Even Front Defensive Schemes for Youth Football
I finally finished my Defensive playbook for my 5th grade pee wee football team. After reading and watching Dave Cisar’s Winning Football Series and Coach Reed’s Winning Youth Football book, I focused on the 6-2 Wide, 4-4 Stack and Gap 8 defensive schemes for my 2008 little league tackle team. I am not going to go into a lot of assignment detail today but here are diagrams of the base defensive formations.
6-2 Wide Defense – Diagram
4-4 Stack Defense – Diagram
Gap 8 Defense Diagram
You can see how easy the transition to each even front defense will be for our youth football players. I plan on using the 6-2 Wide as our main defensive formation. We will move to the 4-4 on long yardage situations and the GAP 8 or GAM on short yardage situations and or when we are inside the 10 yard line.
Over the next several weeks, I will outline the assignments for each defense. If you have any history with these defenses leave me a comment. Just click on the comments button below this post. Thanks!
Good luck this season and remember, Play for Fun and Winning is Funner!
I coach 7-8 graders , we started out with a 5-3and it worked well , but a lot of are players never played before . We took a loss the 2 game of the season. I decided to try something different. I coached a team in the past that ran a gap 8 and they smoked us . I read up on it and it was a very easy defense for the kids to learn. We did t loose a game the rest of the season. The biggest thing was to make personel adjustments as the game went on . Because it’s all man to man and everyone was trying to throw on us . But with the rite movement of best on best player the gap 8 is a ferocious defense that stumps all levels of youth football coaches who play the usual 5 and 4 man fronts. I’m gonna run it this year again with a twist, possibly putting in a couple of flex lineman . Keep two back in 3 point stances like the old Cowboys teams of the 70s just to set up different attack agles. What is a good defense to compliment the gap 8, one I could make ready from a sideline call without switching personel… Like a audible? Thanks
I run a 6-2 Multi Defense which is 6-2 Wide Tackle, 6-2 Tight, 6-2 Double Wide, Gap 8, 3-3 stack and 4-4 or a 5-2 monster for passing teams. You can easily move in and out of these even front defenses. Basically the LBs move out from a Gap 8 into a 6-2 and then you can adjust the Lbs, DTs and DEs to cover or uncover certain gaps. Works like a charm. If you move into the 5-2 monster you lose a DG and move a safety type or LB type player into the monster back.