Defensive leverage: Make em go where you want

How to negate the chief advantage of an offense.

The biggest advantage that offensive players have in the game of football is that they know where the people and the ball are supposed to go before the play whereas the defense is having to figure it out and react in real time.

The best way to do that? Many defensive coaches believe in pressure, others believe in loading up the trenches, the real key is team leverage. You can get effective leverage on the ball by drawing up clever blitzes that pressure the quarterback, with carefully orchestrated movement on the line or in the backfield, or by teaching rules and techniques in a base scheme. What matters is that you leverage the offense into predictable patterns with the ball so that they can’t play faster than you but instead end up having to react themselves while you get to play with anticipation.

My flag football team, the Bull Dogs, had been eviscerating the poor young teams trying to throw the ball but we kept having trouble with this particular squad that was running the ball effectively. Thanks to some reader feedback, we may have solved the issue and figured out how to leverage the run game as a defense and give ourselves a shot at the championship.