Finally, some real football talk on eGriz!
"Just my opinion, but I think there are a lot on this board get stuck on the personnel/alignment and not whether what they are asking the personnel to do within the scheme is executable"
I get what you are saying and maybe I'm saying the same thing but in a different way. Isn't the 30 front at a natural disadvantage against Power Gap offenses?
Will try to explain this without charts and graphs.
The core belief that I believe was issued on high from the lord and savior Knute Rockne some 100 years ago, and has become almost cult like in obsession in and out of coaching circles is that 'thou shalt not defeateth the power horde offense with an oddeth fronteth." When I started coaching football in the early 2000's, I heard it over and over again. So much so that I drank the proverbial kool-aid in that regard.
I've learned a LOT more over the years that defensive orthodoxy leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to what actually works versus doesn't. Part of the reason is that if you rigidly apply scheme, then yes it doesn't necessarily work against power schemes to allow them to simply ORO you and down block your NT w/ leverage all day long. The belief was that you couldn't leave a guards uncovered, because they could reach your LB's too easily. Again if you are reading and reacting from depth as LB's were taught to for decades, to slow play, read the guards, and flow, your LB's will be on the underside of blocks all game long. Tough to play that way.
The 4-2 and the 3-3 both unhinge a lot of the traditional rules about interior LB play and how you use your DL to play on the LOS. I coached in a league where we saw wing-t, veer iso and classic lead/power zone 90% of our season and when we were moving from the stack 4-4 to the 3-5-3, I thought it was absurd we'd make that decision. We took the GMC 3-5-3 which is all line movement and paired it with tons of combo pressure from our interior 3 LB's and teams we couldn't stop playing 4-4 and 4-6 looks in the wing-t for four years, and they absolutely couldn't handle the DL movement and how quickly our LB's were at the LOS. Our NT was a 6-1 kid who was maybe 190 pounds, and he ended up as a first team all league DL because sort of like Gubner, they didn't have an answer for his first step. You can absolutely flubber power teams if you compress their decision making and speed them up.
I just think you can look at what offensive teams want to do, and you can take your personnel and your scheme and you can absolutely manipulate it to get the best type of scheme. The next year we recognized we couldn't play the same way with just a 30 and found an answer a few games in by playing a hybrid over/under front with a stand up LB on the weakside in a quasi-40. The 3-3 allows for that in multiple variations and you can play it just about any way you want. Just so long that your willing to understand what you get/lose with those subtle adjustments and as long as you aren't static in your play calling, what you lose (gap integrity/gap control w/ bodies) you can make up in variance and speed.
Hopefully that makes some sense. There is a reason why I am just a pedestrian blogger.
