Switching Pressure Paths & Coverages

Often on the Board Drill we talk about ROI (return on investment) when it comes to installing more plays for your players at the high school level. We mean that we must find ways to  invest less time and gain a higher return on that investment of time. One way we can accomplish this is through swapping defensive players' paths on pressures and coverages. By changing a few players’ responsibilities, we can create a completely different look for the offense with a lower investment. Let’s get into it!

Switching Pressure Paths

Many defenses, especially in year 1, only have a handful of pressure paths. This means that it doesn’t take long for an opposing offense to get a good feel for what you do defensively when you want to heat it up. So, the opposing offense will take time to get reps against these particular paths all week to be ready for everything you’ll throw at them. How do we combat this? Switching paths with a simple tag.  

Cobra

Cobra became a staple for our defense. I’ve even joked on the Board Drill podcast that we install this Day 1 of camp. (It’s not a joke.) We love this pressure and it’s a very effective path to create tackles for loss (TFLs) and sacks at the high school level. Yet, by game 4 or 5, offenses are more aware of how much we love this path and tend to do a better job kicking the offensive tackle out for the corner. So,we just tag the pressure with the word “switch.” In the example below we’d call it “Over Cobra Switch.” 

This changed two player’s responsibilities, and honestly, only one since we make the corner give the call to the defensive end, keeping him in the C gap. Now we’ve created a brand new path for the offense to grasp and put a very good athlete on an offensive guard. We like our chances with that match up. It took about 3 minutes for our kids to understand and effectively run this install. 

Here’s another version. All we’ve done is added a defensive line stunt along with a pressure. Yet, we’ve created a very different look for the offense. If they choose to slide to the pressure, we’ve now created a 1-on-1 with an athletic defensive end and their center. Again, I like that matchup considering a lot of high school offenses hide their worst linemen at center. If they choose to slide away, they're dead in the water, and we have a free hitter. 

Fox

In our next example, we use the safety in the exact same progression. We don't change anything for the 9 other players on defense: small investment, bigger return. 

In reality, we are running two different pressures, but we've created six different paths for the offense to track. And later, we’ll talk about how to change up the coverage behind it to confuse the offense even more.

Wolf

Wolf is another weak-side pressure for us in our 4-down nickel package. In our normal “Over Wolf,” the interior backer set weak will blitz the B gap. 

Simple enough concept. But, like our other pressures, we can add tags to change the path. Below we set an under front, stunt the defensive line, and wrap the weak interior backer. This call is slightly more wordy, but when we break it down it’s very simple for our players. “Under and Pirate” is the front and stunt, “Wolf” is the pressure, and “Switch” tells the backer the path is now switched with the defensive line. Again, this is a small investment because  our defensive line already knows what a “Pirate” stunt is, so the only player that has to think here is the backer, but the ”switch” tag should simplify it for him.

Switching 6-Man Pressures

San Diego

Switching isn’t limited to 4- or 5-man pressures. We also do this with our 6-man pressures. Our “switch” tag applies to both sides of the call. Below you’ll see our double edge 6-man pressure called San Diego.

Again, the blitzer will give a call to the defensive linemen, so we’ve cut the thinking down to two players. Both interior backers must be aware of the tag and make the corresponding call to the defensive lineman. Is this more complex? Yes, but we’ve still kept it relatively simple for high school aged players. 

Maine

San Diego is a double edge pressure, and Maine is double A gap pressure. We are going to apply the same rules here. On switch, instead of  blitzing the A gaps, the backers will  wrap to the B gaps and let the defensive tackles crash those A gaps. 

Switching the Coverages 

This is almost self-explanatory, but you can easily switch the coverages behind pressures week-to-week, or if you’ve mastered it, call-to-call. Below are three examples of the “Cobra” path with different coverages behind it. In theory, you could run any or all of these with this path. 

Above is our base version of “Cobra.” We run this path with our split-zone coverage (Cover 7). Within cover 7, we make a normal front side call that varies based on number of receivers, their personnel, our personnel, etc. For example, we could also call Stubbie coverage front side here. Then on the backside, we’d always make a “lock” call meaning we go man-to-man. 

Does the offense have a beat on split-zone coverage? In that case, we can run the same pressure as a 3 deep, 3 under fire zone. All of our players know how to play this coverage, so why not build it into the pressure path? 

Looking for something more exotic? We can bring the same 5-man pressure and run Trap-2 behind it. This has become the trendy pressure as of late with the Harbaugh tree. 

There are several possibilities for coverages when you bring 4, 5, or 6. Try experimenting with running different coverages with certain pressures you haven’t before. Hell, that's what these awful 7v7 tournaments are for – experimenting. Try new things instead of 2-man under for the hundredth rep. Much like switching the path, switching coverages allows you to bring pressure paths that your players already know and pair it with a new coverage that just might confuse the offense at the right time.

Conclusion

We all pride ourselves on watching game film, but don’t be foolish enough to not realize the opposing offense does this too. They chart your pressures and work on your pressure paths all week long in practice periods. Even if you don’t carry a bunch of paths, you can toss in wrinkles to throw curveballs at the offense. If a simple tag can create an unforced error, it’s probably worth a try! 

If you have any questions about this article or any other football questions, please reach out to us at TheBoardDrillPodcast@gmail.com or DM us on X (formerly known as Twitter) @BoardDrillPod.