Run strength questions (offense AND defense-relevant)

We will still set the run strength of our defensive to the TE, as there is an extra gap there to account for and many fronts are predicated on handling that. But if the scouting report tells us they run away from the tilt of the backfield (which many teams do) then it is simple to account for that and adjust without changing the structure of the defense.

An H-Back that is consistently lined up as a sniffer back (inside the TE) can just be treated like a RB though and not cause much trouble

We got to the point where we started calling strength to the offset Rb, or away from him or based off tendencies we saw on film.

We run a 3 man front if this changes things since we have no 3 tech to set.

But we don't make a run strength call against any formation. We do key an off the line Y/H and fit our backers and DBs off his movement.

Base rules are
1-TE
2-Most number of WR
3-Rb

But honestly. It’s pretty easy to change it from week to week based on game plan and tendencies.

For spread stuff, you are often in better shape calling the strength based on the alignment of the RB, but you have to be careful with that.

Offenses try to be better about having “same side” plays than they used to be a few years ago, but the bottom line is that a sidecar RB is going to need to cross the QB’s face to get the ball on most runs, so calling strength AWAY from the RB is pretty common.

It’s still not that rare to see teams who have no “same side” stuff for the RB except maybe a counter. For many, the same side run game often turns out to be QB runs and keeps. If the QB is the stud runner, you may want to declare it to the RB for that reason.

You don’t necessarily have to set players based on run strength. You can just play a 4-2 and have your front 6 in C gap to C gap, maybe with the DE bumping out to a 6 or 7 tech. A 3-3 team can do much of the same stuff by walking the stacked OLB into a 6 tech and slanting everyone else away from him.

This means you can just set both passing and run strength to the field (or to a tendency, which may be as simple as “right” or “left” as a default, so long as everybody follows their alignment rules so we get the gaps and receivers covered and we can make a Trips check or something if necessary.

Remember that “run strength” itself can be kind of a nebulous term. Is it the side the offense is more likely to run the ball towards or is it the side with more people and potential blockers? If both those things tell you nothing, it may simply be Right or Left for various reasons, to the RB or away from him, or even to the opponent’s sideline or away.

I’ve seen some teams who strongly prefer to call plays towards their own bench, which was apparently an old-school thing that some coaches would do before the days of headsets so they could see the details from the sideline for themselves as each play happened. I’ve seen some no huddle teams use it (not sure why), lower level teams without spotters doing it, as well as modern HS coaches who just don’t like wearing headsets.

What I’ve noticed from watching some defensive guys talk scheme a few things appear to be a little more common. Now once they start talking it’s clear it’s game planned and adjusted but in the beginning their rules appear to work like this.

Front is set based on the RB position. In most cases this is done to make it harder to run zone. I’m mainly talking about how teams set their 4i and 5 and the techniques they use.

The secondary sets according to number of eligible receivers. This fills in the “extra gaps” for a lack of a better description.

The answer to that on offense tends to be either go in line TE which typically gets the defense to adjust the front some or get creative with the H.

As far as calling plays into your own sideline goes. Sometimes that’s not by design but just happens subconsciously. Drinkell who is at Army now talked about that. One reason people do it is it’s harder for the defense to communicate and sub all the way across the field. Tennessee for example pretty much only runs exotic formations to their sideline.

This is something I do pretty consciously. We get way less holding penalties running into our sideline, the defense doesn't always adjust properly to stuff like unbalanced, coaching players between plays is easier for us than them, etc.

Some games I will fall into a pretty hilarious rhythm of going into our sideline like 3 plays in a row, then reset it all by running a perimeter play to the wide side of the field, then start the process over.

One of my coaching friends liked to run plays into his sideline when ball was on hash because he felt he could see what was happening better.

In fact when he was on phones at JV games he would tell JV coach to run play towards Press Box for same reason.

I had one play that was a big TD scorer-"Get out of Trouble" play, a Flanker Middle Screen (for those of you old-timers the "Rocket" Screen Lou Holtz ran at Notre Dame with Rocket Ishmail).

Seemed to work better when Flanker was from our sideline instead of opponent's where their sideline-coaches could see it coming.

How many is a "ton," i.e. what percentage of your plays in a given game or even over a season?

Our base 34 defensive call set is to the RB, BUT based on week to week can be TE, most WRs, field/boundary...

It doesn't really matter per se, b/c all it does is set where our blitz/twist/slant/etc... is going.  We could just as easily make the call to send a LB regardless of what the formation is.  So in a certain sense, it isn't the traditional strength call but more of a directional call.

If we go with our 4 down package, then usually the TE sets the strength..... unless we want to work an Under front....

I think in today's spread offense world, it really should be a week to week thing and your defense should have built in answers.


****On a side note when I was calling the shots on defense, our 425 always had the 3 technique to the boundary.  Reason being that it easily allowed us to slip into a 3 man front without change much of anything other than created an extra bubble..... but that is in another thread.

We are moving from 3-3 to 3-4. Like some of have mentioned the strength call really means nothing unless I want the DL to slant strong or weak. Can just as easily make it left and right. When we were 4-2-5 we set the 3 in different places vs different formations based on the game plan.

I don't like saying whether we were 4-2 or 4-3 (I'm at a different school now).  I guess technically we've done this if we were 4-2 or 4-3, but we were still doing a lot of the same things for the most part.

We call it to the field and have adjustments to our defense to make sure we are gap sound against a TE or formation into the boundary. We are pretty good at it in our base unless we get some kind of crazy formation that’s unbalanced. Then we still have big play safe adjustments to hopefully eliminate big plays until we can get a better fix.

Our strength rules are:

To the field

In middle of the field:
-to the offensive numbers
*numbers in or near the box take precedence over numbers out of the box
-if balanced it will be something easy based on game plan. Away from the back or to their best offensive lineman or something we thinks gets us in the best position