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Joe Daniel / January 6, 2022

Defensive Line Drills | FBCP S10E20

Defensive line drills can be a key piece to having your big boys playing their most efficient, most effective football. They’re not the only tool you need in your toolbox, but one you need without a doubt.

In this episode we’re talking ways to improve your players with defensive line drills and focusing on the fundamentals of D-Line play.

Photo by football wife from Pexels

The Purpose of Defensive Line Drills

  • Especially in HS, O-Line can be slow, clumsy, and unable to make decisions on the fly. A well taught D-lineman can take advantage of this and really wreck shop
  • HS teams generally rely on the run game to be successful. Having D-linemen that are sound in their technique, you can shut down the majority of the teams you’re going to face.

Defensive Line Drills Do’s and Don’ts

  • Defensive Line is all about reaction and key reads. It has to happen by feel. There is not enough time to see.
  • Never ask defensive linemen to look in the backfield. They must defeat the man in front of them. 
  • You don’t want defensive linemen to run up the field. Without key reads they’re an easy kickout.

The Key Components of Defensive Line Drills

  • Block Reactions you need to teach…
    • Base Block
    • Reach Block
    • Down Block
    • Pass Read
    • Screen Retrace
  • Attack the half-man to get an advantage. Even if you are 2-gap, once you get the two gap read you do not stay head-up to the man. 
  • There is no reason to waste time running defensive line drills for defeating double teams. Defeat the half-man and split it. 
  • Most high school coaches spend too much time on defensive line drills for pass rush. You don’t see that much drop back pass in most areas. Get good at one or two rush moves (Michael Strahan had two moves).

Related Links

  • Listen to Solving 5 Defensive Line Problems from Season 7, Episode 14 of The Football Coaching Podcast:
  • Read this article about keeping your base drills exciting
  • Listen to Episode 78 of the FBCP for 4 Defensive Line Drills You Can Use Now

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:37] Daniel Chamberlain: Welcome back, coaches, this is The Football Coaching Podcast. I am Daniel Chamberlain. I’m here with Joe Daniel as always.

[00:00:44] Joe Daniel: Hey Coach, how you doing?

[00:00:45] Daniel Chamberlain:Doing pretty well. I’m just gonna go ahead and say it. We’re recording ahead of time because I’ve got some military obligations. Nothing crazy, but I will be gone for a short amount of time. And so when I say tonight, or if I mention a game that’s on in the next week and you’re like, Hey, man, that’s in tomorrow, and you said it’s next week. That’s why.

[00:01:03] Joe Daniel: We will do our best to keep up the illusion that you are listening to a live broadcast.

[00:01:08] Daniel Chamberlain: That’s right. That’s right.

[00:01:09] Joe Daniel: But we don’t have lot experience with that.

[00:01:12] Daniel Chamberlain: So in this episode, we’re talking D-line mainly drills as a concept. We’re not necessarily going to lay out exactly what drill you should be using. There is a place you can go to get that and it’s JoeDanielFootball.com and Joe has got it laid out perfect to give you some drills to do. So tonight we just want to talk what a drill or what should be drilled. So what fundamentals of a player, what scheme things need to be drilled? So that’s kind of where we’re going to go with it. Just remember, the trenches are where most of your battles are won, right? So if football and I say that in a general term, so being in military, it means more to me, probably. But football is no different as your big guys go. So you go right. And if your offensive line isn’t doing well, your offense probably isn’t doing well. If your defensive line is playing like trash or not well-coached, you’re probably not seeing a lot of success or probably a lot of points on the other side of the scoreboard. So tonight, that’s what we would talk about, is how you can drill and focus on aspects of your D-line to see a big bump. And well, I guess an opposite of a bump to see that number stay low. Helping your linebackers and Dbs out with a good D-line play

[00:02:21] Joe Daniel: I have a different philosophy on drills than a lot of coaches. And it’s not what a lot of coaches want to hear. But probably the most common thing that I hear from coaches is, you know, our defensive line is too small. What defense should we run with a small defensive line? And the truth is that we need to become problem solvers with that because it’s probably pretty rare that many of us are going to have. Most of you are going to maybe have one or two. What we would consider legit true defensive linemen in a season, you may have none that are really big enough at that point in time, especially if you wanted two platoon because immediately those five biggest guys are on the other side of the ball, right? You know the offensive line, guys, unless you’re less, you’re more of a gap scheme. But we’re always going to be maybe a little short on the defensive line side as far as just sheer size and as far as just guys who can be more powerful and can man handle an offensive lineman. Usually we’re talking about in general defensive linemen or smaller and quicker than offensive linemen. And I think that we need to focus on maximizing that quickness with our defensive linemen and disguising isn’t the word. But getting around the fact that we’re probably not as strong as a lot of the of the of the offensive linemen, at least, you know, three out of our four or two out of our three or whatever we’re doing. So that’s what it’s all about today is a specific there’s so many things that are being done by defensive line coaches. Defensive line coaches have more toys than anybody else, right? Defensive line coaches have the ball on a stick. Good toy. Not a bad one. And I’m not saying any of these are inherently bad toys. We got the ball on the stick. We got the hoop. We got the wobble dummy that they rip through. We got the the arm pads, the full padded arms so he can work pass rush moves on me. I think those are cool. The defensive line coach is always have, we’ve got the leb sled, we’ve got to maybe use the chutes and we don’t really use the board so much on defensive linemen. Some coaches do, some coaches use chutes and boards, and I know when I was defensive lineman in college, I had a very young defensive line coach. We did rope shoot sled every day and I think it was because he just wasn’t sure what to do with us. To be quite honest, we were pretty good. He had an all-American defensive tackle, so we looked good. Not me, by the way. But but he had an all-American defensive tackle. He had a couple of really good defensive ends. So, you know, he was cool. We worked out and I can’t fault him for it. But I just I don’t see the use in all the toys and those kinds of things. So when we had who do we have on talking about the 101 plays, which episode was that you remember?

[00:05:15] Daniel Chamberlain: I think it’s pretty my time. Maybe?

[00:05:17] Joe Daniel: No, no, no, no. This was like a couple of episodes ago. Some way we were talking too about nobody has like, Oh,

[00:05:22] Daniel Chamberlain: Was it Ron? Ron Mckie? He come on and talk.

[00:05:25] Joe Daniel: No, no. I can’t think of who he is. But we talked about the fact that those it might have even been Lynn, I’m not sure. Nobody has those 101, and it wasn’t like we just a conversation we had that those 101 plays 101 blitzes, 101 drills, but none of that really. You know, it’s drawn up against different stuff. I always think that these drill manuals with five hundred things, I used to love them. I think they’re a waste. I really do. I think they’re a waste. And I think that there are a way for coaches who don’t know what they want out of their drills to fill time. And you may not like to hear that, but if you are listening to this podcast for any length of time and you have developed any of the coach simple, play fast win concept, if any of that has meant anything to you, if it doesn’t I don’t know why you’re still listening, but if it does, then you’re not completely offended by that. When I say this is a way for coaches to waste time. A lot of this stuff. And so that’s not the purpose of what we’re going to talk about today.

[00:06:30] Daniel Chamberlain: Right. So we won’t pay the bills before we get into the why here.

[00:06:34] Joe Daniel: Yeah. So we’ll talk about these drills. JDFB Coaching Systems includes the defensive drill system, which is all the drills that I would run on my defense. Now I have coaches. When I run a defense, those coaches run the drills that they want to run. But this is what if you come to me and say what, you know, defense in a box, what do we need to do? Here are the drills that you need to run. It’s going include everything that I’m going to do with my defensive linemen. I’ve been a defensive line coach, I’ve been a linebacker coach, I’ve been a safeties coach and eventually ended up being the secondary coach in the past season. So I’ve got it all covered for you and I can do it all in a very short amount of time. You don’t need a ton of time and you don’t need somebody with a lot of experience to be successful. You just need to run these very coach simple drills that are in the defensive drill system. So we’ve got diagrams we’ve created for you. Some of them we have video a lot of them we don’t have video, but I would love for you to run them and then send me a video of it. So, you know, again, I just coach one position. I don’t, you know, so I don’t have a ton of video. I do have some video that I’ll be adding, but I’ve loved anybody who’s running them through one of our coaches is already running them. You got some film from the season let me know. The defensive drill system is included, along with five complete coaching systems, 4-2-5, 33 stack, 3-4 defense system and the 4-3 defense system. And these drills are all universal. They can be adapted and run in any of those coaching systems. I don’t come up with new drills for a new defense, defense is defense. So with our defensive drill system, you get access to that as well. It’s all available for $1. You get it all right away. All those systems I’m talking about, including the drills. So if you want to see these defensive drills again, I won’t go like in-depth on how to run a screen retrace drill, but there is a place that you can get them for a dollar. And to be honest, you can download it and then you can click cancel right inside there, and you can have all of them for a dollar. And it won’t hurt my feelings. It just won’t. I like people are like what, well, somebody steals your stuff like set up for people to steal my stuff. Go to Join.JoeDanielFootball.com to get that for $1. And again, you can download them. Check them out. See if it’s for you. If it’s not, you know, whatever. Forget you. Just kidding.

[00:08:44] Daniel Chamberlain: I’ve filled it will be for you, though. This is where my testimony comes in, and that’s the 4-2-5 defensive systems of what I took straight from Joe and installed it. It took me about three weeks to read through it, put it in. We ran it this season and the defensive line stuff was right there. I could handle defensive line coach. Here’s everything I want to see. This is what will make the defense successful and then let him, you know, modify what he needed to. So it’s all there. It’s great. It’s easy to easy to send off to rest your coaches if you need to share. I think you can even add coaches and share the entire program with folks, so it’s definitely worth for a dollar.

[00:09:16] Joe Daniel: Yeah, our annual clients is going to add your entire coaching staff. If you start an annual subscription, you can add the entire coaching staff. And here’s the thing like, remember, I’m a 90 minute practice plan guy, right? So when I talk about these are the drills that I that you need, I think I can get everything done in an eight minute Indy period every day. Not everybody thinks that. So you probably don’t have any Indy period. Your head coach is probably not on board with that. He might be, or it’s hard for coaches to wrap their heads around, given these drills give your defensive line coach these drills and say, Hey man, you got 20 minutes. That’s what the head coach is scheduled for indies. These are going to take you eight. You got 12 minutes to do whatever you want to do from that point on. I’m not saying that this is all you should ever do. I’m saying this is what you need to do. Yeah.

[00:09:56] Daniel Chamberlain: Well, the bills paid, I think we can move into the why. So right off the bat, I think you have to look at what level you’re coaching. And I understand we have maybe some semi-pro guys listening or, you know, people from overseas, different different countries. But I would like to believe that the majority are probably high school coaches in America teaching high schoolers. I know what talent I’ve been around as a high school player and as a high school coach, and it was never we didn’t have the Creed Humphreys and insert whatever your favorite offensive lineman here, you know that we didn’t have those guys to go against, right? We don’t have those guys to put on our offensive line. So. High schoolers are often pretty. We talk about, especially if they’re like sophomores and juniors. Their bodies are growing. They’re uncoordinated. They don’t know where they are spatially. And now we’re as an offensive line coach, you’re asking them to not only control themselves, their body where they are, what they’re doing, but to read the actions of another human being and react in a split second. And hopefully they can do it for four to six seconds, right? Like, that’s kind of what they’re being asked to do. And I think that that is a very big advantage to defensive line. So as a defensive line coach or defensive coordinator, whatever you happen to be, you’re in a position where you can tell a guy to pin his your ears back and apply pressure to another human being who’s not very good at what they do. Not saying they aren’t. I mean, there’s obviously kids out there. They’re going to be great linemen from start and they’re probably going to go places. But you’re in a position where you’re running or you know what you’re going to do. Sure. You know, we always talk about offense. Offense knows exactly where they’re going. They know where the ball is. They have the advantage. But as a defensive lineman, so do we like we read one thing and then they don’t know what our plan is either, right? We have a plan of attack. So these drills are a way to really hone your players, get them aggressive and allow them to apply pressure on a very slow, clumsy offensive lineman who’s in high school as well.

[00:11:50] Joe Daniel: You almost never have five, you know, really good. I think a lot of coaches over estimate when they play a good offensive line. I’ve coached good offensive lines. I’m a good offensive line coach, just humbly speaking. I can tell you those good offensive lines didn’t have five good offensive linemen on them. They just they just didn’t. I think a lot of coaches overestimate how unprepared or unskilled someone on that offensive line usually is, and they may be very well prepared and it may look like they’re very, very good when the reality is that they’re not. And so with your defensive line, like you said, you know, we’ve got a good athlete, you’ve got an offensive lineman who’s trying to figure out what he’s look in there making calls. They’re doing this and they’re doing that. And I’ve got a defensive lineman who oftentimes is more athletic quicker in some way, maybe bigger and stronger, but usually not at least not across the board. And I mean, and you mentioned, you know, often I’ve coached for 20 years. One offensive lineman stands out one period. It’s Morgan Moses, who’s had a pretty lengthy NFL career. Morgan Moses was a great dude and was an offensive tackle locally here for Meadowbrook High School and probably the maybe the only NFL talent that I’ve seen on the offensive line and the only guy who could truly just dominate it, truly dominate the game, and there was nothing you could do about it. The rest of them, like I could teach my defensive linemen to not win all of them, you know, get better talent. But what I think we do wrong is we go in and we say, I’m going to teach this defensive lineman how to do 10,000 different things when he just needs to go in there and and go and know how to do three things. And that offensive lineman, he can win a lot. He can win a lot of them.

[00:13:39] Daniel Chamberlain: Yeah, I use the what is the post hip and rip. And I mean, you need to teach that and one pass rush move. And I get like, I mean, you said three is own retrace. It’s got to be the next one, but you can take the thinking out of your defensive line very quickly. Now you can muddy it up with games, stunts, different blitzes and sometimes that’s necessary. But I think you truly could just let them go out and read and play football, and they could dominate. Maybe not Mr. Moses, but the rest of them, right? I mean, they’re going to be able to at least perform against them. And like you said, they don’t have five. Maybe you have three. Maybe you have four with their hand in the dirt. You need to win one one match up there. Realistically, they have to win all five.

[00:14:23] Joe Daniel: And even still the most important thing you mentioned, you know, down block screen retrace the most at the high school level, you will win a lot of games if your guys learn how to. We talk about my guys are too small. My guys aren’t big enough. My guys aren’t strong enough. They’re too young, but they’re too slow. If you teach your players and you’ve you’ve run this system so you understand what I’m saying. If you teach your players how to react when they are not blocked, you will be pretty good on the defensive line. Yeah, if you if so, the things that we talk about here, why do we need to drill defensive linemen? Why do we need to keep defensive line drill simple? Are there things that we can do? Can we do a strip sack? There are some drills that I love, like a strip sack drill, a near hand squat drill for pass breakups, knockdowns. I love those types of things. Those are fun drills and they’re good, good drills. I’ll put them into a turnover circuit or something like that. But the fact of the matter is that if I can teach this sophomore how to react properly when he is not blocked, we’ll actually be pretty good. And when we’re talking about looking at our JDFB Coaching Systems clients, they get game film review, a game film analysis system of their game film during the season. I look at it and I tell them where the leverage to pull most, most of the defensive line levers are, how to react when not block. They’re not reacting to it. They’re not squeezing a down block, they’re not screen retracing. Beyond that, a lot of times it’s just simple alignment. It’s having the wrong hand down and things like that. And I don’t think I’ve ever told a guy, here’s what you really need to focus in on, how to knock down passes in high school, you know? Not really. And I don’t think I’ve really talked much about pass rush moves. It’s one of the things that we will talk about. It’s definitely something that needs to be approached. But why do you need to drilled these specific reactions? The space is too short to look and think and process, so it has to be instantaneous reaction. And if you can react to the times you are not blocked at the high school level, you’re going to be pretty good on the defensive line.

[00:16:34] Daniel Chamberlain: Yes, I think pretty much predominantly across, say, across United States. Generally, high school offenses are trying to run the ball right. And if you can increase your ability through just a few simple methods and get your D-line to shut down the run, I think you have one pretty much that’s a that’s the best way to win those games, right? Yeah. If the other team is scoring, they’re not winning and there’s teams out there, they’re going to, you know, they’re going to out athlete you. I dealt with that this past year, right? I thought we had a pretty good game plan. We need a lot of D-line work like I can look at the film and say that, Hey, we should have worked D-line. We were kind of the opposite. We tried to do too much stuff. You know, the guy I gave him the the practice plan. And then he added to a lot of things and there were some stuff that we need to put the brakes on. But you know, we got out of that game. There’s nothing we were going to do about it. We weren’t stopping that run game. But I think that if you can get into these drills and get the fundamentals down, you’re going to give your kids a good chance to stop most high school team’s run game, which should put you in a pretty good position to win more high school football games. Nice than most of them are, all of them, but definitely more than what you have in the past, especially if you’ve never, never been the one, you know, putting these things into practice.

[00:17:51] Joe Daniel: Yeah, and we said most teams are trying to run the ball and there’s some guys who were in a little area, different areas, maybe some larger areas where they’re seeing a lot more air raid and RPOs and things of that nature. But even if you’re seeing that what we’re talking about, you’re still seeing zone read, you’re still seeing, you know, that’s how does the defensive end react when he’s not blocked? Right, that’s that’s option reads. But also, I can go ahead and tell you from the fact that this is what I do for a living and I get film from all over the country. Most schools are still seeing a boatload of Wing-T. A lot of you know, they’re seeing double wing, they’re seeing straight T, they’re seeing single wing, they’re seeing flex bone. They’re seeing spreads that are spread to run. They’re seeing a lot of gap scheme. You will run into teams that run, that are very very zone heavy and we’ll talk about that because that’s when you’re not necessarily not getting blocks and you’ve got a win some blocks. But I think if we just learn how to and and even that you mentioned post hip and rip, we’re not staying there for long. I’m going to be here long. Like we’re we’re not going to be. Remember, we’re quicker. We’re quicker than you are most. Most coaches are going to be better off starting smaller, quicker defensive linemen. And maybe you put, you know, you’re you’re big, you know, 350 pounder who can’t move very well. Maybe you spot him in situations, short yardage and things of that nature. He’s on your goal line. But I mean, most kids that are 350 pounds, unless they’re just a legit freak who’s never coming off the field don’t need to be on the field for 60 snaps. So, you know, we’re putting we’re putting smaller, quicker out there.

[00:19:27] Daniel Chamberlain: Yep. So that kind of touching on the run game to, I’d follow quite a few people on Twitter out of the Texas area that are just really into zone run right now. And you know, my first team that that head coach, he wanted to he wanted to run outside zone. That was his outside zone, inside zone. And then we tried to add duo later because he found it in thought, you know, it was it was a good play. I like it. I’d like to use it at some point in my career. But it is almost impossible to take the skill that we had at those those offensive linemen and successfully zone block. And I think it was you mentioned last week even that, well, two weeks ago, this is that recording multiple at a time. But when we had coach Shackelford on you talked about it. Get to the second level, right? How difficult is that? And so if you can cause a ruckus with your D linemen, you can throw off a lot of these guys what they’re trying to do with that zone run game. Yeah, the gap scheme, I mean, you’ve just got to, you know, defeated down block and go make a play. But a lot more people are trying to go zone. And I think that there’s a chance there to take advantage of that and really kind of defeat what they’re trying to do.

[00:20:32] Joe Daniel: One of the things that we do with our defensive linemen is instill a mentality, and they will buy into this with the mentality that we instill with our defensive line. And I got this from Ricky Coon when I was at Elsworth College and he’s now at Dodge City College in Kansas. I believe still there. One man cannot block me. Two men cannot move me. Make that the mantra for your defensive linemen and make them believe in it. You know, one man cannot block me. Two men cannot move me. And if they buy into that, then you’re going to be much better. And that’s how you handle the zone. How you handle zone is zone is a combo. So as long as my linebackers are reacting correctly, I won’t be in a double team. And when he comes off the double team, I’m back in a one on one and I know how to win that. And in fact, what we’ll teach is we don’t ever teach that you’re never in a double team. There is no double team because we don’t get blocked. We don’t. We don’t work against one maneither, we work half men. There is no double team.

[00:21:35] Daniel Chamberlain: Yeah. You know, that’s something. Just pick and half a man defeat. Defeat him. Who’s coming at you? You just have to be half of one, right? You know, we talked about split and double team stuff like that, and that’s that something needs to be drilled, which so that pushes into our next part here, which is going to be what exactly do we need to drill? And I think the big overall idea is just creating muscle memory or creating the ability to read and react very quickly. Right. It has to happen by feel and I can look back at my first year. We wanted to be an attacking 4-3-3. We weren’t reading anything. We were firing. We want to be three yards deep right now. This is every defensive lineman and then we’re going to try to read and react. But we’ve, you know, the idea is that we messed up the mesh. We’ve, you know, the hand off. We’ve pressured the quarterback, whatever it is that we’re trying to do. We’re three yards deep right now. As I learned more about defense, I definitely don’t lean that way anymore. I would rather, you know, make contact, dominate a human being or half a man and beat whatever he’s trying to do by reading him. And so I think getting kids hands on and getting him able to know what’s going on and react off of what that is is definitely that has to be the endpoint, right? That’s got to be the overall idea of defensive line drills.

[00:22:53] Joe Daniel: The defensive line, your defensive line drills are all in all of your defensive drills, every defensive drill. And to be honest, most offensive drills are built around winning the one on one game. That’s what your guys need to do. They need to understand what their job is within this component of these 11 people. What is my job in this system? Everything is a system. Everything works together. If one part of the machine is broken, then the machine breaks down. So I don’t even we talk about winning the one on one game. I don’t even talk about. I don’t think that our guys need to win this battle in in the way that people think of it in the thought process of board wars, right? We’re going to put two guys on a board. We’re just going to knock the snot out of each other and concussed everybody, and it’s going to really make us good football players. That’s not what we need to do. I don’t win my one on one game by whipping your butt. I win my one on one game because you just told me where the ball is going and I recognized it, won the game. That’s it. I won the game. When do you see guys lose the game? They immediately look in the backfield. Game is lost. Now they’re trying to figure out because they don’t pay attention, the guy in front of them. Now they’re trying to figure out what is happening in the backfield while that guy’s got his hands on him is running his feet. You lost the game. When he down blocks and I run three yards up the field and I get kicked out. I lost the game. OK, that’s that’s losing the game. When do I lose the game on a pass rush? I lose the game on a pass rush when I dip inside, even though my Rush Lane is to the outside and I allowed the gap escape for that quarterback. And now he’s taken off running. I lost the game not because the other guy dominated me. And that’s I’ll tell you that those three things are where I see a vast majority of the game being lost. And it’s not because the other guy was so good. It’s it’s it’s not because he dominated me. It’s because I wasn’t playing the right game. In the right game is you’re about to tell me where I need to be and if I pay attention to that and react and that’s the key defensive line, there’s not enough room to read. It’s really it’s a key read, but I can’t. It’s got to be muscle memory, like you said. And if I will do that? You tell me where the ball is going. Now I know when I’m headed that direction. Will I make every tackle? No, but that’s how I win my one on one game.

[00:25:21] Daniel Chamberlain: Yeah, absolutely. And I think you meant we make it so much easier for young football players if we just take all the craziness out. You teach these drills if you teach these the few things that, like you said, the key read, hands on, post hip rip and go where the ball is. I mean, they just told you where to be. So just be there, and not every defense is doing it the same way that you coach it or I coached and trying to string things out to the sideline, but I feel like a lot of people are headed that way. I’m going to make you run 25 yards before you gain a yard, right? And that’s all you have to do as defensive lineman. You talk about winning your one on one. But I don’t have to be in the backfield making the tackle. Do I want to? Absolutely. And hopefully you get some tackles for losses, people trying to cut it back, whatever. Sure. But just doing your job being home, stretch this ball out and then, you know, we’ll let some linebackers run over or safety. Somebody make some tackles out there.

[00:26:11] Joe Daniel: So there’s a couple of things that come from this one is I don’t ever, ever, ever want to ask the defensive linemen to look in the backfield. It’s just you’ve got to defeat the man in front of you. And again, I don’t have to physically dominate him. He’s going to tell me where to go, and I’m going to be like, Thanks, bye. Like, that’s he’s going to push me. I don’t have to push him anywhere. I just got to get off him and run away from him because he just told me where it’s going. I talk about, do I want to, you know, do I want to bend down the line of scrimmage or do I want to cross base? DA da da da da da da da da? And they work on cross phase drills or they work on bending drills. But the kid doesn’t know where he’s supposed to go, and so he never knows when to use this right. So I focus on that read. I think we win, and then just let him be an athlete. It’s like, should he cross phase? He’s an athlete. OK, if I want him to cross phase, I’m going to drill the cross phase, OK? But if I wanted to bend, I’m going to drill the bend. But defensive lineman win in the first three steps. Offensive lineman win the first two steps. OK, the first two, I get my read off of you and then I’m taken off on my third step. If he takes his first two and I don’t react right, he’ll win it. OK. So I can’t be looking in the backfield. I’ve got to be getting my read off the guy in front of me to beat, you know, win that one on one game with that guy and don’t go up the field. Don’t go up the field. Don’t go up the field, don’t go up the field. What happens when you go up the field? What happens when you go up the field is you create vertical seams. When you go up the field, you create a vertical seam. There are horizontal seams in, there are vertical seams in your defense, horizontal seams and vertical seams are how you give up rushing yards. Everybody looks at horizontal seams. He’s got this gap, he’s got this gap, he’s got this gap, he’s got this gap. When the guy who has this gap goes through this gap and goes four yards up the field. He created a vertical seen and space on the field of space on the field for a running back, and they’ll take it. So we don’t run up the field because if we were running up the field, we don’t have a key read. Now 3rd and 15, can I tell my defensive end the jet, speed rush and all that stuff? Yeah, OK, cool. And I think just real quick, all these other drills, they have a purpose. OK, if I want to work a strip sack, let’s let’s take a scoop and score, OK? Or however, I want to do you know, if I want to get the fetal fumble recovery, do I work that? Absolutely. Why? Because when it comes up, it’s extremely important. And I want to have that muscle memory of, Oh, I picked this up and I run. OK, but if I spend as much time on that as I do on reacting to a down block, we’re not very good. No, no. But I see a lot of coaches doing it.

[00:28:37] Daniel Chamberlain: Yeah, no. I I understand there’s a way to waste time, and that’s because coaches are probably used to having four hours for practice every day. Yeah, they’ll do that. They’re filling time and now they’re wasting it. You know, talk about getting off the field and without a key read, no matter what, what position you’re at, but especially defensive end. You know, you become a pretty easy kick out block there, but there are always going to be a polar, but it’s high school football. Most coaches can try to run the power. That’s what’s going to happen. You know, we saw it last year with a guy that was doing exactly what we’re talking about here, right? He read. He wasn’t upfield, but he still didn’t squeeze that gap, right? So he didn’t react the right way to his read vertical seam, which really, he just got blown up. And then and then that was where the seam came in a horizontal seam. Or not this gap anymore. But yeah, so reading these keys and being able to react is obviously very important.

[00:29:28] Joe Daniel: So we have five keys that we need to react to as defensive linemen. Five keys, period. That’s it. And again, I do it from a slant. I do it from a 2-gap. But when we’re talking 4-2-5, 4-3, we’re talking about doing it most of shade and we’re talking 3-4, 33 Stack defensive coaching systems at JDFB Coaching Systems that we’re going to be doing it out of a slant. But in either case, in any of those cases, and I and I, we talked about before we even started a two gap, I think when you 2 gap, there’s one little added I’m not a big two gap guy. I’m not a big fan of it. But the added element is, I read you and I did two gap in high school, but I read your your feet or your block or your hips or whatever. I’m going to read your hat, whatever. I read your hat and then I’m going to half man to that based off of what that tells me. And I’m always playing the half man and I’m always reacting in this way. So I need to react to a base block. You come off the block me, right? That’s the most obvious. But to be honest, it’s one of the, you know, that’s where you post hip and rip. You come at me, I come at you. Boom, I throw the arm. I drive my hip into the gap, I rip my inside, I throw the outside arm on your shoulder. I drive my hip into the gap. Hips are everything. 46 Defense, Coaching football is 46 Defense Rex Ryan Best Defensive Chapter The best defensive line chapter in a book if you if you don’t run the 46, none of us do. Go read that book, get that book. Check out the chapter on defensive line because the big thing is a lot of coaches are thinkin hat. They’re thinking hands, its hips. If your hips are in the gap, you have control of the gap. If your hips are in the inside half of the gap, you have the inside half of the gap controlled. You will force the ball to spill to the outside, and ultimately that is the job of defensive linemen. If he doesn’t want to spill, I’ll tackle him, but we have our base block, that’s your that’s your your number one thing positive and we have our down block. What’s our reaction to down block? Well, for us, we’re still, you know, special teams. So down block, we’re going to squeeze down whether we’re going to stay square and squeeze or we’re going to bend and wrong arm and train wreck and whatever. However, where do you want to use? The fact of the matter is we got to get down inside. Tommy Tuberville in the four three. VIDEO The classic tracksuit for three videos. Tommy Tuberville had the great line that they used for their defensive linemen in the Miami four three defense, which was block away, is run away. If he blocks away from you, you consider it as if it’s tossed to the other side of the field and you take off straight down line of scrimmage. Problem solved. You’ll get where you want to get to however you want to teach. That is, how are we want to teach that? We have base block, down block. We have a pass set obviously. If he’s going to pass at us, then if he pass sets, we know we’ve got one. For the majority of high school defensive linemen in the majority of areas, one is enough, one pass rush move, you know, by use of rip move, everybody learns to rip, everybody rip moves. We rip every block destruct and I don’t teach any other block destruct, period. Everybody knows how to rip move and

[00:32:33] Daniel Chamberlain: You forgot pull away. Pulling, pulling key

[00:32:37] Joe Daniel: Ah pulling away from you. Yeah, it’s still a block away. We’ve got to follow it. That’s just a block away. I mean, you know, any of that I was just looking to see a reach block. So we have base block. We have reach block. That’s the one that I forgot. Reach block, he tries to capture your outside shoulder or your far shoulder, and that’s how you react. It’s still block to. It’s still post hip and rip. It’s just you’re probably gonna post hip and rip a lot harder to get there than you do with the base block. But essentially, again, this is in. This is from Rex Ryan. There’s Block two and there’s a block away. If your hips are in the gap, you’re controlling the gap and that’s football. So base block, reach block is block two, down block pull is block away. We teach base block, reach block. We drill five things base block, reach block. And again, this is all the defensive drills. Just a reaction down block closing space down. Pass it. Having one defensive rush move, I saw Danny Morrison speak at a clinic a Glazier Clinic years ago. He’s a consultant for the jets by then. Great defensive line coach and Danny Morrison was talking about, you need to, this is an NFL, not your 180 pound defensive lineman who’s a sophomore. This is NFL defensive lineman have two rush moves. Michael Strahan had two rush moves. How many does your guy need? I mean, seriously, you don’t need 19 rush moves.

[00:34:00] Daniel Chamberlain: No. And we just talked about how the offensive line isn’t that skilled anymore.

[00:34:03] Joe Daniel: Yeah, they’re not like, like, I don’t like swim moves. I, you know, little pin punch and stuff like that. To me, a swim move exposes your ribs and I see kids get pinned and I saw our offensive linemen, our defensive linemen most of the time. So I told them not to swim. And then I get them on the offensive line and I tell you, here’s what you do when somebody swims. When that guard arm goes up, you just just tee off on those ribs. Now a punch is cool. You punch over the shoulder pad, your elbow into the back of the shoulder. All pass rush moves are geared towards one thing and one thing only getting even with the hip. If I get to your hip, you’re beat because the only way you can block me if I’m on your hip, hold me is holding. Yep, yep. And then the one that everybody needs to work every single day and you’ll only see it a couple of times a game. You might not see it for three or four weeks screen retrace. But what happens when they run a screenplay and you haven’t seen a screenplay for three weeks?

[00:34:58] Daniel Chamberlain: They run out again because they probably get a lot of yards.

[00:35:01] Joe Daniel: They probably get a boatload of yards, so work it every single day and never, ever let a practice go by where your scout team offense does not run a screenplay. I don’t care what the other team’s doing that week. There needs to be a screen. There needs to be 4 Verts, period. So that’s that’s that. And then what I do with the pass rush drills is just pass rush one on one but I do it with five guys. So that’s all in the defensive drill system. I’ll do a little two minute rush move partner up. You’ve got one minute go. What are they doing that one minute punch, punch, rip, punch, rip, punch, rip, punch, elbow, you know? You know, post, rip, post, rip, post, rip. Punch an elbow, chop, whatever their rush move is. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with teaching three or four rush moves, but that’s why I don’t have like a here’s our swim move again. I don’t swim move. Let’s just take a spin, a spin move. Whatever you want to do, I don’t. I don’t ever teach a spin move. But if a kid just naturally spins, I’ll teach him how to do it so he doesn’t look stupid doing it, but he’s just going to do it naturally. So like, I would never sit there and say, here’s our spin move drill session. Because the problem I’ve got one kid that can effectively use a spin move at most. So when we say you got one minute to drill your pass rush moves, he’s drilling spin move for a minute. And it’s look, it’s it’s three steps. He should get five, six, seven reps. When I say, flip it, another guy goes and he might be working chop. You know, he might be working rip move. Most of them are working post rip, post pull rip. Most of them working in post pull rip. That’s that’s and that’s all during seven on seven. So during seven on seven, we work the pass rush move and then we’ll go pass rush one on ones. That’s that’s all you need.

[00:36:38] Daniel Chamberlain: And I know I’m going to add to it because I just got out of the situation like you talked about this, even this whole podcast and we talk about this episode we talk about wanting to be short because you should be able to do this in eight minutes, ten minutes, right? That’s how long you should be spending on this, on this. Everything we’ve just talked about for almost the last 50 minutes, right? You’re going to give coaches that give you 20 minutes, then you can start working fundamentals right and get away from this. You know, you start work in their get-off’s, you can work distances or you can work whatever it is right? Or it’s a work your scheme thing and get bigger and go wider. Instead of focusing on a single individual. Let them run some team stuff. Get your stunts, get it, you know?

[00:37:16] Joe Daniel: I should mention we’re working stance and get off on every single one of these drills. It’s always from a stance and get on. So that’s, you know, with down block, it’s, you know, it’s not down block period. We’re doing all of these together, but they’re getting in a stance and they’re working that as well, right?

[00:37:31] Daniel Chamberlain: So use that other 20 minutes effectively go into the little group if you have to don’t. You’ve said it many times since I’ve known you now, and that’s too many pass rush drills or too many pass rush moves. And I laugh because you bring up stuff like Michael Strahan having 2 moves like you have. How? How do you think you’re better than him? Odds are not not in your favor that you can be better than him at football.

[00:37:53] Joe Daniel: You basically have a move and a counter move, so you have a move that will beat the offensive lineman. That’s probably as far as most of your defensive linemen need to go, because most of the offensive linemen that they’re playing against don’t pass that that much and don’t have a reaction. They’re not going to throw enough to where. So let’s say that your move is a push pull or a ball rusher or something like that, you know, a push pull move. So the counter move to that is when he knows that you’re going to bowl rush and he’s going to set his hips down and he’s not going to react to your push. So the push pull works, you push into him, he pushes back on you, you pull him. Well, now he knows. So he squat his hips when you push on him. So now you may just go to a different move where you’re going to take advantage of him squatting his hips. Maybe you’re going to maybe you’re going to use a chop, knock his hands down and go by in that way because he’s thinking about squatting down

[00:38:44] Daniel Chamberlain: Anything to change direction, right? A spin sewt him u pretty bad there. If you want to be a ripper, just yeah. Once you’ve got him trying to sit in one place, you pretty much got him whipped.

[00:38:55] Joe Daniel: Yeah, and it’s just like a speed rusher off the edge. Then he’s going to go to a real fast kick, and that may open up an inside rush move, so it may be a post and rip to the inside move. That’s not a complicated thing. We’re talking about a speed rush is a speed rush. It’s speed. It’s a little choppy. Get the hands off and come around the edge and the other one as opposed to the inside. That’s the absolute most you need. But the fact of the matter is if you’re only going to be, if you’re playing teams that are mostly if you’re playing teams that aren’t drop back passing, none of this really matters, right? Because when you’re talking about sprint out, roll out on that kind of stuff, it’s not the same play actions. But if you’re playing, a team is going to drop back, pass 12 times in a game and offensive lineman is not going to get a read on his rush moves and go like it’s not going to, it’s not enough time. So there’s been a ton of time on it. We’re always working the two man advantage or the half-man advantage. You know, we’re always working half man advantage. And you kind of mentioned it before double teams. Guys, stop. I don’t care what anybody else does like, do what you do. And if it works for you, great. I’m not going to teach a guy how to get his butt whipped. I’m just not.

[00:40:00] Daniel Chamberlain: What is it there was some dropping crabgrass when the party

[00:40:04] Joe Daniel: Crabgrass, screw your shoulder into the ground. You know, whatever it is, ball down,

[00:40:11] Daniel Chamberlain: Beyond athletic to beat the double team.

[00:40:13] Joe Daniel: Pray, And look, I also don’t teach a log walk on the offensive line. I tell them, you better kick him out. Why? Because it gives them an out. I don’t want to give them an out because middle log is admitting defeat because I don’t want that guy to spill me. So you better kick him out. I don’t give him an out. I don’t tell a kid to fall to the ground. I tell him, you attack the half man, if I attack the half man and I post in hip and the guy from the other side comes into me, what’s he getting? He’s getting a big handful, my butt

[00:40:44] Daniel Chamberlain: Block in the back

[00:40:46] Joe Daniel: And I’m splitting them so all that I have to do to beat a double team. And look, I’m not saying it’s 100 percent. I’m just saying we’re not going to teach a kid to get his butt kicked. I am not going to teach a kid to get his butt kicked because all I have to do to to split a double team is to get them on different levels. How do I do that? I attack the half man. I turn his shoulder. Separate levels.

[00:41:06] Daniel Chamberlain:Yup, that’s also going to throw off whatever, whatever game they’re trying to play. If it’s supposed to be a combo to a backer. They’re not going to know who to go to. You’re going to throw off. I mean, one thing, they’re still high school, so. Exactly. Well, man, I think we’ve we’ve punched all the the tickets here. We’re pretty much covered everything. Once again, you know, tonight’s episode is not about laying out, Hey, here’s the five drills that I would do every practice. We’re kind of telling you, here’s what you need to ensure that you’re drilling and then set up your own practice schedule. If you’re struggling with that, there are systems available at JoeDanielFootbal.com where we do have the 3-4, 33, 4-2-5, 4-3 and Pistol Power Offense Systems. In each of those defenses, there are drills to run. There are diagram Joe know how to set it up so that you can go out and teach kid how to read a down block, how to read a pass set and what to do. How to ensure that your line’s not giving up a escape route for an opposing quarterback. Joined now for one dollar for 7-day trial. Full access that is at join.joedanielfootball.com Once again, that is join.joeadnielfootball.com. Log on. Sign up. You get it for a week. And uh, you know, I have to admit you said it last episode and that was when I got that seven days, I was like man I’m going to download all this and have it, and I’ve just never gotten rid of the program because there’s always more to find. So you think you’ve got what you want and then you realize, Hey, I might need some offensive line work. And so now there’s, you know, I can go in and get more data, more information. So sign up annually and then you can add the rest of the coaches on your staff to the plan. How will you all get to use the program? Huge perk. The list goes on and on and on, but there you go join.joedanielfootball.com.

[00:42:46] Joe Daniel: And if this is your first time listening to The Football Coaching Podcast, make sure you subscribe to you don’t miss any future episodes. We have, downloads are available for free at Stitcher or SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and on the website at JoeDanielFootball.com And if you’ve been listening for a while, please go and leave a review, greatly helps out to get the word out. And we’ve been seeing some significant increases in downloads here in the last month or two, so it’s great. Obviously, Daniel, you’re having a hand in that kind of getting us out of a 10-year long rut of me just talking about stuff so appreciate it.

[00:43:25] Daniel Chamberlain: People feel welcome to converse with us. As my wife says, she says now it’s just because people feel like they’re part of a conversation.

[00:43:30] Joe Daniel: So yes, yes, you can join the and you can join our conversation on Twitter.

[00:43:35] Daniel Chamberlain: Ah you can. I am coach Chamberlain and I’m @CoachChamboOK.

[00:43:38] Joe Daniel: OK, I am Joe Daniel @footballinfo. I’ve had it since 2009. I don’t know.

[00:43:46] Daniel Chamberlain: I’m glad you took like all of Twitter. You’re like, I am the place for football information.

[00:43:52] Joe Daniel: I got that before that was before Joe Daniel Football was a thing. Now that Joe Daniel Football is too long, it’s fine for Instagram, but it’s too long for Twitter. So I got that before and I was like this is like the early days of Twitter, and I was like, this will be a great like branding. I don’t know.

[00:44:09] Daniel Chamberlain: It still makes sense. And then, of course, the podcast now has its own Twitter page. We are @theFBCP, that’s football coaching podcast. That’s @theFBCP. Follow. Give us a follow on there. We are posting episodes. Joe’s been posting from the past. I’m making short clips of these that we’re doing now and get them posted on there, so you get plenty of current and past topics to listen to.

[00:44:33] Joe Daniel: Yeah. And I think as we come to a close of season 10, if you have suggestions for episodes for next season or coaches that you’d like to hear, we’re always looking for coaches that you might want to hear on The Football Coaching Podcast. They need to be intelligent and they need to be entertaining, and they need to be, you know, relatively good looking because we do have to look at them during the Zoom calls. And this is why Ron Mckie hasn’t been back on the show in a while. And yeah, I hope he is listening. Yeah, no, I should throw it out there. But and then but you know, they need to have some something to share. And as long as they have that, they’ll help football coaches than we’d like to get them on. So throw your suggestions out there. That’s it for this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast. Remember Coach Simple, Play Fast, Win.

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