The Viking Pro 4-3 Defense MONTE KIFFIN Minnesota Vikings It is a pleasure to be here. I know that most of you are high school coaches and I happen to coach in pro ball, but I did coach in college for many years. What I am going to try to do today is give you some things that you can use in all levels of coaching. You don't need to know all the pass coverages and stunts we use in the pros. What I want to do is give you a few ideas that you can incorporate into what you are doing. If there is one basic thing I have learned over the years in college and the pros, it is that everything goes back to basics. To start with you have to have a philosophy. It doesn't matter whether you are in high school, college, or pros. You have to have a defensive philosophy that you believe in. Your players have to believe in it also. I am going to relate some of the philosophies we have with the Vikings and at the same time tell you some of the philosophies I had in college. The first thing we teach from day one in camp is that the name of the game is pursuit. You have to teach the defense to fly to the ball. That fact has not changed. On defense you must fly to the ball and gang tackle. You can talk about it all you want, but if you don't practice it on the field, you won't do it in the games. You have to coach this in practice every day. We do it at the pro level. Even though the pros are paid well, you have to work on this to get them to do it. The second thing we believe in is technique. ‘The whole defensive scheme comes together because of defensive techniques. You have to coach technique individually. One of the great things I learned early in coaching was that team work will come together if the individual position coaches have done their job in their areas. The defensive line coach knows 132 there are only a limited number of ways that a defensive man can be blocked. There is the hook block, drive block, down block, drop-back block, chop block, pass flow, and trap block. The defensive line coach takes his tackles and teaches them the techniques against those blocks over and over. He must continue the repetitions until they get better. That is how that tackle gets better. When you come together in a team drill it won't matter what the offensive play is because the defensive tackle is playing against the block of the man blocking him. The defensive tackle doesn't care what the play is. He is aot looking in the backfield. He is watching the offensive tackle and reacting to his block. The third thing I want to talk about in the philosophy is--does your defensive package have a realistic scheme? That encompasses a lot of things. It doesn't matter what type of front you run. Make it realistic and let your player play the scheme. Don't ask your player to do something they can't do. I think it is important to give your players a chance to play and execute the technique you are asking them to do. What we are getting at is this--some years you will have great players so you will have a great defense. It wouldn't matter how good a coach you are, but the reason you coach technique and have a simple scheme is for the years you don't have great players. You may not have a great defense, but you can have a good defense if you coach defensive techniques. You are going to have a great defense when you coach hard and have great players. What you have to do is coach defense Like you will never have great players. Coach so that when you first line guy goes down with an injury, your back-up guy can come in and not hurt you. ‘The back-up guy isnot going to play as well as the first line guy, but he is going to give you a chance to win. In the little time I have left, I want to show you the basic scheme ve use with the Minnesota Vikings. Even though it is the Vikings, don't be mislead. It is a basic scheme. In college we called it an EAGLE front. Here at the Vikings we call it an UNDER front. It is a basic 8 man front. Believe it or not, in the pros you have to stop the run first. I know everyone thinks that pros pass so much that no one should be concerned with the run. T know in high school you have to stop the run first for sure. If you can't stop the run, teams will never pass. Even at our Level we have to stop the run first. The reason people throw the ball is because the defense is in an 8 man front stopping the run. It is a lot easier to hand the ball off and run it than it is to throw it. You can play an 8 man front, but if you don't know what you are doing and have people positioned right, teams can still run the ball. If you don't have your players positioned right up front, you can't stop the run. We count people on defense and try to overload one side or the other with our front and coordinate our secondary. It has always been my philosophy that if you play gap control on defense you will give your players a chance. There are a Lot of great coaches that play 2 gap football. I am not going to tell you what to play. Personally, 1 have never coached 2 gap football. In all my years in college and pros, I have never coached 2 gap football. Tf you do that you are telling your player to Line head up and play both gaps on his right and left. ‘That takes a great football player. The year that you are even with the offense in talent you will lose. If you have the great athletes every year, it doesn't matter. You will always win. When we talk gap control we are going to put players in a shade Eechnique where he is not going to get hooked. Now we tell our players not to get hooked. If he does he is not good enough. If we don't have anyone better, we widen until we are lined up somewhere that we can't be hooked. We have an all-pro in Keith Mallard. He has the B gap in our EAGLE front. We don't expect him to make the tackle in the A gap. We tell him to line up on the outside half and take the B gap. If you take your nose tackle, line him head up and tell him to take both gaps, he is going to get hooked. We shade the nose and give him only one gap. Let me get into what the Vikings call an UNDER front. You can run this a lot of different ways. ‘That is why I think you will get something out of this. We run it as a 4-3 alignment. However, this scheme can be built into a 3-4 scheme which many colleges use. In pro ball we play the 4 down linemen because the pass rush is important to the success of your football team. Our defensive ends are pass rush people. On occasion we would take a Chris Dolman and drop him off in coverage. In high school I imagine you would have more people to play down than up. Usually, it takes more speed to play up in the LBer position. The scheme with 4 down linemen is simpler because they will always be down. They don't have to learn to cover the pass. Our SAM LBer always flips to the tight. end side. Our MIKE LBer, who was Scott Studwell, always goes to the tight end side. Our WILL LBer, who was Jesse Solamen, always goes to the split end side. Keith Millard always goes to the split end side. In our EAGLE COVER~4 we are shaded to the tight end side. Our free safety is going to support to the split end side. The front is kicked to the tight end so the secondary goes the other way. The strong safety has deep middle. The secondary coverage is a 3 deep zone. We count people on defense. The offense has a guard, tackle, and fullback to block. We have a tackle, end, Will LBer, and a free safety. In our scheme, the free safety should make the tackle because he is the free man with no one blocking him. The Mike LBer is a flow LBer. He keys the backs and flows. He doesn't take on guards. The nose tackle plays a shade to the tight end and keeps the center off the Mike LBer. The Mike LBer has the A gap oh the weak side. Tt they run a lead play to our weak side they are going to make 4 or 5 133ae) *SOoTID oO T ape m/w ‘ Je | aay Fe] yards. In this defense our defensive end is going to work up field. We are not coordinated to stop the ball run into that area. We are not forcing the ball to the free man. ‘he front has to be coordinated to the secondary. When we read run weak, we get the SLAM call. This gives the eagle tackle and end inside slants to the A and B gaps. The defensive end is going to get hooked and we will give them that block. The Will LBer takes the fullback's block on from the inside out. ‘This forces the running back into the unblocked free safety. oS The next thing a good offensive coach is going to do is read the force and crack block with’ the split receiver. The corner is going to read the crack and come up to play the run. We always keep someone in what we call the HOLE. That simply means the middle of the field or middle third. If we rotate strong the free safety is in the hole. If we rotate weak the strong safety is in the middle. The weakness of this scheme is to the strong side because we don't have a strong safety force. We are in 4 coverage with a SLAM call on the weak side. We are going to make up for our weakness to the strong side with a call. We are Boing to stunt to the strong side. The 134 ° Sam LBer can't get hooked by the tight end. We give a STUNT, REX, or GAP call. That gives our nose tackle and defensive end direction calls. If we give those stunt calls, the center will block the Mike LBer on runs weak, but we don't care. TI am not going to ask Studwell to whip the center who is scooping weak with our nose tackle stunting strong. He is going to do the best he can to get across the center or come under him. Remember that center is paid to block him and he should get him. The block the center can never make is the reach on the stuating tackle into the strong side. Even an average tackle should beat the center if he is stunting into the gap. ‘The Sam LBer lines up toe to toe. That means the LBer's inside foot should be on the tight end's outside foot. If he is an all~pro tight end, we get wider. The better blocker the tight end is the more outside we are going to play. The strong safety lines up on the tight end to disguise the coverage. At the snap of the ball he gets into the middle third looking for the drop back or play-action pass. If the ball is run at him, he stays back. We don't want to get beat with a flanker post on a play-action pass because he is the HOLE player. We should not need the strong safety on the run. On run plays to the tight end side the stack LBer or Will LBer is going to make most of the tackles. Everyone to the tight end side is working like hell not to get hooked. They are turning the ball back inside. The Will LBer does not have to be big or strong. He has to be able to run and hit. We cover him up so no one can get to him. You can get by with a guy who loves to It is easier to stop the running game in pro ball than it is in high