Recognizing Defenses, Part II

In Part I of this two-part series, I described five standard ways to categorize defenses. We call them 7 Even, 7 Odd, 8 Even, 8 Odd, and Goal Line.

All of those categories ASSUME that the defense will line up in a balanced formation. That is, we expect the defense to have the same number of defenders on each side of our center.

But what if we don't see that? What happens in the case of a 5-2 Monster, where the defense shows up as a five man line, with two central linebackers like an Oklahoma defense - but just one safety? That defense has a player called a Monster, that moves around to any spot on the field. Often times, youth defenses will use that extra player on the wider side of the field.

Here's a picture of our flex formation lined up against a 5-2 Monster:

The M player represents the Monster, this time lined up on our left side of the field. Note that there are five defenders to the left of our center, and four defenders to the right, with the nose tackle and safety lined in the middle.

Our first inclination is to call this defense an 8 Odd. And for our option plays, it still will be! Our option plays are well-suited to run against a Monster defense aligned this way, because we can run to either side with no change to blocking rules for any of our players.

For plays like sweeps, belly, powers, or trap, we will probably try to change the play at the line to run away from the Monster. That's not because we can't block him - we can and do against balanced 8 Odd alignments. We check to the other side against a Monster on those plays in order to gain a numerical blocking advantage on the short side of the field.

We change to the other side in our offense with an audible at the line after the players have set their splits. Some words mean 'right' as in 'run the right-side version of the play' while other words mean 'left'. Other words are false alarms, and we ignore them. So if the key word "Ringo" that day means "right", a Power 25 would become a Power 36, and we would run off right tackle instead of left.

Sometimes we will even call a 'check-with-me' type play in the huddle. "Ringo Lemon Power" would tell our players that our play will be either a Power 36 or Power 25, depending on whether they hear "Ringo" or "Lemon" at the line. As they go to the line, they don't know to which side we're running the play.

We will also often do this type of check-with-me in cases where the defensive formations are ordinary, but the individual defenders have unbalanced themselves along the line. For example, if we are trying to run a Midline Option, but the nose tackle is lined up in the A gap between our center and guards within an otherwise balanced defense, it is pretty simple for us to call a run to the opposite side at the line.

We started doing this last year, in the second week of the season, and I was absolutely amazed at how effective our 3rd graders were at understanding that the direction of the play would entirely depend upon what our quarterback saw and called.

Each time we did it though, it was because the coach in the huddle asked the QB to read the defense and react at the line, and our players were prepared beforehand for the 'check-with-me' audible. This year we will try to build on that, and give our quarterback the opportunity to change the side of the play at any time.