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Brennan Marion's "GoGo" offense presents defenses with a lot of challenges. For instance, the offense may have a split-back backfield but then have trips to the field as well. In order to be in trips while at the same time having two eligible players in the backfield means that one receiver will be “covered,” meaning that he cannot go downfield for a pass. While this may sound like a disadvantage at first, there are a handful of benefits for running unbalanced formations. For one, defenses are not used to seeing such formations. Unbalanced formations can cause a lot of confusion...

Tyler Manes is the defensive coordinator at Southwest Florida Christian Academy in Fort Myers, Florida. He and I spent almost SIX HOURS going through everything you need to know about installing one of the most popular defensive schemes in the game today.Coach Manes has learned (and borrowed) from a lot of smart coaches and has adapted and simplified the Dave Aranda scheme for the high school level.I learned a TON going through this process, and I know you will too, so I wanted to share a few things I took from the clinic he put together.Before we get started, you can...

If you could only play one coverage all game long, what would it be? Do you even have a coverage like that in your playbook? Do you have the rules and adjustments built in to the plan to handle everything you're gonna see from your opponent? For Coach Tyler Manes, the answer is simple: 2 Read In fact, because his kids are so good and so familiar with this coverage, he's able to do so many other things in the secondary, and at the end of the day, he feels comfortable knowing he can always come back to 2 read. Why does...

Nick Saban’s success as defensively-minded head coach at Alabama is almost unparalleled. An official record of 218-62-1. Eleven SEC West titles. And, of course, six national championships. But perhaps what is equally impressive about his tenure at Alabama that his defenses have been consistently regarded as, if not the best, then at least top-5 in the country for ten straight seasons. It seems that no matter how many of players he loses to the draft or graduation, there is almost no drop off for the Alabama defense from one season to the next. And by all accounts, his defensive system...