Teaching Defensive Structures: Space

Teaching the QB How to See Defensive Space

This post is part two in a series covering how to teach quarterbacks defensive structures. Check out part one which covered teaching numbers if you didn’t get a chance to read it yet.

Thank you for reading, your support is greatly appreciated.

---

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 space as it relates to defensive structures.

The Final Frontier

The game of football is a beautiful combination of violence and tactical strategy. 22 young men clash into each other in organized chaos within a 100 yard long and 53 and a 1/3 yards wide gridiron. The field is the space which each side of the ball attempts to control. When you control space, you control where the ball goes.

Cody Alexander

coined the phrase “Spatial Darwinism” which I have theological and qualms with though I largely agree with how he presents the idea for the game. He has defined this term like so: “on defense, the goal is to constrain that space while the offense is trying to create it.” The first factor or foundation for creating space is creating space advantage with numbers. If you have a numbers advantage then you have a space advantage.

This is so because not only does the geometrical constriction of a field with boundaries restrict space, but so do people. If the defense doesn’t have enough people to match the offense’s people, then they lack the ability to defend space. Likewise, if the offense doesn’t have the numbers advantage, then they are at a space disadvantage.

Football Law: People Move

Before we fully dive in to how space affects the run and pass game, we must work through this law of football.

The “box” is the run space football operates in. The box is often thought of in numbers. Coaches are apt to say “if I have a five man box, I’m running the ball all night long.” But we would be remiss to forget that people move. The box (nor any other space on the field) can’t only be thought of in terms of numbers because football is dynamic and people move post-snap. For example, a linebacker or safety out of the box can enter the box post-snap and make a tackle for a minimal gain. Or, your left guard could blow a block and allow a defensive tackle to come in untouched to close the space between him and the ball for a tackle for loss.

I don’t bring these unfortunate circumstances up to be difficult, only to exaggerate the point that space in football is a moving, shape-shifting force. In five words, this law of football is that people move expectedly and unexpectedly. They do not always move as we anticipate them to or as they ought to, but they are always moving. Moving on.

Space as it Relates to the Run

While we took a look at this image last time when talking about numbers, these fronts are representative of how the defense defends space as well.

In terms of the run game and from the perspective of teaching QBs about space in the run game, numbers are at the forefront. Numbers communicate to us whether or not we have a space advantage. The QB should be comfortable with this identification, but it’s not essential for him to be able to draw these up perfectly or explain each one’s strengths and weaknesses (at least in our system). That would certainly help when it comes to pressure, but I believe that’s a more advanced ask for the QB and we deal with pressure identification in other ways.

When teaching QBs about the run box and space, we use this identification of fronts as a starting point, but it is not the focus nor something we talk about much afterwards. Part of that is a nature of the system we’re in, but also because the coverage structure of the defense gives us the clues we need to know about the front.

Space as it Relates to the Pass

Understanding how the defense defends the deep or pass space helps the QB not only get a feel for how the defense limits space in the passing game, but also how they build their defensive structure. When we teach the QBs to understand this space, we are at the same time teaching them how to understand the bare bones of the defense’s structure.

I have written about how we teach coverages by using one-word descriptions of the weaknesses. I took these words directly from how R4 begins to teach coverages.

Learning to Teach Coverages

We start with those words because they are simple yet descriptive for understanding the spaces the defense is “giving up” in each coverage. In short, each word describes the weak space in each coverage. Here they are:

Cover 0: Deep

Cover 1: Away (from the FS)

Cover 2: Middle & Hole

Cover 3: Seams

Cover 4: Flats

But the defense knows these weaknesses better than our QB so these descriptors are only starting points. Furthermore, defenses do a great job at limiting each of these weaknesses within the coverages. So while they are weaknesses, they aren’t the only way to attack the space in each coverage. In my mind, these words are better for creating an image in the mind for each coverage. Each coverage has a general shape it covers. And these words describe the weakest points of each shape.

When we teach the QB to determine the defensive structure, we also rely on two more terms: Middle of the Field Closed (MOFC) or Middle of the Field Open (MOFO).

We rely on these words and identification so much because they also tell us about the run space as well. If a defensive structure is MOFC, then they have one more man closer to the run box than a MOFO defensive structure does. That doesn’t mean a MOFO structure can’t quickly have a safety close space and get involved in the run box. However, it does tell us where that extra run fitter could come from and in turn, how we can combat him.

In a MOFC defensive structure, the extra run fitters are on either side of the run box. You could have the nickel to one side and a safety to the other.

Example against a 11p 2x2 set:

In a MOFO defensive structure, the extra fitters are the boundary safety and (most often) the nickel.

Example against a 11p 2x2 set:

An effective vehicle to teaching the identification and teaching the familiarity of identifying these key players is by pulling up a cutup of all your quick WR screens. The QB can then see how these players relate to the screens and the run game. This helps him see not only why we have these plays in, but also how these plays affect these “conflict” players. It also helps him see what open space looks like for the WR screens and what a good run box looks like.

How to Teach Space Identification

Now that we’ve defined terms and looked at a few examples, it’s time to dive into how we teach this identification. This section is going to quickly get into how we practice this identification because after we’ve told them how we’re going to identify space, getting the QBs reps of doing it over and over again will be the actual vehicle for learning.

First, let me discuss the eye-scan we use with the acronym SOC. “S” stands for safeties, O stands for Overhangs, and C stands for cornerbacks. These are the players that will tell the QB what the defensive structure is. This eye scan isn’t perfect and we often “break” it, but it’s helpful and fluid enough to get the job done. I’ll discuss this more in next week’s post on leverage.

The QB will first look to the safeties, then the overhangs, and then the cornerbacks. This isn’t a hard set in stone scan. The safeties should always get a hard look, but sometimes you can get away with seeing the overhangs and the cornerbacks in your peripheral. Additionally, you can sometimes anticipate where and how the overhangs and cornerbacks will be playing based on the safeties. That ability comes after many reps.

Quick note: the other piece to this puzzle is whether or not the defense is in man or zone, but that will be covered in more detail next week when we talk about leverage. When we ask the QB to identify the SOC, his answer isn’t just MOFC or MOFO, but also whether the defense is in man or zone. One step at a time.

At first, we rep this scan and identification by watching film, not on the field. We slowly watch a clip and dissect each piece of the SOC and talk about the defensive structure. We’ll show tons of clips of MOFC defensive structures and then MOFO structures. At first, we aren’t teaching them to identify man or zone. That will come later. At this stage, we are focused on space. This might also be the first time the QB has ever paid this much attention to space. We want him to really focus on each player in the SOC. Not all MOFO structures look the same nor MOFC structures. Each defense’s structures can look different, but we can still classify them all in those two buckets. Building this ability to handle the ambiguity that you’ll find across different teams’ defenses is vital to not overthinking the SOC.

After we’ve watched clips in depth, we’ll move on to a rapid-fire drill of showing a clip’s pre-snap section and then moving to the next play. The QB then identifies the defensive structure as Open or Closed.

We go through each play quickly to help the QB be decisive and fight through that ambiguity. The goal is to get his eyes on the important factors fast. A young QB is apt to not have focus with his eyes. One of the most beneficial things we can do is help the QB build discipline with his eyes. This emphasis gives him clarity and purpose. It also helps him become comfortable under the strenuous circumstances a football game provides. By helping him focus on what to look at, and then demonstrating why those things are important to look at, you help slow the game down for him. He will soon come to realize that he doesn’t need to know everything that the defense is doing. He needs to identify the key pieces to the defense and then over time, he’ll be able to anticipate what others are doing as his knowledge of defensive structures grow.

Conclusion

Our initial goal is for the QB to be able to quickly identify how the defense is defending space and have an understanding of where the weakness is. We call this identifying the “defensive structure.” The QB should be able to look at any play pre-snap and be able to tell us these answers.

This is an initial goal because identifying isn’t useful until we can take action on this identification. Meaning, each play we run on offense has a purpose that runs into conflict with whatever the defensive structure is. The real goal is for the QB to be able to anticipate how our play call will play out against the defensive structure he is facing.

Next week, we will discuss the final part of how we teach the QBs to understand defensive structures: leverage. Leverage is a word that I find to be somewhat ambiguous and vague at times and often overused and under-explained. We spend a great deal of time talking about leverage and trying to define it as best we can. It’s the crux that numbers and space reside on. Leverage is the key to piecing numbers and space together to get the full picture of what the defense is doing. In short, leverage gives a more 3D look at football and brings our understanding of numbers and space into reality.

Until tomorrow,

Emory Wilhite

Thank you for reading. If you think someone else might benefit from this post, please consider sharing it:

---

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up

Want to write a guest article? Submit an inquiry

Thanks for reading! Subscribe to get the next post in your inbox tomorrow morning: