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AFM Magazine


Point Counterpoint - The Blitz

by: Terry Jacoby
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Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts were helpless against the Pittsburgh Steelers and their blitz packages in last month’s AFC playoff game. Manning, the master of the audible and game’s best gunslinger, spent most of the afternoon forcing passes, trying to avoid getting crushed or getting crushed.

After the game, Manning hinted that he didn’t have the best protection. The offensive line, running backs, extra blockers and offensive coaches couldn’t slow down the hard-charging Steelers. Manning was right about one thing. It takes a team effort to stop the blitz. And with defensive coordinators picking apart game film, looking for the smallest clink in the armor and exploiting it to the max, offenses need to be prepared as much as possible for what’s coming at them full-speed ahead.

Indy wasn’t prepared. The pressure came. And the Colts buckled.

The blitz vs. protection. The ultimate “cat and mouse” game played at every level where the winner usually wins the ballgame. “One of the keys is not falling behind,” says Urbana (Ohio) University Head Coach Todd Murgatroyd. “If you are playing catch up and playing from behind you can expect that pressure. Denver had the ball (in the AFC Championship game) and Pittsburgh laid their ears back and came after them. They knew it was coming.

But, like the Colts, they couldn’t do anything about it.

So, how do you not fall behind, and where does this “cat and mouse” game, as Murgatroyd likes to call it, actually begin? As coaches know, it all starts long before any of the cats and mice take the field. It begins inside a classroom with a projector and a clipboard and an eye for detail. That’s the first step in many steps in the game of blitz vs. protection.

PREPARATION
Jerry Holmes flicks on the projector and takes his seat. He’s in for a long night and he knows it. The defensive coordinator for Hampton University begins studying his opponent, looking for both big and small advantages and tendencies that can help him win on Saturday.

“Across town,” Holmes’ opponent also is perched in front of the small screen. He’s looking at Holmes’ defense, also trying to come up with the slightest edge that can tilt the outcome in his favor. What’s ironic is that both coaches know the other coach is watching and writing and thinking and adjusting and preparing. So what will the projector tell them?

Holmes: “We look at how many protections they have and where are they sliding the center. Is the back going to check release? Some go full-slide protection where everybody goes one way and they leave the backside open.

“Another question we ask before the game is what are we trying to do on defense? Are we trying to stop the run? If you are undersized like we are here at Hampton, we want to make sure we are moving out guys up front – stunting and twisting and bringing different looks with the linebackers. These are some of the things we do to play the run better. We don’t have the size to just battle up front so we might blitz at times to just stop the run.”

Murgatroyd: “Film study plays a great role in looking at what tendencies they might have. On second and medium, do they like to bring pressure? Formation and down and distance tendencies is very important in the scouting report. When do they like to bring pressure? We will do things offensively based on what we’ve seen in their down and distance. Or what we’ve seen in their personal. For example, we can see that when they in their nickel package they blitz 80 percent of the time. To determine these things requires a lot of film study time.”

PRACTICE
From the film room, coaches take their notes and information down to the practice field. It’s time to work with the players and other coaches on implementing some new looks and packages to counter and/or take advantage of what the film showed.

Holmes: “We run a 3-4 here at Hampton. We have a guy here who we know can come off the edge and blitz so we are going to put him in a situation to do what he does best and that’s blitz. It’s not so much the situation. So the first thing that goes into the package is to make sure we have the right guy doing the blitzing.”

Holmes also will take note of what kind of quarterback the opponent has and have his defense work on preparing to stop that “type” of player.

“There are times when you are going against a team with an accurate passer so you might have to work on finding ways to offset his rhythm.

“If we play against what we think is an athletic quarterback, we will have a spy in there when we blitz. We will jet-rush the defensive lineman and might blitz from the outside, but we also keep a close eye on the quarterback who can pull that thing in and take off. The spy has to be athletic enough to be able to tackle a guy like that one on one.”

Many teams will designate a fast and quick player to be the opposing quarterback during practice to help prepare the defense for that type of player they are going to face on Saturday. “If you force a quarterback out of the pocket, most of them can throw well going to their right. So you want to try and bring the pressure in their face so they can see it coming and at least be forced to roll out the opposite way. We want them to see the pressure coming so it hurries their decision process. You don’t have to have a sack for a blitz to be successful. You want to force the quarterback into a mistake.”

Murgatroyd: “The No. 1 thing you have to do to prepare for the blitz is have great reps in practice. The thing that gives us a great advantage here is that we are a heavy pressure football team on defense and offensively we see it every day in practice. We have blitz pickup periods and live situations vs. each other.

“We structure practice and practice situational plays like third and long and third and medium. With 1:40 to go in the game you have to expect pressure coming. The key is seeing these game-like situations in practice and rep it and rep it and rep it.

“And we have individual periods where the outside backers go against the backs in blitz pickup. You can’t go into a game without doing the reps in practice and preparing for the blitz because at some point, it’s going to come.”

Turning practices into games is something Urbana does every day.

“When we come to the end of practice, we spend 10 minutes, one on one in a two minute drill or situational red zone work where my coordinators are calling their own stuff and they have to react. Football is such a reaction game. It’s fine to do a drill when you know what’s happening, but if I’m a running back and I see a blitz coming up the middle, I have to react and pick that up. You can’t have robots. You have to have players react.”

THE GAME
It’s finally Saturday afternoon and stands are filled and the expectations are high. All of the long hours are about to pay off for someone. But whom? It’s time for the cat and mouse to put on their head sets and helmets and let the game begin.

Holmes: “One of the first things we do is check their personnel on the field. If we have our best pass rusher on one side and learn by studying film during the week that the running back they have in can’t handle a linebacker of that size coming off the edge, we will look exploit that.

“We then look at what formation they come out in. We have blitzes for the formations that check on the backfield set. We have a blitz we call shuffle, where if they come out in a two-back two formation with two receivers on each side, we will play cover two. If they motion one of those guys across we play cover three behind it and get a different kind of blitz. So any kind of formation they show, we have a blitz for. And we change these from week to week based on the opponent and how they want to slide the protection.

“If we see that quarterback under center and he starts checking we have time to call the blitz off and play coverage underneath. But if they get in a personnel grouping where they have three wide receivers in there and two running backs they can check off all they want because they only have so much protection. They don’t have a tight end to match up with our linebackers. They might have a running back to block, but we will take that matchup of our linebackers vs. their running backs every time.”

Murgatroyd: “The best way to offset any kind of pressure is to be pro-active and have a great running game. A great running game tends to take people out of their pressure game. So if you can establish a running game early in the game, it will take them out of their pressure package.

“You want to give them a look they haven’t seen on film to see how they will react. We script our first 10 plays and we are going to stick to that script because we want to see how they react to different formations. Once we see that then that’s half the battle. For example, we see they are walking the outside backer out on No. 2. That’s very important because they have to play their hand and we can learn a lot from that.

“Another hidden advantage for the offense is in the formations you’re showing. If you throw some different oddities at a defensive front they have to be sound and go out and cover things down. So how you structure your formations in a game is very important.”

GETTING AN EDGE
Holmes: “In our defense we run the 3-4, but when that quarterback is under center it all looks the same. He won’t be able to tell until the last second. We line our safeties up at 10 yards and our corners are usually in a press alignment where that gives them the flexibility so they can bail.

“They don’t know whether our safety is coming down from 10 yards, and boom we are at the line of scrimmage. There is no pre-snap read and that makes it tough on the quarterback. We make our move when the ball is snapped. This is a disguise to keep their quarterback from seeing it.”

Murgatroyd: “We use audibles to our advantage because now we are dictating to the defense. For example, if we see a certain front or a certain tendency that we have picked up off the film and we have a certain play that we feel can be successful against it, we will audible to the play. If they’re showing pressure and we don’t have a good play for that, we will audible out of it possibly to the pressure or away from the pressure. If you have a lot of press coverage, we will want to do certain things on the perimeter to defend against pressure.

WORTH NOTING
Holmes: “Most teams have what they call a zero blitz where there is no one in the center of the field to help the corners. Those corners play an inside technique and there is no help. And trust me, from playing in the NFL, you don’t want to call a lot of these blitzes. I keep that in mind when I call my blitzes. In fact, we didn’t call one zero blitz this year and it’s probably because I played corner in the NFL and I know how hard it is to cover man-on-man with no help. I’ve been on staffs where the defensive coordinator is a former defensive lineman and he doesn’t have a clue what it’s like for the corners and he would call zero blitzes all the time.”

Murgatroyd: “In today’s game I don’t think it’s about the x’s and o’s, it’s about the Jimmy’s and Joe’s. That’s what it comes down to. It comes down to the recruiting process. It comes down to talent. We all want to be the gurus up there on the board, but let’s face it, recruiting plays the biggest role because that will determine your talent. And your talent level dictates what you can and can’t do. It all comes down to the players in the end.

“Being a defensive coach, I know that it’s not easy to cover down certain formations. It’s amazing what a tight end trading to the other side will do to a defense. Just little things that are critical to an offense. You don’t have to have a thousand plays. You need to have four or five running plays, but nine or 10 formations that you run those four or five plays out of. You get good at what you work at. To be an effective offense, you have to work on blitz pickup everyday.”






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