4-3 invert

Coach zulu,

How do you define "playing robber" with your safeties. This is a term I hear thrown around a lot. What exactly does it mean in your system? Also, where are you aligning your CB's and safeties when you run this scheme?

I ask because we are a 3-4 team, but we play our safeties as inverts and bring the flow-side safety downhill hard as the flats / support defender. The safety away from flow is a deep 1/3 player. We have our CB's playing deep outside 1/3's.

I'd be interested to hear how you do it with deep halves!

Please let me know.

Coach,

It has worked well for us as long as we have smart, tough, football saavy kids at the two safety positions. I use SS types for both, and we put a great deal of coverage responsibility on the inverts. I do not run it out of a 4-3, but rather out of a 3-4, but it's all 7 man front, so it's basically the same animal.

There's no problem on backside reverses and playactions as long as you teach and emphasize these responsibilities from day one. We've actually been very strong on these plays because we and our kids both recognize this as a weakness and we work very hard on compensating for it.

You can't really differentiate skill or athlete types between the 2 safeties, because either one could be your force player or your middle 1/3 player, depending on the keys and reads a particular play gives them.

What we do by running this coverage system is have a separate safeties coach (me) that drills them seperately from the CB's. It really takes a lot of individual attention to make it work properly in my opinion.

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Originally posted by: lochness
Coach zulu,

How do you define "playing robber" with your safeties. This is a term I hear thrown around a lot. What exactly does it mean in your system? Also, where are you aligning your CB's and safeties when you run this scheme?

I ask because we are a 3-4 team, but we play our safeties as inverts and bring the flow-side safety downhill hard as the flats / support defender. The safety away from flow is a deep 1/3 player. We have our CB's playing deep outside 1/3's.

I'd be interested to hear how you do it with deep halves!

Please let me know.

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coachn;

you are right, the term "robber" is used frequently and loosely and i think there are as many different varieties of robber coverage as there are defensive coaches.
we use robber as a run defense. this allows our safeties to be downhill/run players.
we like to run robber vs 21/22/30/31 personnel.
our safeties will initially show a standard cover 2 look...lining up at 10-12 yards. during the cadence they creep to 8 yards and they flat foot read...some bounce, pat the feet, chop, etc. but at the snap we don't want them going anywhere until they read run/pass. we teach them to think run first, but not to go anywhere until they are sure. they are responsible for #2 vertical. if there is no #2 vertical, they sit in the curl/hash area. the sam and will are responsible for dropping to the #'s. we will scheme our opponents for sure, for example; this spring we played our offense by buzzing the safeties to the #'s and let the lb's sit on the curl. that's because our te's are not used much at all in the passing game. when we call robber we are expecting run, and if the offense is gonna throw, we understand what type of routes they will typically call, and what type of completions are acceptable.
our playside safety will fit where needed vs run, based on the front we're in, and the play being run by the offense. the backside safety plays the cutback and presses the LOS during the play, to LB depth.
our cb's begin with a standard cover 2 look and then during the cadence they squirm out to about 7 yards off, with inside leverage. they understand that they are post responsible...they can not give up the home run on a running down. we want to force completions short and to the outside. the cb's have to shut off the go/fade, and post routes. if their wr crosses, they immediately run to the post. this is how we run "robber" coverage and it has been successful for us.

the way you described playing your safeties is exactly how we defend the flexbone option from the 4-3. flow side safety runs downhill to the pitch/flats. backside safety shuffles to flowside, playing; dive, qb, pitch in that order. he is late on the run. if it's play action off the option, the backside safety is responsible for #2 vertical and/or the post by #1, if the offense runs some form of exchange routes.

hope this helps, if you have further questions, just let me know.

coachn;

if you shoot me an email, i would be glad to discuss and answer any specific questions you have.
it would take me way too long to try and type out the responses. on the board.
my email is: sunshine2k1@lycos.com
we are a 4-3, eagle, 3-2-6 pressure defense, and i always love talking football and sharing ideas.

Coach,
Something we do with the invert defense is for the inverted safeties and corners to read flow from backfield and the safety (new corner) will cloud that side and roll cover 3 to flow side. Now for those who will shoot questions: what if there is split back flow, I near/far, ctr action, ect,.
You must do a good job scouting the opponent (and rememeber- this is not a defense you live in) if backs split- do they run split flow to TB at certain situations (read TB), or do they throw a great deal of TB flares at a certain situation (read TB), or do they run split flow and pass to the FB a great deal on certain situations (Read FB), do they run CTR with the FB blocking backside on certain foramtions (Read TB). This will be a game week decision in deciding who to read and with good scouting, you may find a tendency that is over 80% and this defense may work in. Just a thought I would like to share with yall!

If you are interested in the "DOUBLE INVERT" - THIS is the "BIBLE" on it. You can order it on abebooks.com

Duffy Daugherty's Defense Spartan Style
Daugherty, Duffy
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Book Description: Four Winds Press, New York, 1967. Hardcover. Dust Jacket Included. 1st Ed. VG+ in VG dust jacket with light edge wear. Michigan State Spartan football coach reveals his 'secrets' in meticulous detail to his Invert Defense, one of the most powerful, original & yet simplest team defenses in football history. With a foreword by Paul 'Bear' Bryany. Illustrated with diagrams & drawings. Sports, Football. Bookseller Inventory # 013160

Tiger 1 is correct. Va Tech played a 3 deep "Robber" scheme (FS as "robber").

What everybody calls QUARTER COVERAGE (Cover 4, etc.) becomes a "robber" for the safety if #1 comes inside & #2 goes flat (Safety "robs" the inbreaking route of #1).

ANOTHER form of "Robber" is to show 2 safeties deep but on the snap - one goes to deep middle 1/3 & the other moves to the MOF & "robs" in-breaking routes in the intermediate area between the deep safety & the LBers. This takes away the old "NCAA" pass, or "3 level vertical stretch" in MOF. Richie Pettibon LOVED to do this when he was "DC" for Gibbs in Washington during their "Super Bowl Years".