OUR DEFENSIVE PHILOSOPHY is based on being aggressive, tough and fundamentally sound. We consider this attacking brand of defense to be almost offense-like in the way that we try to keep opposing offenses on their heels, off balance and reacting to a pace that’s dictated by us.

Nothing epitomizes this philosophy of “offensive defense” better than our Blue Thunder defense. It is a blitzing, hard-nosed defense that focuses on simplicity, toughness and player accountability.

‡    Simplicity. Always try to keep your player assignments relatively simple so that your players will know what they’re supposed to do. This frees them up to play aggressively. If you overload your defensive players with five or six possible assignments over 10 different coverages, they may become confused and play hesitantly. A defensive player who hesitates always gets beat.

Don’t confuse simplicity with not doing a lot on defense. You still want to show multiple covers and mix things up, while keeping player assignments as clear and clean as possible.

‡    Physical, Mental Toughness. Since the team that hits hardest wins the majority of the time, always demand physical and mental toughness from your players. Stress hitting opponents harder on each successive play.

Mental toughness is just as important. You want your defensive player to understand both his assignment and what the opponent is trying to do. Ask any college coach the difference between good college players and great ones and they’ll tell you it’s preparation, film study and the desire to mold themselves into mentally tough players.

The physical punishment that your players can dish out on an opponent is the fun part of playing defense. It’s a reward for all their hard work, film study, game plan preparation and effort put into learning their assignments.

‡    Accountability. You can draw up the best defensive scheme in the world, but if your players don’t execute, it won’t work. Everyone must execute their assignments to be successful as a defensive team.

Demand accountability for assignments from both your coaches and players on defense.

Explain to your players “why” they’re doing something on defense so that they fully understand the concept. Telling a secondary player why he’s responsible for covering the alley in a certain scheme will allow him to grasp the big defensive picture and help him learn his assignment.

Defensive Goals
The Blue Thunder defense has five main goals.

1  Make Your Opponent One Dimensional. Make it a priority to stop the run and keep your opponent’s offense one dimensional. Don’t allow your opponent to mix up the run and pass equally. Once your defense stops the run, then you can scheme to control their best wide receiver.

2  Create Confusion In The Offense’s Blocking, Protection Schemes. Utilize overloading, timely blitzes, line stunts (run and pass stunts), variations of secondary base coverages, stemming (with down linemen, secondary, linebackers) and multiple fronts to give your opponent’s offense a different pre-snap look on every play.

This can be done with very little effort. You can run the same blitzes out of slightly different fronts. For example, by simply altering the placement of the nose guard from a 3 technique to a 5 technique, you’ll be able to use the same blitz scheme. But to an opposing offense, it looks as if you’ve just changed the whole defense.

3  Force Turnovers. Prepare your defensive players to relentlessly pursue to the football and try to force turnovers. Tell them to play every single snap like it’s the last play of a tie game.
We call this gang-tackling philosophy “11 Hats To The Ball.”

4  Hold Opponents To No More Than 16 Points Per Game. Always try to hold your opponent to no more than 16 points per game. In case of an offensive shootout (no matter how good your defense is, sometimes this just happens), keep your offense within at least one score of winning the game.

5  Don’t Allow Any Big Plays. Big plays will kill a team. You can play great defense all game long and then one big play can put you behind. Set team defensive goals of allowing no running plays over 20 yards and no pass plays over 25 yards.

Check back through your statistics for any given game and if your defense hasn’t given up a big play, there’s a great chance that your team won that game.

Utilize Blitzes
Blitzing is a huge part of the “offensive defense” philosophy of the Blue Thunder defense. Design your blitzes based on field position, down, distance, opponent tendencies and where you have the matchup advantage.

Finding match-up advantages are especially key for scheduling your blitzes. You want to study your opponent and discover their weakest player on offense and attack him by blitzing. Your job as a defensive coach is to make that game the longest of that weak-link player’s career.

Match-up advantages work the other way as well. If you know that your opponent has an advantage over your team at a specific position, put more pressure in that area because you know all their main plays are going to come through their best players.

There are three main blitzes that we utilize in the Blue Thunder defense.

1  Zero Blitz. Heavy pressure with man-to-man coverage. Press coverage, taking away the inside and coming after the opponent with intense pressure.

2  Hot Blitz.  Heavy pressure with man-to-man coverage and a lineman or LB dropping off into an anticipated “hot read” area. Many inside receivers are taught to “replace the blitzer” and run to the hole vacated by the blitzing defender. In the hot blitz, we’ll send a player on the blitz, then have another player quickly fill the anticipated “hot read” area and try to get an interception or make the quarterback pump it and hold the ball.

3  Zone Blitz.  Heavy pressure with zone coverage behind it.

Zone Blitz
The Blue Thunder defense has the ability to run zone blitzes in all game situations and from anywhere on the field. You can also zone blitz with all defensive fronts.

We’ve tried to implement the best characteristics of our zero blitz into our zone blitz. This gives zone blitzes several advantages toward disrupting a play.

Ô    You have the luxury of playing zone coverage as opposed to man-to-man. When an opposing QB sees a blitz coming, he’s expecting man coverage — and when he reads zone coverage, it will throw off his game.

Ô    It destroys and confuses your opponent’s blocking schemes.

Ô    With zone coverage, you have the benefit of good run support. If you’re playing a Wing T or an option team, you won’t get burned too badly on a boot leg, screen or a play-action pass because you can run someone in zone coverage into the holes.

Corners Are Key
The most important players in your zone blitz are your cornerbacks. If you’re going to use a zone-blitz scheme your corners must:

-    Be Able To Control The 3-Step Passing Game. If the QB goes to an audible system, your corners are giving a zone-look, but they’re able to read and break quickly on throws.

-    Have The Ability To Make Plays. There are times in zone blitzing where they’re going to be “left alone on an island.” If your corners aren’t playmakers, you may not want to run a zone blitz.