While our defense is trending towards a more multiple look, I am finding lots of ways to simplify such a complex system. The key to simplifying your Multiple Front Defense is to ask each position to do only a few things, while the combination of each of their assignments creates a wide variety of looks.

And then those looks have to all come together.

A while back we talked about the base front for a Multiple Front 3-4 Defense, and some of the base rules for that defense. Go back and take a look to get some of the base rules for this front.

Now we are going to add in a second strength call. Our base call is to the Field, and now we add in the alignment for the Bench call. [Read more...]

We want to be able to marry the 4-3 Defense to an Odd Front this season and am looking at various options. In this video we explore the run fits between a 3-4 Defense and a 4-3 Defense without changing personnel or changing our basic fits.

Read more about the 4-3 Defense in Installing Football’s 4-3 Over Defensive Front eBook.I’d love to hear how you have married various fronts together without changing run fits or coverage teaching, so leave a comment!

Transcript of Running Multiple Fronts

Hi! My name is Joe Daniel. Welcome to FootballDefense.com. Today we’re going to be talking about Running Multiple Fronts and keeping the same Run fits from front to front. This is something that interested me. It is not something that I will be able to do but definitely something that interested me and seen other coaches do is run a number of different fronts out there without really changing too much for your kids. Just changing where they lined up and they don’t have to think a whole lot this far on how they’re going to finish the certain play because they understand the run fits. It is going to cause a lot of problems for your offense. Check the offensive line in terms of figuring out where to block, who to block, who’s going to be where. Are they going to have made different calls every play? If you can line up in 2 or 3 different fronts and really run them effectively. I don’t think that you can never expect to be great in every front if you’re going to run a lot of different fronts out there. What I’m talking about for running multiple fronts is not just running for example with the 4-3 who run over in an under front.

To me those are two different fronts but they don’t change matches for what our kids are doing. They still shade. What I’m looking at is for running a multiple fronts being overrun both “I” and “Even fronts” and not only that being able to run for example a 3-4 and even a 4-2-5 where I got a really good two high safety look maybe a pass package but then I’m also able to jump into a 4-2-5 when we got an 8-man front really good solid against the run. So, these are the things that we were looking at today. What we were looking at today is fitting just a simple inside zone play. Here we got the offense running inside zone to our right offense of running to the left and filling both out of the 3-4 defense and a 4-3 defense without changing our personnel scene and make those run fit the same. What we are looking at here with our 4-3 defense first of all is the run fits since we share into the gaps should be very simple. Our defense of End on the right is getting block two here. He’s going to lock on this guy. He’s going to hold his ground try to squeeze him back in there. We’re not going to back door zone block. We’re trying to squeeze him back in. We got our down to run foot to the Sam backer’s side here. He’s going to camp board now. He’s going to fade up his inside shoulder tight to that tackle he’s going to close that gap off. He’s not going to weight on the scale to get off to him. He is on the close down now he’s going to fade up and he’s going to handle this gap. Our tackle 3 technique and block two he’s slashing on to the sound defender so they can get to double team and overtake him and come off who are naturally the sound defender and just like your defense of end play it who wants to take with the inside out of the gap and handle right there. Our Mike backer covering here now filling up the gap take it all with his inside shoulder just like our Sam backer did. On the flow away here our Will backer is going to set. He’s not going to go running now. He’s going to counter shuffle. If you were zone read option heading to be responsible for that quarterback. In this case we got a kick out block coming by full back with our zone read we were on the shot gun we have trend of quarterback coming out. Our back side backer is being the one who’s able to comebacker to the top one. Nose guard fit as the same way as other defense of upfront up here. Taking that on his got a little tougher job. He was to set tight End to the center lots on blitz center and not letting front on the backer not let this guy overtake. We take hips to the hips. Just squeeze his hips and sees lapses on here just squeeze his hips and the pressure coming back from him just like you teach to split the double team there. The key is that he doesn’t let these guys in or overtake here and blocking by himself. We got this zone block here covering up working to our backer. We were going to ban to get underneath to kick out block. The defense of End was to come tight rolling on this kick out block to begin to end and he was to bend down to the line of scrimmage to play the cutback here. He is responsible for a cutback play there. If we got cutback used pick up we still got the Will backer to come back. So, that’s over to defend the inside zone out of 4-3. What’s going to be different are in the 3-4, will in our 3-4 we are going to slant on one direction to the other. In this case we slant strong if we slant weak here, if we were going to slant weak we will essentially have the same run fit upfront. We will be slanting this guy into the B gap same place to our tackle over here spent. Our Nose in to this weak A gap same place that our Nose stays there. We will be slanting him to the outside. That will make very simple and then these guys base will be going to the same spot where they end before. They will slant weak, these guys will work strong. So that’s the start with force. We’re going to slant strong here. As we slant strong this slants is going to take control this guy, control his C gap. We’re going to block two for the defense of End same as we do over here we’re going to attack hold our ground, he’s the Contain player in this case. We’re going to attack hold his ground hold that A gap as we get the downhill flow we got the gap responsibility. He’s attacking taking on the outside half of that guard with his inside shoulder not letting him get off to him. The guard is not sure whether he’s going to be working to overtake that tackle or have this backer. So that makes a different element here the one he had before where he knew 9% most of the time who got to have that tackle. Now he’s not sure who’s going to get it slow down the rates. For fitting up for the backer on the flow two who slants on the B gap control our B gap here. Back side inside backer flows going away from him he’s counter shuffling if he gets cut back you come down to fill it up. If he continues over here he’s going to scrape over find an open door or just let keep scraping until they find and gets to it. Now we got this guy if we really get the zone read look like what we talk before. Same guy is responsible now for the zone read look. We will a little bit different in that Nose responsible for the cutback. He does not fill as fast because this is the combination on his sides where the cutback will get fill it up now. These guys going to be responsible, again he gets the run-read he’s coming in the line of scrimmage get down there now defending on our coverage he may be the outside Contain player or may not be. He fill the quarters coverage here, we may ask somebody else to come down to help him out. So if he’s not the Contain player we would want him to fit underneath on that kick out block. Same of what we do in our End out here. So there’s one differences, if he is not the contain player he’s going to fit underneath. If he is the Contain player he’s going to fit outside. We would have our full on full safety out there. So these just two different ways of fitting it up both effective, both ways were going to handle this are going to be the same. For most of our players we just got a slight change for this backer here more than anything. I don’t think that you have to be great in slant I think you have to be good in playing on your shade. You don’t have be great in slanting here with your technique you just have to make sure that your guys can move and knock it wash and really just get to that shade technique the we had in the 4-3. This is some of what we talk about in FootballDefense.com of multiple fronts on ways to run on 3-4 and 4-3 together to be given like to be over work even more fronts together with the 4-2-5 and even in a smaller look bare fronts things of that nature as well. It is important to be all the metric coverage here with the different fronts so that’s other consideration as well. Hope you stop by at FootballDefense.com. Read over 200 hour we have there as well as download our free eBook “The Defense of Installation Manual” for as you headed your off seasons looking up create your defense for next year. Thanks for listening…have a great day!