Defensive Back Fundamentals

Our last Personnel Group is our Defensive Back group, these are primary pass defenders, but also play key roles in the run.

Personnel

We deploy 3 Defensive Backs (3+5+3 = 11). Who split the field into 3rd's:

• Left Corner
• Safety
• Right Corner

Stance

Once again, We don't stress stance, ive said this in all 3 position posts because I really stress this to my coaches - don't over coach stance. we put the kids in a basic "athletic" stance which can be seen in just about every sport. 

See the Similarities?

 If our kids are comfortable, and can move in all directions - they will play better. 

Depth & Alignment

Depth and Alignment really depends on the coverage played (we will talk about ours in another post). But, our first day alignment is for our 3 deep coverage:

• Corners - 5 yards deep & 1 yard inside the widest spread receiver to your side
• If there is only a Tight End - you will be 5x5 outside 
• Safety - 7 yards deep and Head up on the Strong side Guard

Keys, Reads, & Run Reactions

The keys are simple - just like linebackers, we are reading flow. We do this for 2 reasons:

1. We have the ability to cross train - if a kid can read as a Linebacker, he can read as a Safety, and that's one less thing we have to teach
2. Communication - if all of our players are looking at the same thing, their communication should match.

Reads are very similar to the linebacker as well:

• Corners - 
• Ball to: Fill from the outside->In (DO NOT LET THE BALL OUTSIDE OF YOU)
• Ball Away: Take a deep angle of pursuit across field
• Safety - 
• Ball to, Or Away: fill - keep relative to the ball
• If you are inside the ball, stay in side, if you are outside the ball, stay outside.

Pass Defense

without getting too much into our coverage system (thats coming in a later post) I want to talk about our defensive back's role in the pass game. To put it simply, they are the deep defenders - no matter what coverage we run, they are covering anything vertical. the rules for them are the most simple: 

• Corners - Cover the widest Vertical to your side
• If there is no vertical - drop deep and look for work
• Safety - Cover the 3rd Vertical to either side
• If there is no 3rd Vertical, drop deep and look for work

That's all we are going to get into for this post, I am trying to keep these short and split as much of the information up into separate posts as possible. I hope everyone enjoys that format and gets something out of this series.