hampering the quarterback, Langford said. “Confusing the quarterback buys time for the pressure to get there,” he pointed out. “We may use two different formations – a 4-2-5 or a 3-5-3.” And he uses different types of blitzes so the offense doesn’t know what’s coming. “We’ll use zone blitzes, man blitzes and zero blitzes,” Langford said. In sum, “we bring the kitchen sink.”

Coaches have a host of ways to prepare their players in the week before facing a strong passing team. Here’s the outline of how John Wrenn, head coach of Hamilton High School in Chandler, AZ, structures the week for his Huskies. They play their games on Friday nights, so on Saturday, the coaches start watching film of the next opponent and meet Sunday to decide how to play against that team.

“On Monday, we bring the kids in, condition them and go through the game plan we want by field position, down and distance,” Wrenn said. On Tuesday the coaches start working a lot with individuals, trying to set up the best match-ups possible. “We figure out who their best players are and match up our best against them,” Wrenn said. “We find out what the kids can and can’t handle. We want to take away their three to four best passing plays, so we concentrate on those.” That work takes the team through Wednesday.

On Thursday the coaches again go through the game plan with their players. And then on Friday, “right after school, we walk through what we want to do,” Wrenn said.

Coaches utilize various drills to ready the troops. In the eyes of Greg Crum, defensive coordinator of Worcester State College in Worcester, MA, the number one defensive play is a sack-forced fumble. So he uses drills that emphasize stripping the ball from the quarterback. A lot of them involve ripping the ball out of six-foot pop-up bags.

Crum sets up four bags to represent offensive linemen. His pass rushers have to get through all four and then finish by stripping the ball from the quarterback. If you set the pop-up bags representing linemen close together, “then you simulate getting by one and then another coming to block you,” Crum said. “You have to be quick with your hands and feet.”

Madoski of Scottsdale Community College uses a drill on game day that he calls a clap session. The coaches will divide a white board up into 10 rectangles, putting the opposing team’s 10 favorite plays in the rectangles. His defense will huddle, and then each player will line up in his position. A coach will bang a stick on one of the rectangles, simulating the snap of the ball and indicating which play the opponent is running. The players clap and point to where on the field they’d move to defend against that play.

Madoski runs the drill anywhere he can find an open space – from the locker room to a hotel conference room. “We’re making sure that everyone knows where to go,” he said.

Langford of Miles College uses seven-on-seven drills, leaving out linemen. The second-team offense simulates the opponent’s offense, and the first-team defense practices its reactions. Without the linemen, “you get a chance to see all the routes and how they run them,” Langford said.

And all the coaches have their players watch plenty of film. The basic idea throughout the week, said Horne, the former Valparaiso head coach, is to give players film-time to learn the opponent’s plays and time on the field to practice defending them. “You show a lot of video so players get a mental picture of what the opponent is doing passing wise, and then get on the practice field to see it coming at them,” he said. “It’s a matter of giving players enough repetition, so they can react and cover.”

No matter how strong a game plan coaches devise, of course, they will have to make adjustments during the game. “We have to look where on the field they’re hurting us,” said Crum of Worcester State. “Are they flooding a zone? If so, we have to adjust coverage to get another defender in that area.”

If his team didn’t blitz much in the first half and was getting beaten on pass plays, Crum may try more blitzes in the second half. “If they’re getting us with a short pass, we’ll play more bump and run,” he said. “If they’re hitting on play action, we’ll try to get more coverage deep. It’s just a matter of finding out where teams are hurting you and adjusting your coverage accordingly.”

A coach’s overall defensive philosophy will dictate how his team operates against an air raid offense. Crum’s basic thinking on defense has changed over the years. “I used to concentrate on the run, but we were getting hurt on first-and-10 passes,” he said. Then he talked to some other top coaches about defensive strategies, particularly Joe Cullen, who worked at Indiana University and the University of Mississippi.

“I’ve adopted some of his philosophy,” Crum said. “We’re going to cheat as much as possible when we know it’s a passing down. We’ll stop the run on the way to the quarterback.”

Madoski preaches a physical style of defense. “As an old defensive lineman, “I see playing defense as nothing more than being physical,” he said. “We want to outhit everybody on the football field so that they quit. For example, if the safety is ripping the receiver’s head off on every play, he’s going to be a little more timid when the quarterback throws the ball to him.”

For Wrenn, flexibility is important. “We use all variables depending on what the opponent wants to do,” he said. “We can play any style from dropping eight men into coverage, to rushing seven men, to anything in between.” That flexibility helps his team prevent big plays, Wrenn said. His philosophy is that a good passing team will gain some yardage, but that his defense must limit those gains to short passes.

NEW BOOK!

Digital Download - 304 Pages of Football Forms for the Winning Coach