From the 3-3-5 we bring both contain men up on the ball, and both corners, free safety and sometimes the outside backers play press man coverage. It puts us into a good short yardage defense. In doing this, there is less learning involved. It turns out to be an extension of our base defense. It is much akin to the old 5-3 defense I mentioned earlier. If our opponents bring in a “heavy” offense, we might substitute to match up. Versus some heavy offenses, we will oftentimes bring in linebackers for the D.B.’s to match up against big physical tight ends. But, for the most part, there is very little change.

Many of the teams we play want to throw the “power pass” with the fullback or tailback in the flat. (Fig. I, Fig. II) It is a great play action pass in short yardage situations because the defense over commits to stop the run. Our middle backer does not have any responsibility for the back out. Therefore, he is completely a run stopper in this defense. Our two outside backers are responsible for the back out.

We do not like to slant or pinch our down guys in our short yardage defense. (Fig. I, Fig. II) We feel that every lateral movement gets us turned and takes away from our ability to penetrate and stop the run. The short yardage offenses we see usually have very tight splits. This means slanting is very easily picked up by the offensive linemen. We want our pads upfield and are more interested in vertical penetration with a “root hog” mentality.

Another problem we see is that we’re so busy trying to stop our opponent’s open field offense, that we don’t give ourselves enough time to work against their goalline or short yardage stuff. If we’re going to stop the power running game and the play action pass, we’re going to have to spend more time practicing against it.

Any motion is taken by the cornerback to the side of the motion. (Fig. III, Fig. IV) This means we must “bump” our outside linebackers and free safety inside out. Like everything else, this must be worked on. If we don’t, invariably, we will double cover one and leave the other one uncovered.

When we face teams that do a lot of motioning, we have to pay very close attention to personnel changes. Sometimes they will bring in a wide receiver and line him up at tight end. This, of course creates a mismatch for our outside linebacker. He then must call timeout or do whatever it takes to keep him on the L.O.S. So, we are very conscious of the tight ends in the game.

In the above situation,(Fig. V) we never bump the weakside corner. We “lock” on and cover him all over the field. Against motion, we must be aware of the motion man as a lead blocker. Therefore, the corner cannot get too far off the ball as he mirrors the W.B. in motion.

Ordinarily, we would probably stay in our 3-3-5 defense with man coverage. But if we wanted to get into our short yardage defense with “0” coverage it would look like the 5-3 alignment. Since there is oftentimes no apparent strength, the free safety would take the tight end to the field side. Will backer would take the tight end to the boundary. Any tailback motion to “empty” is covered by the Sam backer.

There are five main schemes we see. The inside zone, outside zone, weak side cutback, the naked bootleg pass and the “90 series” (three step drop). We feel we are in great alignment to stop all five. Remember, we’re backed up in our red zone, so there’s not too much ground we have to cover. I hope the diagrams below will be of help. Thanks for reading and please leave a comment, positive or negative. Also, if you click the ads next to the articles I'll make a dime or two.