Defense – Blitz and Stunt Blitzkrieg

Another youth football coach and I were emailing each other recently about the Spin offense and he asked me about what defense I use for my Pee Wee football team.  I told him that we run a 6-2 Wide Defense as our base defense, and we have 20 different blitzes, stunts and adjustments packages.  The coach could not believe we have so many blitzes and stunts. 

My 6th grade little league football team has been together for three years, and we have developed and learned these blitz packages over that time.  In the 6-2 Wide package, the DG have A gaps, DTs have C gaps, DE contain and LBs are responsible for the B gaps.  In the 6-2 tight, the gap responsibilities flip for the LBs and DTs. 

Here’s a quick list of our Blitzkrieg out of these two 6-2 schemes.

We run man coverage and if it is an obvious pass formation and play, the blitz will be called off if the CB or Safety are involved in the blitz call. 

This may seem like a lot.  But I looked over my offense last year and we had 30 plays.  Why should defense be any different?  The kids were able to pick up the defense pretty easy.  But I did learn, that I could not call a double blitz like Crazy Left and Cobra Right.  They were unable to process a double blitz.  I also tried to combine blitzes into one call and they hit overload.  In the blitzes above there is one main blitzer, either the LBs, DEs or DBs.  I am hoping the DT and DG just stuff the line and let my playmakers make the plays.  So, even though this seems like a lot.  I am really hoping the playmaker I move makes the tackle. 

Also, this has worked for us because my players learned that if you do your responsibility in a Blitz you make a huge tackle.  They started telling me what blitzes to run at the end of the season.  And you know, they were right most of the time. 

Also, we do not run all 20 in a game.  Base on our scouting, we will practice and review 5 or so packages.  We also did not install all 20 at once.  We ran 10 of these over the last two years and added more this year.  We installed one or two new blitzes each week based on the scouted offense. 

One of the best memories of this defensive season was when I overheard a coach that we just beat telling a group of other coaches scouting another game that we play sand lot defense.  He said our players were all over the place.  He could not tell what defense we were running.  We had a top 3 defense in our league.   I love it. 

I have written before about expectations.  If you set high expectations or goals you can always move back.  I set high expectations this year and learned the back off point on defense but we still learned more than I really anticipated. 

Play for Fun and Winning is Funner!