Defensive Strategy and Drills – Part I
By Benjamin Martin, Defensive Coordinator, Linebackers Coach
Colorado Mesa University
It is an honor and privilege to write this article and represent Colorado Mesa University and American Football Monthly. We, at Colorado Mesa University, are represented by a President Tim Foster, Athletic Director Tom Spicer, and Head Coach Russell Martin, each of whom encourages our team and staff each and every day. Thank you to each of them for letting us represent them as well.
In addition to myself, our defensive staff is composed of Mac Alexander (defensive backs), Tom Everson (defensive line), Ben Bezilla (assistant defensive backs), and Gothard Lane (defensive assistant). It is a joy to work with these men and to hear their ideas and incorporate them into our game plans each week.
At Colorado Mesa University we finished the season with a record of 9 wins and 3 losses, winning the Rocky Mountain Conference and losing to Texas A&M-Commerce in the first round of the playoffs. This was the first time since 2003 that Colorado Mesa University won the conference and since 2007 that we had made the NCAA Division II Playoffs. Though our defensive stats were not the best in the nation, our strength was to prepare for what opposing offenses were trying to do and put our players in a position to best oppose those offenses.
I had been told by a previous coach that “we wanted to take away what an offense did best and make them beat us doing something they were uncomfortable running.” In our staff’s five years at Colorado Mesa University I have had the opportunity to learn from two other great football minds in defensive coordinators Todd Auer and Marcus Patton. Both had different ideas of what it meant to build a defense and the personnel they wanted out on the field. This season we incorporated ideas of both, and incorporated a few of our own, to build our own idea of the best 2016 Colorado Mesa University Football defensive unit we could.
What I wanted to focus this article on was how we adapted through the season. We started running some new packages to help our guys take away what we thought offenses were best at. We told our team late into our season before the playoffs, “At the beginning of the year, few in this room would have thought we would see some of you on the field playing the positions you have been playing and seeing as many reps as you have been, but this defense has found a way to work through the losses and work together to put a pretty good unit on the field each game.”
Our base defense is 4-3, but starting a few games into the 2016 season we played several spread offenses where we realized we needed to get their quarterbacks to hold onto the ball, not have quick reads and throws, and also get a few more athletes and speed on the field, so we adapted.
We went to versions of a 3-4 at times. This helped us to take away the flats to the boundary right away and also to confuse offensive lines and quarterbacks with the same look to the field and boundary. We were then able to disguise blitzes and coverages a little bit more than we were able to out of the 4-3.
