This past off-season I spent more time than normal listening to offensive coaches discuss their strategies. Not just at clinics, but also in our office because this year we had an offensive coordinator to hire. This gave me a great opportunity to listen to the different candidates talk about their offensive schemes.
The biggest thing that struck me at the end of this process was how incredibly important a pre snap read has become to offenses. Not just for the QB, but also the OL and the skill players. Sometimes two players must be seeing the same indicator on defense without time to communicate. Sometimes the QB does not have to read anything post snap because of how strong the pre snap read is.
Now the best defenses I have been a part of in my time in college have been the most simple, where our players can get lined up and play fast. Because of this, for simplicity sake, disguise was brushed aside. After this off-season, however, my thought process has changed on this and the focus has now turned to finding easier ways to make the offensive players have to react to what we are doing post snap. We can do this by having just enough disguise pre snap to not give them a clear read on the best option for where the ball should go. With that in mind, I am going to do a couple of blog posts on disguise. The first one will deal with simple ways to use disguise in the secondary.
When I first coached the secondary years ago, I asked our safeties to be on a “vertical” string. That is, creeping toward the LOS and back without turning their hips toward the sideline too much. The head coach I worked for at the time was an offensive coach and he would stand behind the offense with the QBs. You could hear his commentary on the safeties.
He would alternate between “one safety high”, “two safety high”, or “no safeties” depending on what he was seeing. His words to his QB were, “if it is a one safety high defense, the ball needs to go here. If it’s a two safety high defense the ball needs to go there.” Our thought process was to make that more confusing and not let the QB be able to determine where the ball should go before the snap. Were we rotating a safety into the front? Which safety was rolling in? Were we staying in a two deep look? We felt that in conjunction with our corners showing different levels, we had success with this tactic
Years later as I look at it, I had it wrong, but not by much. My first clue was speaking with a good friend in the coaching profession that I coached against during that time. He said the vertical string was good, but the horizontal space between the safeties was what they focused on as an indicator instead. The further apart the safeties were, the more likely we would be in a two-high look. During my time this off-season, this was confirmed with the other coaches on offense I spoke with or listened to. So my thought has now become, instead of having the safeties on a vertical string, have them on a horizontal string. That is, go between moving closer to the middle of the field and the sideline.
This is especially true for the boundary safety. These days offenses are trying to find that quick “access” throw, trying to find a corner playing soft so they can throw their quick game and keep the chains moving. Those throws are much better in to the boundary because of the distance involved. The more you can keep that boundary safety on a string moving back and forth – inside or outside the hash – the more doubt there is about whether the corner is rolling down or bailing out.
Giving the safeties the thought process in a two-high look to show inside the hash and outside the hash in a thirds look, seems to be a better way to disguise their intentions.
When it comes to the corners, they have three levels – press, base, or off.
Press is taking a leverage of half the man inside or outside the WR. The CB could be bailing to zone, playing man or a man-over-deep concept where he cuts loose any inside drag and gains depth in terms of disguise in press coverage, we like to show outside leverage than change to inside leverage and visa versa pre snap. We like this because the receiver sets his pre-snap release move and communication with the QB and as the receiver looks into the ball, we move to the opposite leverage.
My preference is to stay with an off or base look settling in at 7-8 yards, then dropping into or out of coverage responsibility. This gives good vision of everything inside the box and the receivers that need to be read. Plus, the hazy in between alignment, not press and not 10-11 yards off is harder to get a definitive read on, especially when the safeties are moving outside and inside the hash.
Above is a diagram that I have included in defensive back manuals. It is a disguise chart for our DBs, giving them parameters on disguise. We would add disguise calls, which we use at times to this sheet as well as different coverages and the best disguise technique.
For the longest time I thought the best bet was to string the safeties vertically, when in the end moving laterally will give a better disguise as to a two-safety or one-safety look. When it comes to the corners, a base alignment with a press look should give you enough of a change to keep some indecision in what technique they are in. Regardless, find a way to make the offense make their read post snap and react to your defense as opposed to them getting a clean pre snap read.
For my next blog, I’ll discuss some ideas for disguising the linebackers.
Jeff McDonald
Wesleyan University Football
Freeman Athletic Center
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Middletown, CT 06457
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