Defensive help

[Coach Mac]

Good evening everyone,

First year coach here. I am trying to get some defensive advice. We are getting gashed against the run and I’m open space. I don’t think it’s athletic ability or talent. We are young but still think we can do better. We are aren’t super big either.
We run a 2-3-1 zone with a little man.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Tom Duncan]

Good evening everyone,

First year coach here. I am trying to get some defensive advice. We are getting gashed against the run and I’m open space. I don’t think it’s athletic ability or talent. We are young but still think we can do better. We run a 2-3-1 zone with a little man.

Any help would be appreciated.

There is a link to files I created you can have access to on this threadDefense

 

[Coach Cooley]

Don’t run a “zone”, set your keys. Teach your kids to read keys and then react with zone as your coverage you fall into after you read the keys.

If you don’t teach’em how to read the offense and react they’ll always play on their heals and the punch will get brought to them.

 

[Coach Mac]

Don’t run a “zone”, set your keys. Teach your kids to read keys and then react with zone as your coverage you fall into after you read the keys.

If you don’t teach’em how to read the offense and react they’ll always play on their heals and the punch will get brought to them.

Thank you. This is learning experience for me. This is good advice.

 

[Coach_Tarp]

Hey Coach Mac,

This summer I threw together some thoughts on defending second exchange spread offenses on my YouTube channel to advertise a course I put together on the same topic. I made 3 YouTube videos on different topics, not all of them may be applicable to what you are asking, but maybe you will find them interesting. You can find them on my channel linked below.

Coach__Tarp

This is a place where 6Man Football coaching content will be posted.

www.youtube.com

My plan this off season is to throw together some content on tight defense. We have played two really tough tight teams already this year (with mixed results... ) and more J teams coming down the pipe.

In the meantime, I agree word for word with what Coach Cooley shared. Think about where each position should have their eyes every week. What are the different reads their key could give them, AND what should they do in response to each of the different reads. Put all that together and you have the makings of a sound defense.