Looking for drills to teach defensive ends containment

Coach,

DE's do not have containment, in a conventional defense CB's have containment. I run a 4-2-5 where our twin Monsters who align at 3 yds. deep and 5 yds. wide of the LOS, have containment. The reason I have run it for so long is that very point. It frees our CB's up to play pass 100% without having to worry about containment, and if they get run off it doesn't hurt us one bit as we have the twin monsters for containment. They have 3 assignments on every play (contain on the sweeps, flats on the pass, pitch on the option). The old days of having the DE's come across and box in are long gone. In most schemes, your DE's are going to crash to the QB (not all, but most) and they would not be able to contain because of their path angle to the QB. Hope this helps you.

Root 66,
I'm in my 41 st year of coaching, as old school as they come in a lot of aspects of the game. Most DE's would not have much luck containing if they get tied up with the TE while "crashing" even just a little bit would they, as they would be "late" reaching the depth you mention? If the RB is quick, as most are, he will be long gone by the time your guy gets there. If he comes in at a 45 degree angle, a simple quick pitch would leave him facing in, now having to turn his hips close to 180 degrees to pursue the RB, wouldn't he? Thats why we teach the playside DE to come across with shoulders and hips square to the LOS with his head on a swivel, ready to go in either direction without having to turn his hips. Now, if we are playing an option team, we send the DE directly to the QB in keeping with the 3 things only that a DE can do to him; 1. play hard and make him pitch right now 2. play soft and string it out 3. go directly to pitch. Any tight end with skill is not going to be deterred from a double team down block by a DE leaving his outside shoulder free as that would indicate to me that he is blocking with only one hand. Please understand me, not trying to be argumentitive in any way as that is not the purpose of our forum here, just simply wondering what I am missing here that you feel has helped you obtain better results with this technique.

Coach Easton

Coach John,
Thanks for your informative post in explaining your technique. AS I said before, we contain with our twin monsters (SS's) and the one drill we work on constantly with them is the angle of containment. This drill stresses the correct angle of pursuit to always maintain the RB on his inside shoulder to better funnel the ball into the arms of a scraping LB. we use live personnel (QB,RB, LB, Monster) and simply make the pitch to the RB and have him sprint on sweep action. The monster back reps and reps and reps the proper pursuit angle, while the LB works on his scrape drill rep after rep after rep. Thanks again for your post.

Coach Easton