Spread Defense Sim Pressure Package

This is a guest post from Nick Davis the Defensive Coordinator/LB Coach at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. If you don't know Nick, you should look him up. He is one of the brightest young defensive coaches in the country. Follow him on twitter @Spread_Defense. Nick regularly posts video and drill work on social media as well as having several great articles on X&O Labs. His defensive units are annually tops in the Heartland Conference and highly ranked in all of D3 football. Nick has been able to fill up the stat columns in Sacks and TFL's every season with a dynamic multiple defense based out of 3-3-5 personnel. Nick's defense was 9th in the nation this season with 38 sacks. 

Simulated Pressure 

A simulated pressure in our terminology is a pressure that brings linebackers or defensive backs while replacing the rusher or rushers with defensive lineman.  At Rose-Hulman this has become really easy to get to in our system because of our personnel.  We are a 3-3 personnel team that will play both odd and even fronts.  Our fronts allow us to put our linebackers or best cover defensive lineman where we need them.  Our base defense allows us to rush 4 from multiple fronts and play 1 & 3 match coverages.  

The most important part about a Simulated Pressure is trying to figure out the pass protection.  We look for over a 60% tendency when we game plan.  When you have figured out what the protection is going to be then it is time to figure out what type of fronts you want to attack them with.            

3 Down Odd Front

We want to put the most athletic defensive end to the running back side.  If we have over a 60% tendency we will bring both the middle and outside stack backer to the man side of the protection with any blitz pattern.  If you are not sure what the man side of the protection is you can send both stack backers with any blitz pattern.  We like this best with our 1 low hole coverage.  We train the defensive end that if the tailback runs a swing to his side he will peel off on it and owns that in man. If the tailback swings opposite he becomes the low hole player and drops to 5 yards and works off the quarterback.  The linebacker not rushing is the low hole player unless the tailback swings opposite the defensive end.  If the tailback blocks you get a five man rush with a low hole player.

2 & 4 Down Even Fronts  

We want to put the most athletic linebacker or defensive end to the running back side.  If we have over a 60% tendency we will bring the linebacker to the man side of the protection with any blitz pattern.  If you are not sure what the man side of the protection is you can send both backers and let your c gap players play the tailback and the low hole.  The coverage concept is the same as if we were in the odd front but now we have a better match up on the tailback if he free releases.  We prefer to bring the linebacker down the A gap but you can use any of your blitz patterns.

Why do we love sim pressures?

We can get hits on the quarterback only bringing 3 or 4 rushers.  We can bring 5 or 6 man pressure patterns and still have 7 or 8 in coverage.  We prefer to use this with our man coverage but we can play our whole coverage package behind these pressures.  These concepts teach our defensive line coaches coverage and thus they become more involved in our overall defensive system.  The defensive lineman think it is fun to play in coverage and get excited about the concepts.