Did you watch the Super Bowl? Belichick was running a 6-man front whenever the Rams used their tight-bunch formation, which is pretty much their base formation. I'm a Rams fan, but I've still watched that game multiple times because it's as close as football defense can get to being physical poetry. The irony, though, is that Wade Phillips' Rams defense would have been the talk of the league if they'd won. I honestly didn't think that it was possible to ever again have a high-profile game like that where 2 defenses were able to smother 2 highly potent offenses. I mostly approach things from an offensive perspective, but I admire excellence too much to not recognize that what we saw was something close to defensive perfection. Of course, the average fan hated it. Everybody loved the Rams-Chiefs game where the points went up like a pinball machine, but that Super Bowl will be discussed decades from now because it's still too soon for people to appreciate it for what it was.
If you have specific questions, or if there are specific plays, schemes, concepts, whatever, that you'd like to know more about, let me know. I enjoy writing, and I love football, and if you ask something that I don't know, I love asking other coaches about it to learn something new for myself.
I genuinely appreciate this observation. It takes me very little time to write a very long post, but it often takes 3-5x longer to go back and strip away the fluff, expand the things that are heavy in terminology, and clean up the language. If I ever start a new thread with a long post like that, you can be assured that I've probably proof-read it and rewrote close to 5-6 times before I posted it, and then I re-read it again and still find errors.
You can't think of it in terms of a wholesale change in the defense or defensive philosophy so much as marginal changes at the edges. Wisconsin and Iowa pose similar problems, but they actually have slightly different offensive philosophies, so defenses going against them have to focus on slightly different things. As others already said in response, the simplest thing is to move more people into the line, but you can't just throw more D-linemen on the field and still cover the same bases. Let's look at what we could do against Wisconsin when they run their heavy set, which they use a lot in short yardage situations.
This video should start right at the 0:45 mark, but make sure that you slow it down to the slowest possible speed on YouTube (.25) and then freeze it as soon as they cut away from interviewing Taylor after the game. Immediately when the play starts, notice how there are already three Wisconsin O-linemen who have fired out across the Line of Scrimmage and have their shoulders turned perpendicular to the LoS. The play is a power-lead (or iso) type play out of a zone blocking scheme, and it could have come directly out of Osborne's 1995 offensive playbook. Before we can talk about what Nebraska should do to stop this play, which is their bread & butter, we need to understand what Wisconsin is trying to do. Watch the play in slow-motion a few teams before reading anything more because you'll find that you probably already notice a lot of stuff that you didn't see at the time or even on replay in normal speed.
What is Wisconsin's goal on this play besides the obvious of gaining yards? They want to seal anybody at the Line of Scrimmage who is capable of getting penetration, and they want to get bodies out onto the Inside LBs as quickly as possible. The WRs, TEs, and the H-back/FB all have responsibilities to handle the peripheral players in the secondary, but the bedrock for that play to work is that the O-line needs to seal off the D-line and get hands on the ILBs as quickly as possible. Their linemen know that, and they're discussing that even as they come up to the line, and they're probably debating who has the best angle to seal that D-lineman versus going and getting an ILB. Here's what's crazy/annoying about that play: It worked, even though they blew their assignment. The Left OT blocked Nebraska's OLB who was rolled up tight on the Line, probably because the OT thought that the OLB could blitz and get into the backfield and disrupt the play before Taylor got back to the LoS. Look at the Center, though. He's blocking the Nebraska defensive end on his left side (Nebraska's right side), and he's NOT blocking Carlos Davis, #96. who was playing NG. Wisconsin's Right OT is blocking Nebraska's Left DE. The two Wisconsin Guards are already 3 yards upfield, hunting ILBs. Based on what I just wrote, this play should NOT have worked. The NG gets in the backfield and either stuffs the run or else forces him to bounce it outside, but that didn't happen. Davis was going right, so I don't know if that was a line stunt or if he was reading the first step of the Center, or what, but he took himself out of the play. Even worse, the two Guards end up both blocking Diedrich, which left Mo Barry free to make the play, but he couldn't see the ball because of all of the traffic, and by the time he does, one of the Guards
comes back to block him and de-cleats him. All of the peripheral Wisconsin players do a great job of getting downfield in position to cut off the secondary and outside players from making a tackle. So what could Nebraska do differently?
First, we start with our D-line. If opposing offensive lines can block our 3 down linemen, one-on-one, consistently in the running game, we're probably screwed already. The best way to stop that play is to keep our LBs clean and untouched for as long as possible, and the best way to do that is to at the very least force two O-linemen to at least temporarily have hands on our NG and the DE at the point of the attack. Our NG and/or DE does not have to penetrate the backfield and make a great play on his own, but if there isn't at least the threat of that happening, they're going to have one O-lineman take each one out, and the others are racing to our ILBs. If we did nothing else except for them to have to double-team 2 of our D-linemen, we'd stop that play for minimal gain. If Wisconsin's center can't block the Daniels brothers or Green, one-on-one, we're already halfway there. If our DEs can be disruptive, they'll also draw a double-team. I think that we'll have that this year.
If you want to amp up our D-line a little more, play Ben Stille on the boundary side of the field as a hybrid DE/OLB. He played OLB before, so it's not a foreign concept for him, but if we can line him up on the outside shoulder of whoever is lined up at the end of their line, they are NOT going to move him out of the way easily with a single block from an H-back or FB. He just needs to keep his outside arm free and contain anything coming his way, and--if it's a TE on his side--give the TE a good solid hand-check to his outside shoulder when he fires off so that he's slowed up to go block someone or go out for a pass. If they have 2 or more TEs on the field, put Stille at the OLB to the short side of the field. You want him to be on the TE side so that the CB on his side can roll up a little tighter and help cover some of the deeper flats stuff that an OLB would cover, and you'll still have the ILBs over the middle-shallow and the Safeties for the middle-deep stuff, in case it's a play-action pass. Stille would be automatically designated as a pass rusher, and he'd have outside containment on any running plays coming his way. We generally had Luke Gifford doing this last year, and as much as I loved Luke Gifford, I don't think that blocking him ever struck terror in the heart of a TE or H-back or FB the way that they would if they were having to block Stille coming off the edge with a full head of steam and evil intentions.
All that remains is run fits and doing your job. Ideally, we want our ILBs to be immediately moving towards the line when they read that it's a running play, so even if a Guard is coming out to get them, we want our ILB to meet them in the hole and as close to the Line of Scrimmage as possible so that the ILB can stay square to the ball carrier while pinching off as much of the hole as possible. No matter how you draw up a play, offensively or defensively, it still comes down to execution. If their O-linemen can block our D-linemen and ILBs, their plays will probably work. If they're able to do that while engaging our ILBs 3-4 yards downfield, we're probably toast. Somebody needs to beat their blocker and make a play, and we need penetration in the line wherever possible, but under control. We need ILBs moving fast to fill the holes, and if they get blocked, it needs to be in such a way that the person blocking him is now partially plugging up the hole that the RB is supposed to be running through.
Here's a very simple diagram with very simple red lines showing a common play call for where they attack, and that also represents the gaps that they have to cover for their run-fits. A good D-lineman doesn't have to make the tackle because it's very possible to stuff the play just by being where you're supposed to be and occupying 2 or more blockers.
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The yellow hexagon represents where I would put Stille, and the yellow triangle would be the CB who I'd roll up tighter to help cover the normal responsibilities of the OLB in pass coverage. If they motion another receiver over to that side, the CB would cover him, the Safeties would slide to their left, and the CB on the backside would drop back a little while sliding inside more. If that happened, you could tell the OLB on the Nebraska right side (Wisconsin's left) to blitz as the CB could cover the outside containment. Regardless, at the end of the day, someone needs to beat their blocker and make the play, preferably as far upfield as possible. Here's what that would look like with the shifts:
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