Pressuring the passer.

Going at him with penetrating pressure, overloading, and mismatches

When a football coach's game plan starts unraveling, he has to assume that his base defense and zone coverage are not getting the job done.

The time has come to apply pressure, particularly against the passer, and we believe that the 34 and 43 fronts offer the best way to do it. They enable us to attack the offense with penetrating pressure, overloading the LOS, and creating personnel mismatches.

We pressure the passer in three ways:

First, we determine the opponents' weakest offensive lineman and match him with our best defensive lineman.

Second, we stack the numbers in our favor by overloading the weak, strong, and/or middle of the LOS.

Third, a combination of the above with some deception and/or zone blitzes.

Most offenses operate on a time sequence, and if you can interrupt that sequence you can cause trouble.

When scouting and evaluating the opponents, we rank their offensive linemen from 1 to 5, #1 being the best and #5 the worst.

The mismatch must be in our favor, of course - our best on their worst. But this strategy can only be used in highly predictable situations, with respect to yardage, key personnel, and field situations.

It must always be remembered that the opponents are doing the same thing - matching their best offensive lineman with our worst defensive lineman.

Overloading the offensive unit can be done fairly easily if you understand the basic concept - bringing more defenders than the offense can block in a certain location. Check Diag. 1, 34 Open Fire and Diag. 2, 43 Open Fire.

These are overloads to the weak side of the offensive LOS. Our basic assumption is that our four defenders can attack and get to the passer and/or ball-carrier before they have time to maneuver.

The term "Open" indicates the one-receiver side and/or X receiver. If there is no Open set, we will check out of Open to Closed Fire [ILLUSTRATION FOR DIAGRAM 3 OMITTED] - overloading the two-receiver side under Y (tight end).

If the offense employs an even set with doubles on both sides, we will attempt to get pressure up the middle with the 34 package - 34 Double Eagle Bandit [ILLUSTRATION FOR DIAGRAM 4 OMITTED].

The 43 package (43 Mike and Will Go) presents a combination of pressure inside and outside [ILLUSTRATION FOR DIAGRAM 5 OMITTED].

Deception plays a major role in the game. In our defenses, the word "Show" commands all linebackers to crowd the LOS [ILLUSTRATION FOR DIAGRAM 6 OMITTED].

From the Show position, we can execute all of our 34 and 43 defensive blitz schemes. This alignment helps confuse blocking assignments and eliminate pre-reads by the QB and receivers. We can now zone-blitz our opponents by dropping any one of our down linemen to a specific receiver and/or location on the field.

See Diag. 7 (34 Open Fire Zone) and Diag. 8 (43 Show Closed Fire Man).

The passer can be considered the brain of the body. He commands control of the offensive unit. And we know that whenever stress is applied to the brain, there is likely to be a misfire.

(Symbols for diagrams: MO, weak inside LB; M, Mike strong inside LB; S, Sam strong outside LB; W, Weak outside LB.)