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Getting Defensive: How I Defended Against Inside Veer

By Darrin Sheffer

It was week three, we had just come off our worst loss of the season (44-7) to a team who was just plain out faster than us.  We still had not found our identity as an offense, having scored one touchdown in the first two games.  Then to add on to the challenges we were about to face a team who ran something quite different than the two spread attacks we had seen so far: the Flexbone Triple Option or Inside Veer.  

Image result for flexbone formation
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flexbone_Formation.svg

Many coaches hate facing the Inside Veer Offense, and for good reasons.  This is an offense that can take mediocre to average athletes and give them advantages over opposing defenses that other offenses may not be able to do.  We were experimenting with the Pistol Triple Option Offense (find link to website below) and were loving how the wider splits of the A Backs were giving us some athletes in space.  


I was a bit worried about facing this team because they were from the county next door and teams from that county are known to have a lot of big boys.  However, I felt like I had a slight advantage to defending the IV, because I understood it and I had coached it before.  The HC at the school I coached at the year before ran the Flexbone IV so I was required to know the inner workings of the offense.  Because of this I designed a plan to do one thing and one thing only: force the QB to run. 

I will describe the jobs I gave to each defensive player, for reference at the time we ran a 3-4 front with two high safeties.  This team ran an Inside Veer play that always went the way the A back would motion.  I would have the safetys be deep coverage while play side corner was responsible for pitch man (A-Back).  When I say Front Side (FS) I mean the defenders on the option side.  Back Side (BS) Away from option side.  

FS DE: Dive Read- I told this person their job was to "attack the mesh" and confuse the QB.  I felt that if I could put doubt in the QB's reads it would help him make mistakes.  

ILBS- Dive Defenders

N- Dive Defender

BS DE: Contain in case of Counter/Dive Defender

FS OLB: Attack QB running lane/force pitch to A-Back

BS OLB: Counter Contain

Safeties: Deep Coverage

BS Corner: Man coverage on WR

FS Corner: Responsible for Pitch Man


So how did it work?  Well we took away the dive play and forced the QB to run the ball.  That was our goal.  We also had success with covering the A-Back so that the QB did not have the pitch option available.  It was obvious to us that this QB was not used to running the ball so he tried to get side to side instead of north to south which helped our guys make lots of tackles for loss.  We effectively stopped their rushing attack.  Unfortunately our deep pass coverage was sacrificed and we got beat deep a few times which lost us the game.  

If I were able to go back and do it all over again and run the same defensive front I would change just a few things.  I would have the Corners be man to man with the receivers and have the safeties rotate to the motion.  I would have the FS Safety be responsible for the pitch man and the BS Safety extra deep help in the pass.  

Diagram Below:

  

I'm not saying that this defense will work for everyone against the IV, but it seemed to work for us.  We were able to take away the threat of the run, but gave up the pass deep.  Give and Take I guess.  

If you have any comments about how you defend the IV or have any improvements on what I said above please comment below and follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DarrinSheffer

Remember to Stay Obsessed  




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