Building a championship football team

by Paul W. Bryant

Best Defensive Player—The next step in setting up our Victory Defense is to station our very best defensive football player 10 yards behind the middle safety man. His sole responsibility is to keep the offensive team from scoring. He must always stay between the ball and the goal line. We do not want him to come forward and break up a pass. Nor do we want him coming up to make the tackle. We want him to fight off blockers and make certain the ball carrier does not score should our defense break down and the opposition move downfield toward the goal line with a long run or a completed pass. When the ball is thrown, we want every man on the team to go for the ball except our deepest man, our best defensive football player. He remains 10 yards behind the ball at all times in case there is a tip and the opponent might catch it and score. His sole responsibility is to keep the opposition from scoring when we are using our Victory Defense.

OUR GOAL LINE DEFENSE

Our goal line defense is very simple, and I am certain many other coaches use the same goal line defense, as illustrated in [Figure 25]. Perhaps there are a number of goal line defenses that are better than ours, but we have faith and believe in our goal line defense, and I believe this is 50% of the battle. When we go into our goal line defense, we want our boys to be so sold on what they are doing that they are not going to let the opposition score. Each man is going to take it upon himself to see that they do not score over his particular defensive area. Playing goal line defense is a terrific challenge. There is not much territory remaining, and the big questions are, “Who is going to come out on top?” and “Who will end up with the ball when the dust settles?” If we give our team a sound plan and teach it to them well, and they believe in it and in us, we will do all right.

Figure 25

[Figure 25] illustrates our goal line defense, and the individual and team duties and responsibilities are as follows:

Ends—The defensive ends line up in a four-point stance as close to the line of scrimmage as they can get, just shading the outside eye of the offensive ends. On the snap of the ball the defensive ends will charge low and hard through the tail of their offensive ends, trying to get approximately one yard deep into the offensive backfield. If the flow comes toward his side and the quarterback has the football, the defensive end tries to force the quarterback to pitch back to the off-halfback.

Tackles—The defensive tackles line up on the outside eye of the offensive tackles, and they aim for a spot one yard deep in the offensive backfield behind the inside foot of the offensive tackles. Each tackle is responsible for the hand-off play to his side, making the tackle or forcing the dive play to the inside so our middle linebacker can make the tackle.

Guards—The defensive guards get their spacing by lining up on each other, but theoretically they will line up on the inside eye of the offensive guards. They are responsible for sealing-off the middle of the line, and for keeping the offensive center from blocking the middle linebacker. They aim for a spot about one yard behind the offensive center’s position. They must get to this spot using a low, hard submarine charge.