Bateman:
https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/11/14/defensive-schemes-rpos-mike-pettine-packers-naia-grand-view
Jay Bateman stunned the college football world in September when his game plan helped
Army take then No. 5 Oklahoma to overtime, despite an overwhelming disadvantage in personnel. But to those in the know, Bateman’s prowess as a defensive coordinator was old news. Last offseason a parade of coaches traveled up the Hudson River to study the Black Knights’ tactics.
Even with an overtime session, Bateman's Black Knights defense held Oklahoma to fewer points (28) and yards (355) than any team since Lincoln Riley took charge of the Sooners.
JAMIE SCHWABEROW/GETTY IMAGES
Bateman’s philosophy, like Johansen’s at Grand View, requires the mastery of only a few simple concepts. Those are then folded into the weekly game plan and adjusted after input from players. Film cut-ups are texted to each cadet’s phone on Monday, with the requirement that he reply to Bateman with two unique observations.
The one constant week-to-week: “Everyone is a blitzer,” says Bateman. “A kid is a defensive end—well, now he’s a linebacker, or a strong safety. How does a quarterback declare him? [Their offense will] start blocking guys that aren’t even rushing, and
not block guys who
are.” From this, Army employs six different blitzes, but Bateman runs them out of dozens of personnel packages, which he says forces offensive coordinators to spend twice the normal time in preparation.
Bateman says the biggest concern he’s heard from visiting NFL coaches about this kind of multiplicity is that it requires immense brain power from the safeties in charge of lining everyone up and from the corners memorizing the coverages. Bateman’s solution is to have his defense operate as a collection of grouped special forces. They use one-word calls, the first letter of which pertains to a specific position group, alerting players as to who is blitzing. Linebackers, for example, might be assigned an S-word—so if the call is “spider,” linebackers are going after the QB. The other groups know what coverage or technique to play when the linebackers blitz.
Players then have all week in practice to work on just a few moves, or techniques relevant to the upcoming game plan. The nosetackle, for example, might be told: Center kill, gap control, cross left and cross right; and he’ll have all week to focus on those instructions. The result? An amorphous defense with the most realistic chance to match the targeted explosiveness of modern offenses. Defensive backs with their hands in the dirt. Linemen floating in coverage, scattering the quarterback’s progression.
“The days of a defensive player dropping back into a spot, the quarterback throwing it and [the defender] breaking on the ball are over,” says Bateman. “If one of my guys draws up something like that, I tell him,
We ain’t doing that.”
