Saturday, November 10
Sending 2
The fourth quarter of the BYU/TCU game on Thursday was a nice reinforcement to something I've been saying for some time. Never, ever, ever, ever, EVER, EVER, send only two guys after the quarter back. In TCU's second to last possession, BYU rushed 2 or 3 on every play, and TCU marched down the field in about 3 minutes to pull with a touchdown. I was afraid when TCU got the ball back with just a few minutes to play. But suddenly, Bronco and the rest of the BYU coaching staff turned their brains back on and send 4, 5 or even 6 players after the quarter back on every play. TCU moved about 10 yards before turning the ball over on downs.
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4 comments:
You may recall the Utah-BYU game from 2 years ago. During much of the second half of that game, Utah played a "circus" defense where they often rushed 0 or 1 guys. John Beck was afraid to run, he got mixed up and as you may recall, BYU wasn't able to do much of anything. So, maybe it shouldn't be ever, ever, ever, ever, ever but ever, ever, ever. It certainly worked in the Utes favor that game (I loved watching Beck not knowing what to and 4 offensive lineman just standing there wanting to block but with nobody to block). I think that BYU's defense was trying a similar ploy (although with less desirable results).
You may recall the Utah-BYU game frm 1 year ago. During the final play, Utah rushed 2. It didn't work out so well for them on that one.
The one exception to this rule that I will add is on a last-play hail mary from about 40 yards or more. I believe that in that case, sending 1 or 2 is justifiable for the extra people in the secondary. Just pray the opposition hasn't been practicing some sort of 15 lateral play . . .
I must say, I whole heartedly agree with Clark's assessment. I believe the type of defense Clark is referring to is the "prevent" defense. I have yet to figure out what the prevent prevents, aside from preventing the defense from stopping the offense. The "circus" defense to which Tyler referred is obviously of a different nature as it distracted BYU during the game two years ago (did you notice how many clowns were in the secondary? ok, bad joke, I know) And we won't even go into the "circus" act that Utah had on it special teams this last week.
I'm not saying that I like it when teams use the prevent defense. I totally agree that it was a huge part of the reason that Utah lost to BYU last year. Not only on the last play (like you mentioned Clark), but the whole last drive for BYU was played against Utah in their prevent defense scheme - so I actually hate that defensive strategy as well.
The point that I was trying to make (and obviously did a poor job at it judging by the comments), was that "prevent defense" is not characterized by the number of defensive lineman rushing the quarterback but by the number and position of the defensive backs. There are a handful of defensive packages in the quarter formation (i.e. prevent defense) that utilize a similar strategy and are able to confuse the offense. The biggest difference then is how many defenders are left in the box to match up with the tackles.
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