Radar Defense Part 6

Here are some film clips of Coach Yakapovich's 1969 Kenmore West team running the radar defense.

The clip appears to be Defense 1. I was surprised by the tilt of the on the LOS defenders. The book shows the players drawn as tilted but to see the technique on film was still a surprise at the angle of the outside tilt.

In the clip the F3 (#52) appears to have his eyes inside. The OT is pulling outside with the TE blocking down. My initial reaction was #52 should be playing lateral outside crossing the face of the TE's down block. Inside he takes the inside space on the pull to make the TFL. Not sure if this is just the F3 making a play with the open space or a called stunt.

Outside flow runs was an area I was curious after drawing up plays on paper. Could the offense get quickly to the edge with so many defenders near the LOS in gaps?

One of the selling points of the defense in the book is how naturally and quickly players are able to pursue. This clip shows it off, the defender's technique puts players quickly into pursuit. The defense does a good job of forcing the ball outside using a spilling type fit. The Corner and Safety clean it up once it gets outside the 4 man.

Here is a short yardage example of Defense 4. The LOS players use the 3/4 point stances and attack with penetration. The Safety and Corners are in cheated down alignments.

Here the 2 men are in a tilted penetrating technique. The F1 does a good job getting across the blocks to be in position before missing the tackle.

Nice example of F3 (#33) crossing the down block of the TE. The double team of the OT and TE ends up with both blockers falling over one another and on the ground. B1 is attacking the mesh point quickly from the backside A gap. Defenders quickly disrupting the mesh point is a proven recipe to cause mesh point ball security issues, here a forced fumble.

Here is a good example of the overlap in pursuit. The F1 (#45) is able to overlap the F2 (#52).  When F2 gets caught by the down block F1 is able to get playing lateral and get involved in the off-tackle play.

Another adjusted call against the offense in a backed up field position. The tilted 2 men really create problems when penetrating. This is one of the challenges of the Radar concept. Are the players read/react or attack/penetrate? Here the tilted B2 is unblocked for a TFL.

Nice example against a drop back pass. This looks like the Sprint stunt with the penetrating 2's and a 1 wrapping over the top to create pressure.

This is one of the concepts that on paper looks like a concern. With lighter stand up players, the offense electing to get low pad level and run wedge dive concepts. Fire off the ball and attempt to knock the stand up defenders off the ball.

This looks like a Defense 3 example with the 4's activated as edge rushers. The defense does a good job of spilling the ball lateral to the unblocked corner.

Really interesting to see the film of the defense from 1969. Huge shoutout to Sean Bruso for making me aware of the film. Coach Bruso coaches in western NY state and shared a link to the YouTube video of Kenmore West that was digitized from 16mm film reels. If you are interested in the full film here is the link.