How To Develope a Successful High School Defense

Before I start talking about defense, I'll admit, much of what I will talk about about I just learned last year, which was my first year coaching defense.  Although, I may lack some knowledge in this area, I will discuss knowledge of several other coaches that have more experience.  I started my offensive segment saying what position was most important for success.  For Defense this is much harder to do, as a successful defense is more of a group effort.  But, if I had to choose one player that was all-state caliber I would take the obvious choice, middle linebacker.  If your defense has a dominant middle linebacker, you are able to have more success in making sure people are lined up correctly and know what slant and/or stunt they will be doing.  Also, a great middle linebacker can read inside runs easily and fill the right gap and make most of these plays.  Screens and passes over the middle are much harder to run when your going against a great middle linebacker.

Photo by Hugh Cox

Before any linebackers can have any success at all you need at least an decent defensive line that knows what they are doing.  The key to this is what is called gap integrity.  For linebackers to have lanes to make tackles and not have blockers all over them the d-line needs to fill the correct gap on the snap (gaps are the spaces between the o-linemen).  Gap integrity is even more important on blitzes, I learned this the hard way a couple of times.  If a player blitzes the same gap as where the defensive lineman is going, it opens up a whole.  If the play ends up going up that hole, then runner usually ends up getting to the secondary, which is a bad situation for the defense.  If you look at the picture below you will see the linebacker is blitzing the gap between the center and guard and the two d-linemen are going to the other two gaps.

Photo by FootballsFuture.com

The most successful High School defenses have a d-line that plays with their hands on.  This helps in two ways: first this keeps the offensive lineman away from your body so when you are near the runner you can easily disengage the block and make the tackle, and second this keeps the o-linemen occupied so they are unable to go down field and make a block on a linebacker.  Also, d-linemen need enough power to keep the o-lineman back.  As a d-line the worst case senerio is to get moved back away from the ball.  This makes life easy on the runningback and hard on the linebackers.

A successful d-line makes the job easy for a linebacker.  First it keeps them free to make reads on runs and make tackles.  Also, it makes open lanes where the linebacker knows to fill on inside and outside runs.  But, these linebackers need to be smart and aggressive for them to get tackles.  They need to be smart so they can make there reads.  The middle linebacker needs to read the guard.  I was always told going through football that following the guard will always take you to the play, and through coaching I have found that to be correct.  We run drills in practice everyday just working through reading the guard.  These linebackers also need to be aggressive.  This is a lot easier said then done.  They need to be able to attack, stick their nose into a play and make a tackle.

Photo by Chris Manderioli

 Finally, I will talk about the defensive backs.  Their job is fairly easy in small school football, as their are a lot more runs than passes.  As long as the d-line and linebackers do their jobs the d-back should rarely have to make tackles.  For running plays the defensive backs are your safety nets, they need to be able to make open field tackles when the running back breaks into the secondary.  They also need to be able to read pass, and cover well.  They need to make sure under no circumstance, they ever let a receiver behind them.  They also need the correct footwork to be in position to make plays.

To recap, if the d-line, linebackers, and d-backs all do they jobs correctly.  If they make their reads, fill right gaps, keep hands on, play aggressively and have proper footwork, you will find that stopping the offense will be done easily.