TCUs Flyover defense

The 3-deep, 3-3-5 takes the biggest stage against big, bad Georgia.

Georgia’s path to repeating as National Champions in 2022 has seen them intersect with two different modern trends in college football I’ve taken a particular interest in.

First, they proved to be the big test for Tennessee’s “Veer and Shoot” offense after neither Nick Saban and Pete Golding’s Alabama nor Mark Stoops’ Kentucky could figure out how to handle the extreme spread stress of Josh Heupel’s take on Art Briles offense.

Georgia passed that test.

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Over in Big 12 country, defenses evolved to handle the challenges they were facing from explosive spread offenses like the Veer and Shoot which married run/pass conflict to spread spacing and speed-based personnel choices.

I detailed the evolution in the last chapter of my book and broke it down some here as well.

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Under counsel from Cody Alexander of Match Quarters, I decided to dub this scheme the “Flyover defense.” We’ll see if it sticks as well as “Veer and Shoot.”

Everyone is mostly just calling it the 3-3-5 but then they’ll talk about it as though the 3-3-5 itself were some novel concept, or like what TCU is doing is akin to 3-3-5 schemes of the past. This is something unique and different and could present challenges to Georgia which aren’t being properly appreciated in the mainstream commentary about this upcoming final game.

The Tennessee scheme was in vogue in the Big 12 back in the early 2010s. This is something much newer Georgia is facing. That was yesteryear’s Big 12 innovation, this is the current one.

Don’t worry, I’ve got you well covered here.