defending wing t

Coach,

We are a base 4-4 team, but when we play a wing-t team, we don't run it. The wing-t is made to out man you and by running a 4-4, in my opinion, you can easily be outmanned, because the 4-4 is a balanced defense. We like to run a 5-2, 2 Deep shell (rotate safeties with motion), a form of the 4-3, and a Wide 7. No 4-4. I'm very big on being multiple in our looks on defense, so since that is the case, even though for us we consider it a "special" week when we play a wing-t team (because it doesn't happen often), I still like to have at least a couple fronts to run to keep the offense off balance so they don't know what front we'll be in....makes things a lot harder for them. The 5-2 look and the 4-3 are fronts in our defensive system already. The only thing I put in new for that week only is the Wide 7. The Wide 7 is very easy to teach, so it's not difficult to implement it. Plus, Wing-T teams, from what I hear, hate to see the Wide 7 when they haven't practiced against it. Some coaches say go with what you got. But if they have better players, you usually don't stand a chance in a 4-4, from what I've seen. That's why I believe in different fronts.....some fronts are better against certain offenses/plays than others. I like to use that to my advantage.

Just my 2 cents, coach.

new2veer
You are right. Don't make wholesale changes throughout the season. All that does is to make your players inexperienced each week. You can defend the Wing T the 44/42 in a manner like 44Attack described. You may also want to purchase one of the tapes from the 20 Gap defense - defending the Wing T. He describes using the 44 plus shifting to a 50 front. I believe you should always have a minimum of two looks for an opponent and shifting to a 50 front, cover 3 doesn't involve a great deal of learning.

I'm up for talking Xs and Os most anytime. To add on to what FCC is saying I believe that he is right with the idea of being multiple. We work to achieve that, however, within the 44 framework. Our base is a 7, 3, 1, 5 tech front. We will also stack the front 4, that is 6, 2, 2, and 5 or 6 tech weak depending on whether they are double tight or not and then slant for penetration. We will also play split with the DTs (double 3 techs), etc. If you sit in a straight 44 all night long you will probably get picked apart. Offenses will always try to go off-tackle on the D. The other thing is to use movement through stunts, blitzes, and stemming.

Two years ago we played quite a bit of 46 with man-free behind it. That worked well against some of our opponents but I felt that we didn't work it enough to make it strong come playoff time. Back to that small-school-we-only-have-so-much-time stuff that you mentioned earlier.

If you are looking for a wrinkle to add to your 44 take a look at "Basics of the 4-4 Defense" by Bryan Collins at C.W. Post. They run a robber scheme that is very nice against 2 back teams, which is what we face most of the season. It is very tough against the run as it gets 9 in the box and also sound against the pass. In short they run a 2 deep with the corners (reading #1s) and the rest of the D aligns in a 4-2-5 look with the FS playing a hard alley, that is, as soon as he gets a run read he is coming up without pass worries. If your interested let me know and I'll give you more info. The video is on this website.

one more thing I forgot to ask.

You talked about running a 46. Is it a true 46? We are also thinking about just walking up our SOLB sometimes and either lining him inside the DE or outside and have them mug the TE. We did this against a single wing team and shut them down. We face two teams that run the I and their bread and butter is 46 draw. So we think throwing this at them sometimes will give them trouble.

new2veer

What do you do if it is a balanced double wing?
CoachP

new2veer,

Sorry I haven't answered anything for a while. As soon as school got out I went home for a week to hang out with my mother. She is just starting chemo for breast cancer. Things are looking good and she has not been getting sick. When I got back my computer at home crashed. I brought it to our techy and he is trying to save all my files before reloading the software. That was 2 weeks ago. I decided to drop in at school today to update myself on Campbell's site and download my football files to transfer to a laptop so I can get busy getting ready for this season.

I see a lot of similarities in what you are looking at doing and what we are doing. I'm going to respectfully disagree with FCC with his thought that OCs do not have to change their plays vs different shades of the 44. I think the 7315 and 7335 demand good combo blocking from the offense. When we face 40 front teams that mess around with their shades we put in an audible or two for that week which allows us to switch to another play at the LOS when they show us certain looks. That being said we decided to do some stemming against certain teams. We show a heads up front and jump into the shaded look we want deep into the count. If a team tries to quick snap on us our rule is to slant into the gap we are suppose to be shading. It has worked well for us. Teams that try to quick snap often jump offsides when they don't do it on a consistant basis. I feel that the traditional 44 stack can be exploited by Wing-T teams but 7315 fronts with good guard reads is very sound. Remember, Wing-T teams like to use down blocks and play inside-out. A good 7 tech doesn't get easily shoved inside and the 3 tech can cause problems for the strong guard. I was a Wing-T coach for 6 years. The biggest problems we had was when a DE could anchor C gap which stretched out the Buck Sweep and when a DT squeezed the Down play (off-tackle) along with the DE. A decent 1 tech causes issues with the Buck trap as he is squeezing the center's backside fill block. That leaves the Iso (Belly in Wing-T terms) weak as the most open option for the run which is not the first choice of most Wing-T teams. Of course I'm holding the chalk right now but we have not had a ton of problems with Wint-T the past few years.

About your questions, our front 4 is always down. We use 4 pure D-linemen and never stand any of them up so our DE's are always down. We don't drop them off into coverage or have them cover running backs on screen's. We do, however, try to teach them to look for the screen and get in between the back and the ball but it is not their responsibility to stop them. Like you we will often put all four of our D-linemen head up and play slanting games. We used to do that exclusively because it was fairly easy to teach and we were running through D-line coaches like mad. Our current one has been with us for a while and he is good so we are now shading and playing head up. When we line head up we go for penetration in order to disrupt the Os schemes. Most Os will shorten their splits against us when we are head up and slanting hard. I think that gives us the advantage. Playing head up also messes with the TE as you mentioned because he doesn't have a certain person to block now. It usually slows him down a little as he is now kind of "feeling" his way to who he has to block. He is protecting his inside gap from a hard charging DE.

We are following C.W. Post's DE rule this year for reads by having the DEs read the O-Tackle and feeling for the TE when shaded. By that I mean that as he is coming off the ball and striking the TE he is putting his eyes on the OT to see is he is releasing inside. If he is he will come off the TE's block and bend inside right now. We face a couple of teams that Arc release their TEs and if our DE is disciplined he will step out with him. Now we have helped to make a nice seem inside which is tough on our ILBs. We will use the same read when we are aligned heads up and slanting inside so it will transition easily from shaded to heads up.

Since our base D is 7315 we have decided to automatically slant to those gaps when we align heads up as our starting point. We used to assign the inside gaps to our D-linemen but the first idea of beating the 44 is to go off-tackle so we decided to make the switch. Usually the DC makes a slant call when aligning heads up unless they are a "reading, 2-gap" front. That is what we do quite a bit but when we blitz a middle LB I like to simply call the front "stack" and the blitz - say for instance "Bullet Strong" (SILB to B gap). The 3 D-linemen not involved in the blitz will slant to their 7315 gaps while the 3 tech now goes to A gap instead of B. I feel that it is less wordy than to call the slant and the blitz. We do that sometimes, however, when we wish to get D-linement to certain places plus throw in a blitz. For example, if we want to mix it up on the outside and have the DE take D gap and blitz a middle backer we will "Slant Strong" and call our blitz "Acid strong". In our terminology a blitz call overrides a slant call so we can call a slant strong and throw a B gap strong blitz to our MLB. The MLB must make sure to communicate to the DT that he - the DT - must go inside because he is blitzing B.

Our 46 front (vs a pro look): We slide the Stud - strong DE - to a tilted 9 tech and aim him 1 yard outside the near back or deep back if in an eye. He is to come hard and blow up lead blocks and pulling guards plus get a good pass rush. Our 3 tech stays put, the 1 tech goes head up on the Center, and the 5 tech become a 3 tech weak. The nose may play 2 gap if he is tough or slant. Our Strong OLB plays inside shade on the TE almost on the LOS. He jams the crap out of him and tries to stay in C gap and not get washed. M/M on the TE. Our ILS pretty much stay head up on the Guards and our WOLB walks up to the LOS and hard rushes like the Stud on the strongside. (no pass responsibility for him) Corner man on #1s and FS plays Free. This is very tough against the strong side run and has not hurt us weak at all although an option team should be able to exploit the weak side. We don't see much for option teams and we wouldn't stay in our Tuff (Bear) look if they did.

I hope I answered your questions. All in all we will be running 7315 as our Base D, 7335 is Base vs. Double Tight. We will be using our Stack front and our Bear look also. None of our basic reads change in these fronts. We have a way to put our DT's in double 1 tech's and under looks also (13) but that is scouting report stuff. If you have other questions please ask them. I don't claim to know a lot but what we do seems to work for us. Hopefully I'll have my computer up and running soon.

Good luck next fall!

Coach LO,

We don't run a 50 out of our 40, but we will go into a Bear front which is not far away.

I like your stunt. You are taking care of the Guards and putting pressure on the strongside also.

We tend not to bring up the OLB in that situation because we have our OLBs read the EMOLOS. I know that you can have the OLB jam the WB as he tries to release inside and then play zone coverage so he can drop into the flats if he gets a pass read. We will usually keep him off the LOS and have him step up and inside if the TE is down blocking. We then look for a pulling guard or a FB kick out. Since the TE will often release to the ILB against a 40 front the guard may be kicking out the DE. By having the OLB back a couple of yards he can help inside once the ball is committed off-tackle. He should never jump inside, however until the ball is crossing the LOS or the OLB will get caught inside on a bounce play.

If the DE is playing a 7 tech and the TE down blocks him the OLB must be ready to take on a puller or FB quickly. That is where playing him up on the LOS can work well. He should be able to get a good piece of the WB and is in position to take on a kick-out block.

How is that for playing both sides of the fence?! You can walk him up and blitz him off the edge also. Again, we tend to keep ours back but bringing him up can make for a nice change of pace. Especially if he can out-muscle the WB.

We are reading the TE with our OLB so if the WB arcs that won't affect us much. If the TE arcs, however, that is another issue. Remember, when the TE arcs he is offering no blocking help on the inside. He is trying to pull people out with him. We want our OLBs to stay outside until the ball is committed inside of them so we are not worried about that. Our DE feels for pressure from the TE but his eyes are on the Tackle. That is a C.W. Post rule. When the OT releases inside or down blocks, the DE bends inside to squeeze C gap. By doing that he is not honoring the TE's arc release. DEs who read the TE's release obviously will step out with the TE which is a goal of the arc release. The ILB can now scrape over the top and fill inside the TE and over the DE.

I agree with you about holding the chalk. The kids have to follow the reads/keys and make the plays, however.

We are just switching to having the DE read the Tackle instead of the TE and using the TE as a pressure key. We face a team that arc releases the TE often. They win the state championship every other year. We have been in some good battles with them but they have been getting the best of us the past few years. We have been adjusting our D keys and reads to meet the needs of playing them. In doing so we have been getting better overall.

Do you see defenses that 7 tech the DE or even put him straight in the gap and slant him hard inside because of your TE arc releasing? What do you do in response when you see this?

I'm guessing that the OT is just punching and getting up to backer quickly otherwise the backer should scrape over the top of it, but since the play is heading outside the guard can probably keep the 3 tech out of the play. We will run load (Campbell's double option) in the same defensive situation. Of course we haven't brought up the idea of rolling coverages yet to help defend the option.

If I'm reading your question correctly you know have a single back look with the HB at the Slot and a TE ineligible. On the offensive side this kind of takes away some of the misdirection look of the offense. I would maybe look at sliding the 1 tech to a shade on the center since the Iso play is gone on the weakside. This would give more protection to the WILB to flow to the strongside once the threat of counter is gone. Again, I'm not sure what the offense is doing out of this look. Scouting report stuff you know.

As far as coverage vs. Wing-T we have seem mostly traditional looks so we see a lot of crossing patterns (waggles) so we play quite a bit of cover 3. Also, the Wing-T teams that we face do not have great passing games so we stay a little more vanilla against them. I think a person could get away with C.W. Post's Robber package against this look also. Normally they wouldn't play robber against the one back look but you have 2 receivers on one side and 1 on the other so I would think it would be a go again.

Double Tight Double Wing: We faced a double tight double wing Wing-T team in the first round of playoffs this past season. They were the number 1 seed and we were 8. We took them down 26-0 or 26-6, I can't remember off the top of my head right now. They're top back was out so we were fortunate or it would have been a closer game. If you are asking about a Wing-T team that aligns in DT/DW we simply aligned heads up 6s and 2s. We pinched the DEs most of the time and hit the TEs in passing situations. We attacked the Guards with the DTs and read guards with the MLBs. I have more detail on our ILB reads if you are interested sometime. Other than that we played straight Cover 3. We had some coverage rotations in place, if needed, that depended on the WB motion but we didn't need to use it.

If you are talking a no line split Double Wing Team then we have a different issue. Let me know if that is what you are talking. I have to be quick today as it's my anniversary and my wife wants me to get moving!

Happy Anniversary to you and the MRS. 44ATTACKD.Thanks for the conversation.Best of luck to you and your team.Defense wins championships!Where do you coach?I'm in Louisiana.Next conversation will be trips adjustments.

44Attack,

I am really interested in the scheme you reffered to earlier by Bryan Collins. I would appreciate any info you could send my way. From your brief description it sounds like the Corner's lock on #1, and the FS reads #2 for run/pass. If run, he fills the alley, if pass he locks on #2? What about 2x2, 3x1 formations? Again, thanks for any help.

Any ideas from you coaches on how to defend the jet sweep to the wing? I like all the arguments about multiplicity - we move from the 46 to the 43 though I see some merit in expanding the fronts. Our first game is against a wing-t team the has a runner QB and likes to get the halfbacks into slots and jet them across the formation.