Overload to Reduce of Punt Pressure / Returns

By Tommy Acklin

Defensive Coordinator

Frankfort HS (KY)

As a Defensive Coordinator, I spend a great deal of time with my defensive unit with adjusting to motions and shifts.  We define motion as one offensive player moving to change the demographic of the offensive set, and a shift is when two or more move from one side of the formation and reset on the other.  Motions and shifts attack the Integrity of defensive structure.  This is done by moving the strength of the formation, to deceptively camouflage attacks to and away.  I’ve applied this same concept with our Punt Protection unit. 

Our base formation is Quads, in which we have the ability to align right or left.  Quads itself places a great amount of stress on a defense; however, the potency intensifies when nine players with eligible numbers are constructed into the formation (Diagram 1).

Complementary Formations

There are a variety of ways we can change up this formation using Quads as our base.  These have developed over time as we have added new wrinkles to confuse defenses.  The most basic of these complimentary formations are Load and Heavy.  In Load, we would place the Quads (4, 5, 7,20) to our right.  In Heavy, we will bring #44 and the Quads over to our right, and declares our snapper eligible (Diagrams 2 and 3). 

We also have a few lesser used calls that we can tag on to the formations above to create additional looks.  Those tags are as follows (use the diagrams / number above for reference on the alignments of the tags below):