The 4-2-5 Defense
Defending Unbalanced
Formations
Recognition
To Defend Unbalanced Formations
Unbalanced formations present a unique challenge to defensive football coaches.
For the 4-2-5 Defense, that is no different.
The 4-2-5 Defense is a balanced, 8 Man Front. Offensive Coordinators try to
unbalance defenses that are balanced by nature.
There are many ways to adjust to unbalanced formations. The most important
step to defending unbalanced attacks is teaching your players to recognize them.
There are two styles of unbalanced formations. One is for the unbalanced
Offensive Line. The other is for unbalanced receivers.
On the Offensive Line, our Linebackers are looking for Tackle Over formations.
They must be aware of eligible numbers, and who the Tight End is.
Our Mike Linebacker will always check the formation. He needs to identify the
“new Center.” The new center is the middle player of the 5 ineligible offensive
linemen, regardless of who snaps the football.
In the secondary, our Free Safety is responsible for identifying unbalanced passing
sets. These sets include Twins, Trey and Trips formations. The Free Safety will look
for an uneven number of receivers removed, not attached to the Line of
Scrimmage.
We have both automatic adjustments and game-to-game adjustments for
handling unbalanced passing sets.
Our base alignment against a Wing-T Formation. We use a Strong
End in a head up alignment on the Tight End (Y).
Our secondary is in a 3-deep shell. We can play both Cover 3 and
Cover 1, as well as Robber Coverage and other adjustments.
Even this base formation can be treated as an unbalanced formation
at times.
If the Y and Z are not significant passing threats, the single receiver
removed to our left (X) would cause us to shift into a 1/4, 1/4 , 1/2
coverage.
We call this a “Check Roll.” Our Free Safety checks to a “Check Roll”
against any unbalanced passing set when Cover 3 is called.
A simple adjustment to handle unbalanced formations is to bring
one man over.
In our Cover 1 coverage, against unbalanced passing sets we will
bring a corner over. This is a “flip” check.
By bringing the corner over to unbalanced passing sets, we avoid
making any changes to our 8 man front.
Shifting one man only lets the other 10 players on your defense play
as if nothing is happening. Players who are confident in their jobs
will play faster.
Whenever shifting 1 man only is applicable and possible, it is an
excellent solution to unbalanced formations.
A simple adjustment to handle unbalanced formations is to bring
one man over.
In our Cover 1 coverage, against unbalanced passing sets we will
bring a corner over. This is a “flip” check.
By bringing the corner over to unbalanced passing sets, we avoid
making any changes to our 8 man front.
Shifting one man only lets the other 10 players on your defense play
as if nothing is happening. Players who are confident in their jobs
will play faster.
Whenever shifting 1 man only is applicable and possible, it is an
excellent solution to unbalanced formations.
When we have an unbalanced front, we have to make more
changes.
These are commonly called “Tackle Over” formations. It is the
responsibility of our Mike Linebacker to recognize the tackle over
set.
Our Mike Linebacker declares the new “center” and calls out his
jersey number.
The base adjustment to Tackle Over sets is to shift the entire
defense over to the new center.
In the diagram, our defense has shifted over to align on the new
center.
Because the Will Linebacker sees a Tight End on his side, he makes
the ‘Heavy’ check., shifting the Nose to a 2i and Weak End to a 7technique.
Our second answer to Tackle Over formations is to shift only the
Defensive Line.
We like this shift if teams are seeing our Linebackers overcommitted
to the overloaded side.
We shift the Defensive Line to help take away extra gaps on the
overloaded side.
Our Linebackers do not shift. They can offer more help on off tackle
and outside run plays to the weak side.
In other situations, the best answer to shift only the Linebackers. We
will use this adjustment to unbalanced sets.
We can also use it against over-shifted Tight End sets, where runs
back to the weak side are difficult or unlikely.
This is called a Slide check. The Defensive Linemen do not adjust to
the new center. They play on the Offensive Lineman who is snapping
the football as the center.
The Linebackers shift 1 man over. We also bring the Weak Safety in
to 1x5 off the Defensive End.
This shift is more useful against teams that run heavily to the Tight
End in normal formations, but can be used against Tackle Over
alignments as well.
It may seem that “No Shift” would only be used when your players
have made a mistake. They have failed to recognize the unbalanced
formation.
But if teams have seen that you do shift to unbalanced, they may
attempt to take advantage of the shift.
Some teams want to see you shift your entire defense over, to give
them a numbers advantage – or athlete advantage – to the weak
side.
By staying in our base defense, we can make it difficult for the team
in the diagram above, if they prefer to run plays like a weak side
Fullback Belly, Jet Sweep, or Rocket Toss.
The 4-2-5 Defense
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