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View Full Version : Introducing the Defensive Scheme Type Indicator



Spiritguy
07-30-2013, 05:09 PM
Ted over at IAOFM came up with a very interesting naming scheme for defenses for those that feel that just using 3-4 and 4-3 aren't descriptive enough for what defenses are these days. Interesting read. I don't know if it would catch on or not but it does a much better job IMO defining teams defenses. So whats your opinion.

Happy Tuesday, friends. As promised in my last article (http://www.itsalloverfatman.com/broncos/entry/broncos-defensive-schemes-through-the-years), today, I want to propose a proposition. I think that it’s high time that people stop acting like there are only two kinds of defense being played in the NFL, and that we come up with a better way to identify them.

You’ll recall that last Tuesday (http://www.itsalloverfatman.com/broncos/entry/broncos-offensive-schemes-through-the-years), I made the case that the base personnel grouping (3-4 or 4-3) was not only not determinative of the character of a defense, it’s actually only barely relevant to the discussion. It doesn’t necessarily contain any indication of tactical approach, so saying that a team runs a 3-4 defense means almost nothing, yet that's all you get from the football commentariat. This injustice will not stand, man!

On offense, at least, the traditionally recognized groupings speak to tactical approaches. When somebody says that a team runs a West Coast offense, you tend to think of horizontal passing, and timing routes, and a running game that sets up that kind of passing. The basic principles are mostly common within the group. That isn’t the case for a “3-4 defense” or a “4-3 defense,” not at all.

I think the reason for that is that defenses are generally much less verbiage-heavy, so less goes into the learning process for the terminology. For that reason, defensive coaches tend to be more easily able to cobble together specific tactics that worked from a bunch of different schemes during their career, so every resulting defensive scheme ends up being a mix of stuff.

That’s somewhat true of offenses too, but because offenses tend to be imagined and set up as interconnected frameworks, you tend to get more faithful adherence to schematic principles, as they pass through the generations of coaches.

The other reason for the insufficient naming convention in defensive schemes is that when people watch football, they watch the ball. Their view of the game is from the perspective of the offense, so it’s easier to tell what they’re doing in real time, than it is to tell what a defense is doing.

Why can’t we have a defensive naming convention that actually imparts what a defense does? Is it too difficult to figure that out, and to disseminate it? I don’t think it is, and today, I’m going to propose a new model for talking about and understanding defenses.

read the rest here: http://www.itsalloverfatman.com/broncos/entry/introducing-the-defensive-scheme-type-indicator (http://[URL)

Simple Jaded
08-03-2013, 11:23 PM
Link broke.

Spiritguy
08-03-2013, 11:44 PM
http://www.itsalloverfatman.com/broncos/entry/introducing-the-defensive-scheme-type-indicator

Don't know what that was all about. Same link as far as I can see but this one works. LOL