Re-thinking defense

Schemes are temporary, innovation is forever.

Innovation is essential, as our flag football team learned when we not only got stomped by our main rival (may only be a rivalry in the sense that the Lakers and Clippers have a rivalry) but also lost our consolation medal game to a team who’d learned from playing us previously.

I noticed in our final game we had real trouble dealing with a particular RPO they were running. The play concept had given us trouble at various points in the season when we’d seen it, but this team really took us apart with it. Evidently they’d practiced it very intentionally to make it as effective as possible in reaction to our defensive success against them. Later when processing the game I noticed with greater alarm that our defense does not have easy adjustments for the strategy. It’s inherently unsound against a good RPO.

I could try to find a big enough tweak but at that point you have to start to question the overall structure of what you’re doing. Instead it was easier to conclude our style was outstanding for overwhelming bad teams and was a tricky puzzle for solid teams, but was repeatedly facing diminishing returns against the top offenses in the league. Continuing to be one of the top four or so teams in the league isn’t satisfying, so evolution is necessary.

I’ve noticed many of the top defensive coaches at the real levels of football either evolve beyond their initial breakthrough or flounder. You can go online and find hours of footage of Gary Patterson and his assistants explaining their 4-2-5 defense and coverage scheme but you won’t see him explaining anything he was actually doing beyond the early 2010s when the RPO ate his lunch and forced some changes.

Like ol Gare, I have some changes in mind to stop the “bull**** train” as defensive consultant Chris Vasseur (Coach Vass, make defense great again) refers to the RPO.