Spring football roundups: Flyover fighting Irish
Could 2023 be the year Marcus Freeman converts Notre Dame's defensive approach into the cutting edge of Flyover tactics.
Once the Iowa State 3-3-5 Flyover took hold, it proliferated pretty quickly. Half the Big 12 now utilizes the scheme and it’s helped elevate smaller programs to the playoffs two years in a row.
The 2021 Cincinnati Bearcats had a version of the scheme which was different and unique but ultimately utilizing some of the same principles.
They played with “big dime” personnel. Technically it was a 3-3-5 but they’d use a hybrid, smaller linebacker and play him off the ball. In this case it’s the guy in the middle who’s seven yards off the ball and inside of the flexed out tight end.
Here’s another example where he’s stationed like a box safety, which is essentially what his role was on the defense.
The guy is named DeShawn Pace and he was 6-foot-2, 218 pounds and listed as a “linebacker” on their roster.
So the Bearcats would play three down linemen, two true linebackers around the box, a nickel corner, and then this dime linebacker/box safety player. They used a lot of man coverage relative to original Flyover teams like Iowa State but enjoyed the package for how it allowed them to move players around in the box and create confusion for the offense.
The guy who installed it in Cincinnati was Marcus Freeman, although he had already parlayed his success in Cincinnati to the defensive coordinator job at Notre Dame. When Brian Kelly left that quickly became the head coaching job.
The Irish have yet to really use the package, but already reports are trickling out of South Bend that it could have a bigger role for the team in 2023.
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