would a 50 defense work for a 10 year that see spread teams

It can work just fine as long as you don't try to get too fancy.

You could get away with it against a Spread team if you use a Zone Coverage or a combination of Man and Zone. What I've seen in my short career the accuracy of the passing game deteriorates rather quickly based on the Route and the QB drop. If we allow a 15 yard area for semi-accurate passing that decreases the range down field on a 5 and 7 Step drop. Since I think you will find most have a fairly quick 3 step rule you could play an inverted Cover 2 and still be able to provide run support with your Safety. If your worried more about Bubble and Tunnel screens, play Man tight and jam, your DE's are going to have to learn to read and peel. In such a case, I would play a 4-0-4 ( as mentioned above) with my ends as described in the previous sentence.

The object of the Spread is to convince you to take folks out of the box to cover. With the zone you can still cover and keep folks in the box. A lot of guys will show Spread and still run 70 to 80 percent of the time especially in the youth game.

jmho

I agree with Coach Hartman most youth teams dont have more than one or two receivers who can catch 50% of the stuff thrown at them. As such I think you'll find that they throw a ton of motion at you for effect and then runs Lead sweeps and OS veer with some Midline Chasers. Some might run a Spread Option but If you bring the safety up you have two LB and a DE they have to block and their receiver has to make a stalk block. Sounds easy until you watch a youth team try all of this at the same time

More ramblings and expanse.

The foundation for a 30 and 50 front are about the same give or take the positioning of the tackles and how your run the line. The 30 front allows you to disguise multiple defensive sets and change nothing. However, your DE are not going to be your prototypical DE's that you would find in a normal 50 set. That being said, am I going to change my entire defense to face one or two opponents who show a Spread formation? Nope, not at all !

Essentially I am playing downhill by inverting my Corners with either the Safety staying back in Cover 3 or moving him up going Cover 2. Now your not out of the woods by any means but by bringing up your safety you can still Zone Over and Under, covering 80 percent of the HIGH COMPLETION underneath passes with 4 defenders. At the same time your DB's aren't being run off the play by a wide out. Now everyone in the defensive backfield can play both pass and run. Technically I am still in a 5-3. The DE are going to have to learn to read 3 things. Outside run, Trap Blocks, and (heres the added thing), once the QB brings the ball to his ear they have to start dropping into the Bubble and Tunnel screen area. This is going to happen mostly to the Trips side. Against two wide they arent going to effect much. However, by dropping even a couple of steps before the release they can alter the pass simply by being somewhere they arent expected to be. In a sense they are more like a Linebacker than a true 5-3 DE (if you have a couple spare LB I would sub). Even if they drop a few steps they can still come up and clobber the QB if he pulls it down and runs.

These are just some quick thoughts on how I can run a 5-3 starting off against a spread team who might not throw a single pass and support both the pass and run game. The best thing is that none of your defense will be turning their back to the ball to chase a receiver. All 11 of them can come downhill to nab the run game. On top of that it forces the QB to be very, very accurate.

Good Luck

Coach Ray:

I agree. If you let the Dline play a true 50 front and bring your Safety up you can force them to block 6 with 5. A simple Line slant can throw off their pass protect by two men depending on how they slide. You still covering in Zone as well. But I digress, we're talking about 12 to 14 year old kids all at different levels of physical maturity hence most teams don't have more than 3, maybe 4 "Studs". One has to be the QB that leaves either 2 wide outs or 1 Wide out and 1 TB. Simply based on that fact alone, I dont think a youth Spread team can run all aspects of the offense equally as well. They are going to be tilted to the pass or to the run. Even if they are tilted towards the pass, I truly believe it will be the short to intermediate game. This fits very nicely in the Zone concept be it Cover 3 or Cover 2.

I recently heard a very successful High School coach speak for about 2 minutes at a clinic. His staff was presenting their basic defensive philosophy and demonstrating some techniques etc. Last year the A-11 was the buzz along with the Spread. He very quietly pointed out that you can talk schemes all day long, or develop a new smothering defense based on the alignment of the moon and stars. He finished by saying NONE OF IT MEANS DOODLY SQUAT IF YOU CANT TACKLE!. Your not going to beat a basic I Formation team and your sure as heck not going to handle a Spread team, if you cant tackle. YOU WANT TO TEACH TECHNIQUE? TEACH THEM HOW TO TACKLE! Then do the rest of this stuff.