An Introduction to the 5-3-1 Triangle Defense

The 5-3-1 Triangle Defense

By

Denauld Brown

I would like to introduce to the football world a defensive concept that I have been working on for the better part of the last 5 years. I call it the 5-3-1 Triangle Defense. The 5-3-1 Triangle is a single gapping, 3-4, hybrid, defense that first, marries its self into the offense formation by identify the middle of that formation, them places a specific defender transversely across from “MO.” (Or the Middle Of the formation)

The 5 in the 5-3-1 refers to the 4 down and the Sam backer over the TE vs. any pro set. The 3 in the 5-3-1 refers to the two inside linebackers and the stacked safety also vs. a pro set. The 1 in the 5 -3-1 is the other safety who can also stack vs. a pro set but is also an adjuster vs. extended sets.

Essentially a 2 high defense is imbalanced literally. In traditional defense, which admittedly this defense is not, balance is created by a walked down or overlapping safety. When you keep the Sam linebacker on line of scrimmage as the primary overlap, this allows the defense to stay single gapped but also allows you to keep a pre-snap disguise longer. Ultimately you allow the defense to stay 2 high by choice, not by necessity. That to me is paramount and gives the defensive coordinator an extreme amount of latitude, flexibility, and play with the secondary shell including the corners.

Since the emergence of the spread offense and all of its residual spinoffs these offenses have exposed us defensive gurus for the tradition slaves or slaves to tradition that we really are. Which one are you?

Biding a defense to the hash in my opinion has been the biggest culprit of offenses exploding with a larger volume of plays and points and likely the reason the spread has been so successful over the last 10 years.

I challenge defensive coaches to reconsider biding your entire playbook the hash and start putting more emphasis on offensive sets. By running a hash defense your tendencies in the middle of the field are so skewed that likely you stay in a 2 high shell the majority of the time. You become so predictable that most offensive game planed plays outside of their base will occur in this part of the field.

So we are waiting for the defensive gods to bring us our messiah and the answers to the spread that we so seek. In the meantime offensive coaches have exponentially grown the spread, spawning honorable men like Gary Patterson and his 4-2-5 defense. In my opinion the 4-2-5 is the best defense played in the college game today. It is as close of an answer for the spread as I have seen this decade but who in the top 25 runs it other than TCU?

It saddens me that offenses have devised schemes and philosophies that have gotten to a point where running well over 100 plays of offense in a game as well as averaging 1 play per 10 seconds or less is actually an accepted norm by defense. I must put my foot down and tell my defense colleagues it is not!

I have encountered an offense that was 50/50 in every single category from personnel, to hash, to down and distance, to formation and run/pass ratio. Tim Murphy is both the Head football coach and offensive play caller at Harvard University and in my opinion one of the best offensive play callers in the country. His call sequences are an amazing piece of work. Needless to say they won several Ivy League Championships during my tenure as a defensive coach and coordinator in that league. For all you smart guys who call defense out there, if you face a play caller like that who can maintain that type of balance and at the end the game accomplish a 50/50 run to pass ratio, he can make you ook like a novice if you are not prepared.

So where do we start? The first thing we need to do is reduce the amount of variables we are using during the opponent break down. I have found it very useful to stop looking at formations so specifically but rather, look at them in a generic manner.

Instead of making yourself and your players memorize non-systematic formations, make it easy on yourself by identifying these sets as either “even” or “odd.” It is determined by the location of “MO” whether a set is even or odd.

Instead of looking at a break down scenario as 2^nd and 8, left hash, 11 personnel, QB Gun, Ace right you can look at it like this: “It’s 2^nd and 8, even set by result of a 1^st and 10 run. This allows you to study the results of the previous play in your break down with more examination rather than locking yourself to the dynamic of the current play pre-snap.

 This can dramatically reduce the amount variables that offensive coaches know that we use and taking advantage of our slave mentality and ultimately earns an offensive play caller 110 offensive plays a game

I have done a lot of work on this defense and it will take several articles and clinics to disclose the finer points of it going forward.

The first thing I decided to do was to eliminate the traditional lettering of the defensive positions. I think is important to have them as references for your play book but now you have eliminated a step in the whole equation that will help as I will explain further.

Instead of the “Will” linebacker being aligned in a 30 technique; responsible for “A” gap with flow away, and “B” with flow too in the run game, and in the pass game, responsible for the hook curl; but rather you are now a 3 linebacker who always has “A” gap and is responsible for apexing between the declaration #2 to #1.

That it is much cleaner statement and turns you from coach to teacher.

I will not be able to get into particulars in this first article but the 5-3-1 Triangle has allowed me to merge both the alignment with the assignment in this system for all the defenders including the secondary. By Being a 3 linebacker he simply does what 3’s do.

People ask questions for two reasons. First, we ask a question to get an answer, but more so we ask questions to simulate thought. I have created this defense by asking one question and that was question being “why is defensive football an 11 man game.”

THE 5-3-1 TRIANGLE DEFENSE