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Blitzing Backs – Keys to Effective Defensive Back Blitzing Packages

by: David Purdum
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Blitzing defensive backs is a high risk/high reward gamble that requires deception and precise timing in order to be successful. What are the best times to send your corner or safety, which players make the best blitzers and what should they be aware of to increase their chances of a sack or a  hurry?

American Football Monthly enlisted the help of four defensive coordinators – all blitz experts – to share their insights about the who, when, how, and where of D-back blitzes. Edinboro’s Wayne Bradford, Arkansas-Monticello’s Keith Scott, Minnesota State’s Joe Klanderman and Prince George High School’s (VA) Joe Daniel shared with AFM the thought process, philosophy, and strategy behind their blitz schemes.

What are the best situations to bring pressure with defensive backs and against what formations?

Bradford: We have to be smart about how we’re handling formations. If you’re getting twins to the field side and a tight end to the boundary, we like to bring our boundary corner there, because obviously he’s down in a 2-by-2 look and you can still show cover 2 to the field.

When we bring a boundary corner, we’d prefer to bring him from our right hash, the offense’s left, because most QBs are right-handed. We’ll bring our boundary corner against two-back twins, with a tight end on the back side or against three wide outs on the field side with one back.

Scott: We definitely like to come from the boundary, depending on if we’re facing a boundary-throwing team or a field-throwing team. Most teams in a 3-by-1 set like to throw to the field side, so you can bring pressure from the boundary.

Daniel: Coming from the edge, we’re going to look for two things. We’re going to use a edge blitz against a pocket passer from the short side of the field. If it’s a zone read team, we’re also going to bring pressure from the weak side to mix up the read for the quarterback.

When we bring pressure up the middle, we’re going to bring our Mike linebacker and strong safety into the A gaps. The strong safety’s lined up on the left and will cross behind off of the hip of the Mike linebacker into the right side linebacker. We’ll bring that blitz in run situations. It’s also the best blitz, I think, if you have a pocket passer that you want to get on the move, because he’s going to move one way or the other.

What are the best ways to disguise your pressure packages? And is the disguise more important than actually making sure the blitzing player is in position to quickly get to the quarterback?

Klanderman: If you want to be good at blitzing, with safeties in particular, it can’t be an unusual look for the offense to see a safety dropping into the box. You have to some complementary plays in your package to not make it so unusual, if you do decide to bring one of those guys. You have to drop him down in there and play some base zones or man.

You can drop him down in there to be a hook player or you can drop him down in there to be a hole player in man. You can do some things that get him moving pre-snap down in the box, just so the quarterback doesn’t immediately check out when he sees the player rolling down in there.

We’ll play man across the board with a linebacker on the back. We’ll drop that safety down in there to be a low-hole player that can help with crossers and can help with quarterback scrambles, while also allowing us to have a deep middle safety.

We’ll also expand our linebacker to become a flat player, and then we’ll drop that safety down inside to play some cover 3. Those are a couple of ways we get our safety down in there that help us set up some blitzes.

Bradford: We try to stay in our cover 2 shell as long as possible. When we bring the boundary corner, obviously he has to be able to get there. You don’t want  him to have to sacrifice being able to get there because of the disguise, but he has to be in a position to show cover 2 and also be able to get there in a hurry (See Edinboro’s defensive back blitz packages vs. various formations).
Daniel: Disguise is important, but the biggest thing is to make sure we get there. We don’t want a guy blitzing from nine yards away. We want him at linebacker depth, 4-5 yards from the line of scrimmage or closer.

Most of the time we will run a zone blitz, three-under, three-deep zone. Depending on the formation, our safeties begin 9-12 yards out. If we’re playing a running team, we might be seven yards out. If we’re playing a wide-open spread team, it would be more like 12 yards. When the blitzing safety begins coming down, the remaining safety is moving to the center of the field.

Scott: We want to make everything look the same. If you’re a two-shell team, you want to start off making it look like two-shell. We’re a big-time cover 4 team. If we’re sending one of our linebackers, the safety has to replace him and the other safety has to roll. That’s how we get into our one-safety look. If we were trying to show that nobody is blitzing, we’ll want to walk that weak-side safety down to show that it’s one-safety high. Then he’ll roll back at the snap. That’s how we disguise our zone blitzes.
   
What types of pre-snap indicators do you instruct your players to look for when trying to time their approach into blitzing position?

Daniel: One of the biggest things that we look for right before the snap is the quarterback’s hands because we are playing a lot of shotgun teams. We look at when he is opening those hands, when he flashes them. The hand flash is an indicator to get moving. We want to make sure our blitzers never cross the heal line of the defensive lineman no matter what they see until that play has started. We are just trying to get a feel of the cadence throughout the game.

Scott: We teach our linebackers and safeties to watch for the quarterback to flash his hands. During film, we want to see if the quarterback is a ‘hands’ or a ‘leg’ guy. Sometimes, a quarterback will raise his leg, before he flashes his hands.

We also key on the clock. If it’s down to five seconds or less, we should be in position to go. If it’s earlier on the play clock, with 15 or 10 seconds to go, we’re more relaxed and looking for other signals like the QB’s hands or leg.

Bradford: We actually played a team that we keyed when the quarterback put his mouthpiece in. Our secondary coach Kim Niedbala does a great job and we watched one tape that the QB would do all the fancy stuff no-huddle, but when he put his mouthpiece in, they were going.

Another time, we saw a QB who always had his hands by his side until he’s made all his calls. Then, he’d raise his hands up right in front of his chest to get the ball.

Also, in terms of run or pass, look at the quarterback’s feet. If the quarterback’s feet are parallel, we found that they are going to run the ball, throw a bubble (screen) or they might run boot. If his feet were staggered, it was a traditional pass, three-or-five-step.

Klanderman: Most offenses will have something in terms of a pre-snap indicator to let you know when that ball is going to be snapped. Maybe it’s when the quarterback puts his hands up or when the center picks his head that means it’s time to go. As coaches, we have to look at those indicators and, based upon those, that will tell our blitzing players when they can get out of their pre-snap look and get into a functional pre-snap alignment.

What type of players are generally the best blitzers?

Daniel: The best that we’ve had is a kid who’s roughly 6-foot, 200 pounds and pretty fast. He’s able to make open field tackles and play man coverage. He’s probably your best player, which in our case is usually a Mike linebacker or safety.

Klanderman: He’s got to be a guy who can finish when he gets there. You need to have speed, but also have to be a guy that doesn’t slow down on contact. We don’t want to blitz someone in there who’s going to be timid. We want someone that’s going to run through contact, even if he gets picked up. And even if he gets picked up in protection, we want someone that can beat blocks and continue to come.

What techniques do you teach your blitzing player when coming from the edge?

Daniel: Aiming point is always the back shoulder of the quarterback or back elbow. Even against the zone read because what we don’t want to happen when we’re bringing that safety in from the edge is for him to get beat around the outside. He is the contain rusher, so if he gets beat around the outside, there’s just no help at all. We want him to force it back to the middle.

Bradford: We want our blitzers to have the ability to take on the block. He has to understand if he’s coming hard against a running back, he has to know whether that back cuts and is going to attack him low. In that case, he has to be ready to settle and make a move.

Or, is the tackle fanning to him, where he’ll need to beat the tackle with speed? We don’t want that tackle to take one, two kicks and get to him. We want him to be wider in that case.

We spend time with all of our defensive backs, if we’re going to blitz.

Klanderman: We’re not a huge blitz team, but if we’re going to blitz, we want to rep it a lot during the week. We want to rep it vs. different protections. We’re not always going to rep it in such a way where it’s always going to hit. We want to rep it in ways where the scout team can pick it up, so the guys know who might end up blocking them.

What are the priorities for the players who are left in coverage behind the blitz?

Daniel: When we play three-under, three-deep, our corners and our safeties that our the three-deep are in that ‘nothing gets behind you’ mindset; keep backpedaling and get depth. If something goes wrong, make the tackle so we can play again.

What we don’t want to do is gamble up front and and on the back end. On the back end, we’re playing pretty soft. We don’t see that many quarterbacks that can read hot and play that effectively. We’re not blitzing a ton, but when we’re blitzing, we’re trying to make something happen, get a bad throw or get a sack.

Klanderman: The number one thing that they have to understand is that the ball is going to come out quickly. You’re not going to have time for double moves or longer developing route concepts. They have to trust that the ball is going to come out of the quarterback’s hand quickly. And it has to. The guys that are blitzing have to make sure that takes place. The worst-case scenario is that they pick it up and have a bunch of time. In that case, we have a bunch of one-on-one’s up front and we have to win those battles.

The thing that we talk the most about is going off the quarterback’s intentions. He’s not going to have time to look two ways. That ball’s got to come out and get out of his hands. We have to be able to defend the shallower throws.


Edinboro University’s Defensive Back Blitz Packages

vs. Formation into Boundry







vs. Formation to the field











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