Loaded Presentations: How to Manipulate the 4-Man Slide

By Mike Kuchar
Co-Founder/Senior Researcher
X&O Labs
@MikeKKuchar

“Who knew that by keeping our base pressures and moving one defender over six feet would have such a significant impact on our hurry and sack ratio?”
- anonymous FBS Defensive Coordinator

If you can’t dictate the protection, then you’re not going to beat it. And if you can’t dictate the protection, then why do it? That was the attitude of the many coaches I’ve worked with in this loaded presentation study. The entire premise of using these loaded (three-to-a-side) fronts is to declare the protection and beat it. How you beat it is the beauty of these loaded presentation tools.

For clarification purposes a presentation is a pre-snap picture, not a post-snap movement — built to force the offense to declare and slide its protection so the defense can attack the isolated (man) side away from it. “There are only so many ways you are going to protect it,” said one of my sources. He’s right…and these are the only ways:

1. Four-man slide
2. 5-0 it on the most dangerous rusher with the back scanning the other LB or the boundary blitzer.
3. Full side it one way or the other and put the back on the end and plan that you will drop the end.

I will tell you though that after studying over 300 clips of loaded front presentations from this season, the most common way offenses are protected is by forcing the offense to generate a four-man slide and then exploit it using a four-man rush.

Why The 4-Man Pass Off?

You want to generate a four-man pass off to the slide side of protection. Most of the time, the offense is forced into tying the open side Guard into the slide side of protection, generating a four-man slide and leaving the backside Tackle on an island by himself (we’ll get to that later).

That being said, it's the job of the defensive coordinator to study how that protection works against the front and more importantly, where the weak link is in the protection and how you can affect him. One of the more insightful tidbits that were revealed during my research were these “essential questions” that every DC should ask before implementing these loaded presentations (hint…these same questions we will have answered by the time you’re done reading the report):

Loaded Presentation Essential Questions:

1. Do we want to attack the personnel or the protection?
2. Do we want to attack the protection without pressure?
3. Do we want to line up in these fronts and bring a field or boundary pressure because an offense struggles in space even though they can protect it?
4. Do we know how the QB will move with pressure in his face? In which direction will he escape? How accurate is he when he doesn’t set his feet?

I’ve found that those are the cornerstones of how to build out these loaded front presentations. In this report, I’m going to take you through how some of the sources I spoke with worked through each of these scenarios on their way to exploiting these four-man pass offs.

And when it’s all said and done, you’ll be able to track the efficiency of these loaded front presentations by using the guidelines below:

Efficiency Definitions:

You’re going to need to measure your efficiency using these loaded presentations. And here are the top questions our sources answered when breaking down the efficacy of these loads:

1. How many times did he get hit?
2. How many times did he get picked up off the ground?
3. How many times did he change his launch point?

Ok. I’m ready to dig right into my findings. But, first, a very important note:

A Very Important Note: This study is built around three-to-a-side (or tilt) fronts. That does not include any away-side mug looks that some coaches still refer to as “loaded presentations.”

Those presentations will be the focus of another install and almost always ensure a 5-0 protection scheme. Therefore, they need to be treated differently.

Introducing…X&O Labs Install Anthologies: Loaded Front Presentations

These Loaded Front presentations - including the complementary pressures that are built off them- are included in our Installation series. It’s a new series designed to prepare you with everything you need to know installing and utilizing these loaded presentations heading into this season and its exclusive to our X&O Labs members.

Here’s what you find in the full report (login below):

• Declare and dictate the offense's protection before the ball is snapped — forcing the center to slide 93% of the time — so you pick the side you attack instead of guessing.
• Beat six-man protection with a four-man rush and still get home, using the simulated-pressure library that made up 64% of our entire study.
• Isolate your best rusher on the offense's weakest protector — an edge on a struggling Tackle, or your top blitzer matched up on the back.
• Install the two build-ins that manufacture the four-man pass off: pressure to the load and pressure away from the load.
• Add the man-side and zone-side twist games — up-and-under, pick, and loop rushes — that turn the Tackle and attack the interior gaps, where pressure gets home two-tenths of a second faster.
• Turn this into your third-down "get-off-the-field" call and measure its efficiency with the exact benchmarks our sources used.
• Layer the concept four ways — to the boundary, to the field, to the back ("Buick"), and away from it ("Audi") — so it keeps working when offenses adjust.