Hey Coach,
Here’s a fact: Whether or not you run a spread or RPO-heavy defense, you’re probably looking for ways to stop it (or slow it down).
Coach Davis spent many years at Rose Hulman University leading one of the top defensive units in Division 3, and college football as a whole.
Today we’re going to walk through the base coverage that Coach Davis and his defense made a living on for many years at Rose Hulman, how his scheme is set up, and a few of the techniques behind it.
If you want to skip all that and just stream the actual video yourself, CLICK HERE.
The Structure of the Defense
Coach Davis designed a 3-3-5 defense while at Rose Hulman that was consistently one of the nation’s best at the Division 3 level.
The secondary is arranged so that their best corner will play to the boundary in almost any situation.
The field corner, who they call a “dog” will match up against the offense’s best slot receiver. The “Rover” or 3rd safety will match up against whoever that second threat is, whether he’s a receiver, fullback, or tight end, depending on the formation.
You can see in the screenshot below how the defense aligns to a lot of the basic spread formations they see on a weekly basis.
This doesn’t mean that the defensive backs are only trained in a single position. As he states in the clinic, he wants them to view themselves as DBs, not just players at their specific position. Coach Davis makes sure to cross-train all of his DBs in all of the five different positions in the secondary, for depth reasons, and also so that they understand everyone’s responsibility.
Coach Davis can signal a one-high or two-high coverage by the number of hands he holds up on the sideline. They’re a 3-3-5, so they have some 3-high looks as well, and if he wants to get to that look, he’ll hold up both hands and raise a knee.
Because he coaches at a small college, he is usually able to literally yell in the front call, then signal in the movements and coverages he wants to tag on top of that.
The Coverage
One of their favorite coverages is a one-high concept they call “Akron” but is very similar to Rip/Liz match that has been popularized by Nick Saban.
They play outside leverage man, but have used different techniques the past several years as they have had different DB coaches who have taught it differently.
They way they taught it as of the date of this clinic was to play outside leverage man on #2, lined up 5-7 yards off the line of scrimmage.
Meanwhile at the linebacker position, they have a linebacker for the tailback against one-back teams, and then the other linebacker will play the low hole and read the QB’s eyes to help with the underneath routes. The third linebacker will usually be involved in some kind of pressure.
Against an H-Back look they will use the safeties to play the same way. If the H-Back goes backdoor and crosses the formation post-snap, either in a run or a pass concept, the near safety to the movement will take him in man coverage and the safety to the side of his original alignment will play the deep middle.
The safety in man coverage will take the H-back anywhere he goes deep, and he’ll pass off underneath routes to the linebackers.
This is illustrated in the diagram below:
The Wrap-Up
Coach Davis spends almost three hours going through his spread defensive scheme, including using LOTS and LOTS of film.
Click HERE to stream the full clinic INSTANTLY!
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