6-2 Defense for Youth Football
After being focused on offense the last two seasons and reading Football Principals and Play by David Nelson, I assigned myself the Defensive Coordinator role this season, so I would focus my efforts on Defense for my tackle pee wee football team. Coach Nelson is right, if your opponent doesn’t score, you can’t lose. And as many youth football coaches have learned, defense is easier to teach than offense. My goal is to go undefeated this season, by implementing a sound defensive strategy. We had a top 6 defense last year in our league based on total points allowed, but I want to be number one this season.
This off season I have read several books on defense, Coaching Youth Football by Reed, Football Principals and Play, Winning Youth Footballby Cisar, The Complete Guide to Installing the 44 Split Defenseby Roman and countless articles in American Football Monthly and youth football websites. After much research, I am going to use the 6-2 Wide tackle defense as my base youth defensive formation. I ran this last year as a variation to my base 6-2, but after reading and watching Coach Cisar’s book and video, I think the 6-2 wide tackle should be my base and move to a 6-2 Tight formation in short yardage situations. The 6-2 is also easy to move into 4-4 and Gap 8 Defensive formations for pass and Goal line situations.
In my new 6-2 base defense, the defensive tackles will align in the C Gap just inside the Tight Ends shoulder pads. This will give the D-tackle a great attack angle to beat the O-tackle into the C Gap. I want the D-tackle to blow past the offensive tackle and be behind the O-tackle before the play develops. I am thinking about using skill players as d-tackles upright in a two point stance to take advantage of their quickness. Most youth offensive lineman will stand straight up before moving forward to block, so we should be by them as they are standing straight up to block air. Since most youth offenses run Gap On Down or Angle blocking schemes this might give us advantage to bull rush the gap, because the O-tackle should be worrying about the B Gap. We should be past the Tight end before he can get an angle block on us to the inside and thus free up our D-End for contain. Yes, this will put a lot of pressure on my two linebackers in the B gap, but I have two very strong LBs. Plus I am hoping the D-tackles can make B gap tackles if they are able to blow into the C Gap and scrape down for B Gap runs. Here’s what it will look like.
6-2 Base Defense – Wide Tackle
So what do you think? Let me know. Have a great season!
Update 6/7/16
Check out my new video on the 62 Defense that I run.
For all my videos check out http://www.youtube.com/c/StephenParker
Use this Defense for 3 year its the real deal !
Used a similar set. Used 4 down linemen. DTs lined head up over the guards as I had them either attacking man up or to either gap. Primarily attacking A gap to clog middle. My DEs lined up outside of OTs primarily in a 9 tech crashing down. My two OLBs were usually the most athletic and football smart kids on the team that can split out and cover a slot. Able to run stunts with the DEs and OLBs that the kids really enjoyed doing.
If the offense shows an unbalanced line we shift the line to that side and run a slant towards that side with our backside OLB and CB playing contain incase of a reverse, bootleg or counter. At one point and time our defense scored more than our offense did and teams had VERY little success running outside or inside on our line.
I love the defense and was wondering if you could send me a printable copy of all the 6-2 formations so I can use them in my play book for my Junior Migget team in Greene county pop Warner NY.
I sell the playbook here https://coachparker.org/buy-copy-62-multi-8-defense-book/