Simple Dime Package

EXTRA DB PACKAGE

Today we are going to take a look at adding a simple Dime package to your defense to help defend 3rd down situations and spread teams.  We are a 425 defense so we are technically a Nickel package already.  Adding another DB gives you more speed on the field and the ability to cover tighter.  At the High School and Junior High level the key is keeping your coverages simple and consistent.  A lot of times at the college and NFL level they will have specific schemes set for nickel or dime packages to take away the route combinations they will see.  They have more time to work on their substitution packages and more meeting time to go over the coverage adjustments they want to make. Its important for us to have a lot of carryover when we add a package or change a look so we keep things the same when we add a DB into our package.

The way we will generate confusion for the offense is by going to a Base 50 or Okie Front in our Dime Package.  That is different from our base even front and gives the offensive line and offensive coordinator another thing to work on, which affects their practice plan and practice time.  This way we are causing some confusion up front while keeping our back end coverages the same, in essence making the offense play slower while we try to play fast.  We will always have one wrinkle in our coverage scheme for longer yardage situations but we would like to play our base coverages as much as possible.  The way we accomplish this is by adding a second free safety in the game while removing a defensive lineman.  Now we have the ability to play any of our base coverages to either side of the formation.

50 Slant and Angle

We basically will become a 50 Slant and Angle defense much like the great defenses under Bo Schembechler.  We will always slant strong in our Dime Package, bringing the Down Safety from the side with the least receivers with the 3 defensive lineman creating a 4 man rush.  The safety that is rushing must make a call to the defensive line giving them their direction to slant.  Now we can play our base coverages behind that depending upon the formations we see.  If we see a 2x1 formation we will play Quarters strong side and Cov 2 sky or cloud weak.  If we see a 2x2 formation we will play 2 Read to each side bringing the down safety that is on the same side as the Will LB.  That allows the Will LB to walk out and be the Apex player to a 2 removed receiver which is how we play it in base defense.  If the offense gives us a 3x1 formation we play our standard trips checks because we have an extra FS in the game giving us the ability to play trips to either side without changing strength.  We will add simple zone pressures from both sides and a zero pressure to keep the offense honest.  We always want to have the ability to pressure from any package we run.  The zero pressure is really good because you have all DBS covering the 5 eligibles which makes for good match ups, and allows you to bring an outside LB in the pressure with the 2 ILBS.

If you are interested in our base coverage concepts I have an Ebook out on Kindle called Split Field Coverages.  It gives a good brief introduction into how we declare our coverages using split field principles.  Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed it.

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