The 2-4-5 defense and "gap and a half" technique

The 2-4-5 was quietly ascendant in the 2024 college football season as the most popular new defensive scheme. How does it work?

As complicated as the game of football is, the trends in the game aren’t always well understood before they’re rubbed in everyone’s face on a big stage. Even then, it often takes someone pointing out a key detail before the media really starts to catch on and build a narrative.

I have a very recent, two-fold example to offer you.

1. T’Vondre Sweat won the Outland Trophy for top interior lineman in 2024 and was commonly praised for demonstrating excellence as a nose tackle at 6-foot-4, 360 pounds.

2. Sweat played for the Longhorns, and did you know they which were among the three out of four total teams in the college football player who employed the 2-4-5 defensive scheme?

Now, to begin with Sweat did spend the vast majority of his time executing very nose tackle-ish tasks for the Longhorns. But he did it from a 3-technique. Texas’ starting nose was Byron Murphy, who ended up drafted higher than Sweat due to his pass-rushing acumen.

Pro Football Network praised Murphy for his ability as a disruptive 3-technique and Sweat for his value as a 3-down nose tackle but again, here’s how they usually lined up:

They’re tight to the guards, and the distinctions between a 3-technique and 2i-technique are more blurred, yet Sweat is your 3-technique and Murphy is aligned where your nose would be.

There’s value to playing the tackles differently than the traditional “big plugger in the A-gap as the nose, quicker disruptor in the B-gap as a 3-technique” assumptions that football commentators always use when describing D-tackle play.

Part of the reason for this is the rising popularity of the G-front as a solution to Duo-based run games. Having an answer for Duo is sort of a baseline requirement for modern defenses.

That value also stems in part from the increased popularity of the 2-4-5, the preferred defensive scheme in 2023 of the Texas Longhorns, Washington Huskies, and the defensively dominant National Champion Michigan Wolverines.

Today we’re going to dive into the 2-4-5 and some of the new techniques like “gap and a half” that D-tackles play to make it an emergent style.