Teaching Defensive Structures: Leverage
Teaching the QB How to Work Through Leverage
This post is part three in a series covering how to teach quarterbacks defensive structures. Check out part one on numbers and part two on space if you didn’t get a chance to read it yet.
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The working theory that underlies this series is that a strong understanding of defensive structures is the most sound way to navigate any given play. Today, we go over leverage as it relates to defensive structures.
Leverage puts numbers and space into context. The understanding of leverage gives you the ability to diagnose any situation on the field and determine the question of our age: what is open?
For the QB, an understanding of leverage is vital to playing fast post-snap. The clues he picks up pre-snap are essential, but once the ball is snapped, he must rely on his understanding of leverage to make decisions in as little as two seconds.
What is Leverage?
Leverage is spatial advantage. Leverage is something that you sometimes have for a particular space and something you don’t have over another space.
Leverage doesn’t exist alone, but always in relation to another. In a one on one matchup, you have leverage for a certain space but you don’t have leverage for another particular space. For example, you might have inside leverage, but not outside leverage. Routes also have particular leverages they are designed to acquire. For example, the out route is designed to acquire outside space. Because of this, you can also have no leverage when defender maintains or acquires leverage in the space the route is attacking.
When we’re talking about leverage, we constantly switch from the perspective of offense and defense. One’s spatial advantage is another’s disadvantage.
This phenomenon demands clear communication so we know whose leverage we are talking about. You can say either “we have inside leverage” or you can say “they have outside leverage.” Both phrases mean the same thing, the difference is whose perspective you are speaking from.
Example of Leverage
Below are two drawings describing the leverage of the defender from the perspective of the defender in relation to a five yard out:
In the drawing on the left, the defender has inside leverage on the out route. On the drawing on the right, the defender has outside leverage on the out route.
Understanding that the situation on the left is advantageous for the offense, and the situation on the right is advantageous for the defense is the beginning of understanding leverage.
Again, leverage is something that the defense and the offense possess at the same time though at opposite ends of the spectrum. While the offense holds inside leverage, the defense holds outside leverage and vice versa.
Furthermore, the spatial advantage the offense is seeking dictates how we talk about leverage too. Seeing who had leverage was clear in the drawings above because the route was drawn and known. The route will not dictate the leverage a player has over another, but the leverage they hope to keep or get. In the drawings below, no route is drawn and so we must understand leverage another way too.
The ball is on the left in both drawings. So in a pre-snap environment we can say that the defender has inside leverage in the left drawing and outside leverage on the right drawing. That hasn’t changed from the drawings with the out route. Now imagine the route is a slant. The spatial advantage has now flipped. The left drawing shows a spatial advantage by the defender while the right drawing shows his disadvantage.
Words to Describe Leverage
As mentioned in the before, leverage is not only a way to understand space and numbers, but a tool to communicate. In the drawings below, a defender is drawn in a certain relationship with a corner route. Over the drawings, are the words we use to describe the leverage the defender has on the route. I’ve been using the words inside and outside already, and now the words over and under are present.
I take the following words from the book Capology by Dub Maddox and there is much more detail in that book about communicating leverage.
The key point to understand here is that routes have spaces that they seek to take advantage of. Defenders’ relationships to these spaces determine if that WR running the route can win that spatial advantage. Teaching QBs these words is simple. Teach them these words using drawings like these and then watch film and ask them to identify the leverage of the defender at the route break (when the ball should be thrown). Then ask them if the route is open or not. But what we are really asking them is “do we have leverage?”
Leverage in Action
Another route that helps demonstrate leverage in action is the vertical route. When a WR runs vertically, they are trying to win the space over the the defender. If the WR is able to gain this leverage, then the route is open. However, that doesn’t mean at any point they don’t have leverage. At any point you have leverage for a particular space, you don’t have leverage for another. So for a vertical route, at any point the WR has either over leverage or under leverage.
The film below demonstrates this point. Watch the number one receiver at the top of the screen run a vertical route, but snap it off when he doesn’t win the space over the defender:
This play is a great example of the fluidity you must have when understanding leverage. But having a high understanding of leverage allows you to run plays that have options because you always know where your leverage is and can then take action on that knowledge to get open.
Below is an example of two players understanding leverage in a fluid environment on another type of vertical route, this time a wheel out of the backfield run by an RB. This example is a “tighter” leverage by the defender, but because of that, you can clearly see how the two players use their understanding of leverage to their advantage.
The RB is fighting for vertical space against a linebacker. As the route develops, the linebacker is able to acquire over and inside leverage. To be able to win over space, the only way for the RB to defeat this leverage, he must use speed to get past the linebacker. However, the important principle of leverage somewhere means a lack of leverage elsewhere is on full display. While the linebacker has over and inside leverage, he doesn’t have under and outside leverage. QB Jordan Travis rifles the ball under and outside the defender and the RB makes an athletic catch.
So while the design of the wheel route is to win over space, the QB and RB made split second decisions to win this route by going after leverage that the defender did not have.
Conclusion
Leverage is the intersection of numbers and space. Understanding leverage is having spatial awareness. Being able to manipulate leverage allows your players to put the odds in their favor because they can adapt to the leverage of the defender.
There is much more to be said about leverage because you can study it on every single play. At any point, every player has some type of leverage on another player. And when we talk about football being a game all about gaining and losing spatial advantages, then the understanding of leverage is vital. For players, their ability to see and communicate the leverage is the first step. The second step is reacting to leverage. This step is happening all the time whether you teach them or not, so the important part is them being able to articulate it. The third step and what is in constant practice forevermore is the ability to manipulate leverage.
Understanding how the defense defends the offense under the context of numbers and space is the foundation to teaching QBs how to understand defensive structures. But leverage is the bridge between the two. When the QB understands how to see leverage, they become most dangerous because they can use leverage against the defense.
Until tomorrow,
Emory Wilhite
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