Wing T DFence help

Coach Hollegaard,

Coach Cella and others have a very good, and pretty in depth, discussion about stopping the Wing T with a 5-2 Cover 2 defense on the "50 Defense" board below, primarily on the second page of the post titled "3-4 defense." We've run different fronts at the Wing-T (because I've coached on teams that played both even and odd fronts), and we've had success in both by sticking to a few key principles:

(1) The Wing-T is designed to hit the A, C, and D-Gaps (Dive/Trap in the A, Belly/Counter/Reverse/Toss (if they also incorporate some double wing) in the C, and Sweeps/Bootlegs in the D). As a result, we always design our defense to force the ball into the B-gaps where they don't want to go and where our ILB's should be there to make the tackle. You can do this either by shading the A/C/D gaps, slanting to them, or playing an attack and read technique with outside leverage forcing everything back inside to the ILB's.

(2) Unless a Wing-T defense is sophisticated enough to use false pulls (most aren't), if you teach your ILB's to read the G's, they should take you to the ball almost all the time. If we know the team will false pull, we teach them to check the FB first (through the area vacated by the pulling G because he will likely become the lead block since the G has pulled away), then scrape with the pulling G.

(3) The secondary force defenders must be aggressive yet disciplined. They must be able to locate the ball by understanding the offense's blocking schemes. If a RB is carrying the ball toward them, they need to attack the edge of the front to stop the ball from bouncing outside. If a QB is carrying the ball toward them, the contain man (DE/OLB) should have outside leverage on the QB, so they must look for flat and intermediate routes because it is a bootleg pass.

I hope this helps, and let me know if I can provide any further info. Good Luck!!

We tried to hit the wing-T with a 60 formation.
2 DT's in the A gab and the ends in C gabs.
2 OLB's had the contain
The 2 ILB had responsibility for the B gabs, keying the guards.
Never the less there FB trap play killed us.

I heard, from at coach, that containing the gab instead of fighting through was the key, with only a few men on the line, like 3(3-4 or 3-5)

I think the FB trap play could be stoped by lining 3 Defense linemen over the G and C.