S06E07: In-Season Q&A - Defending Power/Counter, Power Read, Pin-Pull, Dart, Bear Stunts, Sprintout, Running QBs, & Tackling Drills w/ Mason Hughes (College of the Sequoias, CA)

[MUSIC] >> Hey now, welcome to another episode of Make Defense Great. Again, my name is Chris Vassar, aka Coach Vass. Thank you so much for joining me. We're back for Q&A in season episodes. Today I'm joined by Mason Hughes, Safety's Coach, and Special Teams Coordinator at the College of Sequoias, and Visalia, California. We're going to talk about how to defend gap scheme, including power read, pin pull, dart, some bare twists, defending spread out, containing running quarterbacks, and we even talk about tackling drills, which does not happen very often on the show, but it's early in the season. So we're going to get into some of our favorite drills. Mason's an excellent guest as a fantastic job. Top notches always. For those of you new to the show, we switch from our normal long form topical episodes, where we kind of dive deep into one concept, and we switch to Q&A sessions where coaches like yourself submit questions for next week's opponent, and then we go over it. So usually what happens is I record with a guest on Thursday night, they get released Saturday or Sunday morning. So this week, if you have a question about a team that you're going to play the following week, I'll solicit questions on Twitter. You can go to my link tree link tree.com/coachfasts or you can just go to my Twitter account and the link trees there and scroll down. There's a form where you could submit a question about a future opponent, and we promise to answer the question so we can help you gain plan. So midway through next week, start thinking about the team you're playing after. And I know it's a little tricky at the beginning of the year because you don't really have a ton of film on the teams that you're going to play with it being so early. Maybe you haven't exchanged with them yet or they haven't played any common opponents, especially early on when you're playing. I don't know how it is around the entire country, but most of the time you're playing out of league opponents, maybe a team you've never played before. But if you have any questions or maybe some, it doesn't have to be the next week. It could be an opponent down a line that you play after a by week and you want to work on some concepts during that by week. Or it's a rival and they've done something that you just can't figure out or you need a different approach. Throw it in the questions there and we will get to it, I promise. Before we get started, I want to mention one of the thing. I run a Patreon site. If you're not familiar, Patreon is a platform for creators to put content out in tiers. The core of the products that I offer is a silver tier, which is for coaches that want information. They have access to webinars. We do a weekly game planning webinar very much like the podcast, except it's just me, but we have visuals. 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In fact, today's guest, he'll talk about it throughout the podcast of some of these things have helped him become a better coach. So I encourage you just to take a look if nothing else. You have any questions? Reach out to me on Twitter. And if you can't DM me, just tweet me, @me, and I will respond. All right, guys, let's get to the show. Let's get into it, man. My guest today is Mason Hughes, Safety's Coach and Special Teams Coordinator at College of Sequoias and Visalia, California. Mason, welcome back. Hey, Chris, thanks for having me. So you have traded in the high school. Well, not really, because you're still the principal at the high school where you're a coach at. But you've traded in your high school coaching, and you've gone on, be position coach at the junior college level. How's that transition been for you? It's been great. It's obviously really different. But it's been a welcome change. I've been coaching high school for 25 years. And so I have no-- did not play college football. I played high school football. And started coaching immediately out of high school. And I think I always wanted to be a college coach, but just that wasn't the route that God had for me. So my son graduated high school last year. He's playing college football at Dort University in Iowa. And so I thought, man, family life is changing. And my daughters and my wife were on board with me trying this thing. And it's literally five minutes down the street from where I work at during my day job. And so it's been great. It's been refreshing and fun and challenging. And yeah, I'm excited to kind of kick our season off. Been practicing a long time getting ready for this. That's awesome. And you guys started two weeks, right? Two weeks, yep, September 7, 11 a.m. 11 a.m. Oh, yeah, it's so hot here. I was just about to ask, because the heat thing-- Yeah, yeah, 11 a.m. and it can be great. I grew up in Orlando, Florida, which is very hot, very humid, yeah, lived in Miami for three years. But the hottest I've ever been in my life was when I was in Clovis. And I know Clovis is a couple hours south of you, right? No, Clovis is-- No, 45 minutes north. OK, yeah, I'm thinking of Bakersfield. Yeah, yeah. The hottest I've ever been in my life, I made the mistake. A couple of things, one that I'm so happy didn't happen. I used to leave-- because you'd stink like crap after a football practice. I'd keep axed body spray in my car when that was still acceptable. And how one of those didn't explode, I don't know. But one thing that did explode one time is I left a can of Coke in there. Oh, man. And it exploded, and it ripped the entire cap off. It looked like someone had taken a samurai sword and went through the top of it clean, except for a little bit was still hanging on. We would get off the field. We had morning per summer practices. We'd get off the field at 9.15 in the morning, 9.30 in the morning. And it was already almost 100. It's just terrible. Oh, yeah. And it's so hot at night. But yeah, it was just crazy right now. Last night, it was like 70 degrees at kickoff for some of these high school games around here, man. It's like totally random. And next week, it's going to be like 110. God. Well, speaking of kickoff, like that segue, we have a lot of questions today. We got coaches kicking off this weekend. I probably should have just started the podcast back last weekend, but I'll ask. I did not. And so we are going to answer some questions now. Usually it's pretty straightforward. Coaches will send a question, and I'll read off their Twitter account. And we'll have the question from them. But we had some coaches that submitted multiple questions. And some of them overlap. And so it's going to be kind of more of a traditional kind of flowing conversation. So I just want to give a shout out to those that asked the questions. So quick shout out to Coach Shuck, Coach Dibo. I cannot pronounce your last name. You know who you are. Sean Weaver, Seth Steer, and a couple other guys that submitted questions. Patreon, guys. I'm going to answer those tomorrow during our live webinar. By the way, I'm going to throw a commercial in here before we get started. If you want help, game planning every week, patreon.com/coachvast. I actually don't do commercials this early like this. Actually, I do. I hate to start with a commercial, but if you're on a small staff, you're looking for ideas. You don't have a lot of help. And you want to bounce some ideas off of me and community of other coaches. Check that out, silver or gold tier and higher. We do Sunday game planning webinars, Sunday eight to 10 p.m. Eastern time. They're also available on demand. So if you submit a question, I will answer it and then you'll have it whenever you can watch it. But we do this kind of thing. I just think that in early months and got to get it, got to let the people know. So these questions are all mixed up. We're going to kind of just flow through it as we go. The first one we're going to start with is our favorite way to shut down gap schemes. I can take this one first Mason, so shutting down gap schemes in general. This is generally speaking. I don't know your defensive system. I don't know exactly the coverage is, you know, spilling kickouts is number one. If you're talking about stopper plays, stopper calls where you're having trouble with gap schemes, I am of a different school of thought. A lot of people like to bring pressure into gap schemes and slant away. I do not like to slant with the gap scheme and bring pressure behind it, so the ball has to cut back. You always want to think, what is a team want to do? What is an offense want to do if they're running gap schemes, they're trying to down block, kick out and lead through. So the idea of slanting and letting them wash you down or not even wash you down, but letting them block you down when they're trying to block you down, never made as much sense to me. And this is especially great. If you are spilling, if you're playing like in a, I don't know what the formation is, but if you're just talking about gap schemes, and there's a tight end and you're spilling, like if it's a two back playing and playing like an under front or a nine technique that's spilling or anything else, they're trying to bear down and kick you out, kick you out, kick you out and then all of a sudden everything slants outside. And you have a three technique crossing the face of a tackle blocking down or a doose block. And you have the fullback who's normally kicking out an outside back or a nickel or a defensive end, all of a sudden having to kick out of moving three technique. So you pair those calls together. That's always been my favorite with stopping gap schemes. As an even front guy, you wouldn't try to get the three technique to where the ball is going to be. And so that's basically trying to figure out by formation where it's going. And then if you want to bring pressure, bring pressure away, there is some merit to bring pressure into it. I know a lot of great Nick Saban loved blitzing in the gap scheme. So who might have questioned him, but you can see if you draw it up where there may be an issue. Mason, where are your thoughts here? Well, the first thing I think about is for me is, is this a gap scheme where, you know, they're going to be, you know, the traditional shotgun stuff now, where you're getting the y-off. And that's part of the puller, is this, you know, is this a counter? Is this a, do they run power to the y-off? I think that's really what we see now. We don't see a traditional inline tied in down block fullback kick out. You know, we don't see that very often, but we see a variation of that. And then also for us, a big one is just like, where's the back, you know, is he a pistol back? Because I always felt like pistol was really one of the most difficult things for us to defend when in gap schemes. And so like kind of knowing all that stuff first would really help, but it's kind of like you actually, I do like to stun, well, let me backtrack. I like to key the guy who is going to tell us where to go, you know. And so, typically in these gap schemes, it is the y-off guy. And so, you know, we will kind of get away from even key in the triangle or key in a guard. We'll key those, those, those backs and those sniffers and, you know, play it normal that way, right? We have normal techniques and just have our backers flow based off that guy. But then, but then it's kind of stinking and, and, you know, maybe blitzing gap schemes. I'm kind of like you like, I do, I do like to plug where it's going to go, you know, like to plug where it's going to go. That's something that, yeah, I probably learned from you or from reading the saving thing. But I actually started doing more of what you just described and that is stunting to where, to where I believe, you know, to where we think they're going, right? Obviously, you know, you got to game plan this a little bit to, but, but stunting where we think the play is going and then blitzing the backside. And so, a traditional thing that I do all the time is, you know, I long, I we run a three four. I've always run a three four. I shift into a even front, but I'm a three four in my brain and, and long sticking the backside end. And then, and then wrapping that we got backside backer, you know, into the big ab just a normal blitz that everybody does. And doing that on the backside and trying to do get exactly what you said, because I can get that long stick to either penetrating, I can get that long stick to maybe eat up some of the, the double that's happening with the center in the, in the guard on the play side. And it just causes a mess, I think, for that backside tackle who's trying to stiff block or whatever, you know, whatever scheme they're doing back there, they're trying to keep that backside in it until, and it kills the cutback. So that's something we started doing when we saw more pistol teams because they were able to hit the cutback so well. And it probably was from a podcast that I heard you talk or something like that. And then if we're in, if we're in an even front, you know, I really like getting my, my, my middle backer, whether I'm in a four to five or a four three, it's that backside backer to just scream like crazy once you see the double happen and try to get right underneath the double of, of our three technique between that guard and the tackle, just get right underneath that. And we've had a lot of success with that guy and, and teams against that because we run gap schemes when I was the head coach, that's what we had all the time. And that gave us it. And so I don't know if I described that well, but essentially just, you know, you know, blitz and that's almost like a, like a window blitz, I guess, but it's that backside backer. If you're in, you know, double, double 30s or whatever you want to play in a lot of teams with the plan of three, four, three, it's just that Mike and him just running underneath, you know, between the, the sinners back block and the double by the guard and the tackle, getting right underneath that. And I don't know. It doesn't even seem like that should work. But in high school football, if you have a kid who can play with some speed there, it is a monster. And, you know, even in, even in, that college of school is like, I, I see us doing that at times. And, and so even at that level, you know, that, that backside backer, seeing the sniffer pool and then just getting after it, it's a simple, you know, I guess that's, I don't know what that's called. Is that like a, it's like a, we used to call it backside plug run the crease. So if you saw the, yeah, yeah, yeah, we used to call the, the professional crease runner. There you go. Yeah. But we had some problems, though. So what ended up happening is we just do the same thing. The problem was teams got really good at blocking the backside backer because that doose play. So not to insult anybody. So if you've coached against me and what's, what I'm about to describe is what happened. I apologize in advance, but we used to do that and it worked against the teams that weren't so good. And then we saw teams, you know, that are nationally famous like Dale Sal, right that they practice that do spot, because that's who they're tracking back to. And so what we ended up doing was we ended up trying to get the nose across the, the, the back block. And the problem is, and this is going to go, I don't want to go off on a tangent. But one back, you either have to slow down that guy or the will. So what we would try to do because, you know, especially on my counter, if both those guys pull in the nose and the, the will go front side in the end, you sit the end. It's okay. But if you chase the end, there's nobody for the quarterback. But we were getting picked up. So we tried to really emphasize that nose getting across face and letting that guy run to the ball. Now, if you, if in your situation, it worked. Maybe I was just not as good at teaching it, then keep doing it, right? Like keep doing it, but we ran into that problem. So if you run into that, we would emphasize the nose, we're trying to even front. You get the back block. You get across face like day one. So day one knows is learn doubles and back and pulls. I, I think like we, we witnessed what you saw, right? Like the guard being really good at coming off that double and just whacking that, that, that backer. And I think, I mean, honestly, the answer to this question is, you need to be able to do everything we said. You know, you got, you have to, you have to have all these answers, I think. And, and it's not so much that you're going to find the right answer. It's that you're, you're going to do things that are sound that never, that keep them on their toes. Like the, because, because the answer for the offense to what we just described is that, the guard to come off, well, we're moving that front, you know, we're getting a lot of movement into the tackle who, you know what I mean? Like if we're, if we're moving that three technique towards the tackle and then we're blitzing the backside or we're, you know, if we're doing all these different things, it just makes it really difficult to, for that offensive line coach to say, like, hey, you know, be ready. You're going to come off that double when, like, all of a sudden everybody's moving and doing something different. So, I mean, I think for this question is, you know, being able to do every single thing that we just described, you know, like stunting towards it, stunting away and blitz and plugging it, you know, running the, running the track. Like you said, our decrease, you know, and finding different ways to, you know, I always, I always go with, I'm going to move that front first, whether that's post or, or pre snap, and then I'm going to work to blitzing and, and go from there and find as many different ways to cause conflict and hit creases as I can. One thing I'll say is not to, and I've, I've talked about this on the podcast before, and this is more for the inline tight end stuff. But one of the things that, you know, I'd seen, and we had done it, mills apps, you know, coming from the Gary Patterson School of Defense, again, was slanting to the play and they had a stunt called tank where the front, the front three guys, not the front three, but the three guys to the call out of an even front would go towards the ball. And I was always afraid to run that because I was like, why would I take a six technique and loop him outside of a tight end to get kicked out. I don't understand like, why would I do that? Why are they doing this? And I, I, I shied away from it. And so when we would slant the inside guys, we would anchor the end in the C gap. And so if the three technique was getting a double, and he was basically slanting into a four I, he would get into the tackle, the offensive tackle, and just anchor that, that be gap. And I went and visited Dick Bumpus and he's like, you're not, you're not saying it. You're focused on the six technique and you're not seeing the three technique. And I said, I was like, what do you mean by like, I don't know, you know, what does, what does that mean, sensei? And he said, you're so focused on the kick out block that when you're watching the whole line slant, the difference between just slanting the inside two is when you slant on three, you let the tackle cross the face, the defensive tackle and three technique cross the face of the back block, or I'm sorry, the down block from the tackle and the doose block and he ends up in the C gap. So your full back has to kick that guy out. And they're so used to blocking this target that what's going to end up happening is you're going to make the ball cut back. They're trying to pry a hole open and you're moving a guy they're not expecting into that gap. I went, oh my God, you're right. Of course he was, but it was just to have him tell me that. And this is why if you're ever watching somebody who's really smart, just do what they do. You don't have to always know the answers. I mean, I know it's kind of counterintuitive to what we talk about in this podcast usually, but like, if you're watching a Nick Saban, see, I'm referring to him in the present tense still. I got to get over this. It might take me a year to get my arms around that, but that's why you just kind of do. We used to joke about we'd have wristbands that would say, you know, what WWGPD, what would Gary Patterson do? Because he was doing it. They were doing it. They were a lot smaller than me. So, but yeah, no, totally get across that stuff. Now we had another question, well, from the same coach, and we're going to start going in specific plays now. There were basically, there was a question about gap schemes in general, and then we were asked about power read, dart and pin pull. So we're just kind of roll through that. I'm going to take the easiest one first, which is dart. Okay. The question was, do you change your linebacker reads? The answer's no. I don't see the, I don't see the reason to do that. Now, you know, some people only call dart with the tackle pulling. Some people classify it as a tackle or guard pull, because I know there's some coaches that they'll pull based who's the uncovered guy. And then some people will say, no, that's not dart. And coach Debo, or Debo, I'm sorry, without you being here and being able to ask you these clarifying questions, I don't really think that there is a real, you know, difference there in how that works now. You can cheat if the team is only pulling the tackle, which again, most people only call dart the tackle pull, but I know some people that classify as both. So I want to make sure that I at least include that in there. If that's the only play they're doing where they're pulling just the tackle. Now we did this for tackled trap, but you could make something, for example, like a T call. So if your backers, you'll pull pull pull, you yell TTT and what that could tell the backer is to go fill the gap right now if they're trying to find the open bubble. Instead of scraping like you would on Santa Polcar, we expect in the ball to spill outside. Do something like that to maybe trigger, but I wouldn't really change how they read. Because even if you're in a 10 technique, let's say it's an even front and you're in a 10 technique, you're going to see the tackle flash across your face and you're going to know it's not the guard, but I don't really see a real difference there, Mason. I don't know. Am I am I missing something here? No, I mean, I'm the same as you. I don't play this any different. I think one thing, you know, actually even going back to the gapskin pushing because you said something that I think you said that pumpkin told you like the, you know, I know you played a lot of wing T teams and maybe double wing and I and when I defended that a lot early. And one thing that I kind of learned was and I again, those are to me a just gap scheme teams, right? Like they do some different things, but it's just about of the same crap is, you know, they all have a area that they want to get to and they have a they have a pack that they expect to block. You can then to that, you know, if you can, if you can, you know, we always used to say don't let, don't let a double, double wing team have a rounded edge, you know, don't let them have that rounded edge and that's the gap. And so we wanted to make them have a squared edge, right? And so we would do everything we could and we did to make it have a squared edge to really just kind of bounce that thing out more or make it cut back and, and, you know, and you said that and that's a, that's a huge thing on all these gaps schemes. I don't think darts any different. I mean, it's the same same stuff, so we don't really treat it any different. The only thing for me is that we, what we, what we see a lot of and correct me if I'm maybe I'm wrong, I'm, I'm seeing categorizing this as dark, but, you know, we see this, this jet sweet action. And then GT pull away from it quarterback run and quarterback read that's, that's kind of what we always call dark, but I don't know if, no, that's a lot of people call that bash. Yeah, yeah, that's right, bash, bash, bash, so then the, the other thing that when I see Dart is, is a, is it like what you described a tackle, like a tackle wrap. And so, you know, we're not going to treat it any different, you know, both of those, actually, we wouldn't treat them much different. We're going to, we're going to, you know, base play, we're going to squeeze things that go down, we might spill them, we might box them, we might splatter them. And we're going to, we're going to blitz when we think it's going to go and we're going to blitz and we're going to start to where we think it's going to go and blitz away from where it's going to go, just like we just talked about in the gap stuff. And if there is any sort of option involved in it as far as one guy could get the ball or another guy could get the ball, then we're going to have our option rules, which I think we'll probably talk about another question, but so I don't really, I don't do anything different to either of those plays bash or Dart, the single puller. So I wouldn't change anything of what he does against power. I would, I would do the same, same things that he does against our tackle trap for whatever the front, the front, the five o'clock lineman look like, regardless of what's going in the backfield. Yeah, so I got screwed up with Dart because when I learned it was like 2006 or seven and I think I learned the Dave Christiansen rules or a bastardized version of it where teams are running it where they pulled the tackle, but it would depend which side they were pulling to. They were looking for the open B gap. So for example, if you were playing an even team, we're playing an odd team, both sides of the big gap, but if you're playing an even team, if the three technique was to the back, now this is going to take some picturing here guys, if the three technique was to the back and the G was away, the tackle would pull and the back would kind of follow behind him, and it would just play like an ISO, which they both, they all play like ISOs. They should. Yes. How it works, but, but if the three technique was away from the back, okay. What would happen is the tackle, so you're imagining the open B gap is to the back, the tackle would come away from the back and the back would kind of take counter footwork and then follow behind him. And then I learned it from a certain set of guys who I can't remember who it was, but it was they would call Dart and they would pull depending on where the open gap was, they would pull either the guard or the tackle, which I don't think people run it like that anymore, and either of those situations, but I always get screwed up on that because when I think of the play, that's how I think of it being originally taught to me. So I apologize if you're sitting there listening, listening to me and going, what the hell are you talking about, a guard's pulling or it depends where the open gap is, I mean, it just may be different now. I remember there were people that were running it, well, this is more guardfold where it was like, if the open B gap was away from the puller, then they would pull up through I think Hawaii did this when we played them and I was at San Jose State with June Jones and Colt Brennan, but if the three technique was away from the guard, they would just pull and it was like a long trap. But the only other thing I can mention or I could think of is if you're an odd team, obviously they can go either way. You may want to run some plugs, but if you're an even team and they're picking on you, like say you're playing the three technique the back because they're doing a lot of zone read or whatever and they're they're isolating the B gap away from the running back. That's when I think you want to slant your interior guys or stem them or whatever. So they can't just know where the bubble is going to be. All right, speaking of gap scheme, we had a question. What is your favorite stopper blitz versus power read? The formation is three by one and two by two. Yeah, so this is kind of what I was referring to a little bit ago too about just like I look at power read as an option play. I look at as an option play just because the two people would have the ball and we're always going to come up with, okay, who are they reading? Who are they reading, right? With us power read being an odd front, sometimes we would get our end read, sometimes we would get our weak side backer, our weak side backer read if they run it to that. So it wasn't always like an in-man online scrimmage for the teams who ran it against us would read, you know, fours, they would read, they would read threes. So it would become more like almost like a midline and then obviously we would get like our outside guys read sometimes and so and then when we're in even fronts, same thing like threes and threes and flies and get read. Wait, how are they reading a three-technique and power read? Yeah, so I guess it would be more like midline, right? So we were getting, we were getting, they're reading the three and the quarterback was essentially running it right up the A gap. Oh, so it's stretch read. So he would kind of shuffle slide but it was fast and so and again, maybe that's not really power read, but they were they were pulling a guard, right, and the guard, yeah, and the guard was like almost like full blocking, right? So he would pull block and get right inside of that, that threes technique. So it's like an A gap play. So we've had that and the team who used to do that was a shotgun wing tee team and then they would come out in this kind of special package, yeah? So that's probably more a midline to be honest than a power read, but again, it goes back to just like. I mean, it's similar concept, right? You've got a half because the back is running wide, correct? Correct. Yep. So you've got a wide element and the element inside and instead of down there just coming so it's hitting tighter, correct? Yeah, it was rough, especially if the quarterback is the runner, you know, when the quarterback in this group, we used to face this team. It was one particular team that did it really well and their quarterback was the sophomore and was great and was a junior and was a great and was a senior, was a great mate. It was a nightmare to go against, but to answer the question, find out who they're reading. And once we found out who each group was reading and again, the better teams could read multiple players. And so this makes it a little more difficult, but have your base answer to what you're going to do and then have your switch up to the base answer. So if they're running power read and they're reading on the weak side, let's say they're reading our five technique, right? Whatever we're in. One front, we have a five or if we're in an even front and we have a five, the guy outside the tackle, right? The reading him and if we want our base to be, that guy is going to take the quarterback and someone else is going to take the wide play, then we want to have a change up to that. Were those two responsibilities switch, right? And then the third thing we want to have is we want to have a blitz where those responsibilities are switched, right? And so instead of letting the backer maybe play that outside, let's say we want the end to hit the quarterback to play the inside element of the play and we want one of our backers to play the outside element, well then our change it would be to switch those, right? To have the backer play the inside element and the edge player on the D line play the outside element. And then we want to do some sort of pressure, so they're not even reading anything. But we're just changing, you know, we're either it's the change up where the end is playing out and the backers playing in or the base play where the backers playing out in the end is playing in. We want to blitz to that, right? So that the play happens much faster. So it goes back to like that, just that denting of stuff. That's really what we do no matter what and my favorite one is to always play the end has the inside guy and the backer has the outside guy and blitz that, right? That's, you know, either we're going to play it slow and they're going to read it or we're going to blitz it so that the action happens differently. And then we'll do our change up to it where the backer has the inside guy and the outside guy. So I know I said a lot of inside and outside guy, but really I want three ways to do it. I want to play, I want to make sure that that guy is reading something and then what he gets used to is the guy he's reading is supposed to tackle him. And then all of a sudden the guy he's reading doesn't go to tackle him. And then all of a sudden, they're there really fast because we blitzed it. And so I know that probably sounds really simple, but that's essentially what we would do when we would see power read. Makes sense. So to build a stopper blitz for anything, you have to take an account what you're doing as what you need to do be as your curve ball. So your curve ball or your change up is going to depend on what your main pitch is so to speak. I think it also depends on how big is the quarterback and who do you want to keep the ball to or who do you want to keep the ball rather. So if you are playing, when we played this stuff, our base technique was most of the time was something we called high gear with the quarter back, the, I'm sorry, the DN's going to come one, two, three up the field, flying up the field and then fall back in for the quarterback. It's not a read though. It's a timing mechanism. It's almost like a stunt. If you try to read it, you won't, you, you may not play both because you won't get up the field as fast and then you've played nothing. If the quarterback is the guy, then we want that guy to play the quarterback and let him hand the ball off. If the stretch guy is the guy, we want to just, if we can't do the high gear, just get up the field. Our guy is not good enough to get up the field and then fall back underneath. Then we'll figure something out. Now, stop or blitzes, again, who do you want to keep the ball and how big is the quarterback? The best way I think to stop the play is to what we were calling lion concept away from the back. That is to take the end up field and to blitz a safety or DB off the edge inside and underneath. So it forces the quarterback to pull the ball. The guard wraps around. The DB hits the quarterback. If you're playing a guy like DJ Uglala, who's huge, then I would prefer to go back to what I said earlier, which is to slant into the play, high gear the end and then bring a guy off the backside on a spill path because if they're running power read, he can't keep it the opposite way, especially if you shuffle it. So take your three technique away from the back, play a shade nose, a tight five line, and we used to do it. We'd line up our backer on the edge and everything is slanting down the end away from the back. It's going to come flying up field and the guy off the ball or I'm sorry, the backer on the ball to the back is going to run flat down the line of scrimmage and tackle that quarterback. And so the Mike who's the remaining linebacker can play back over the top to the other side to the weak side where the back starts. That would be the way I would look at it. And really that's the best of what or what coach said is slant the line away. This is where I would be cool, blitzing into a play. Take the end, have him go screaming down at the quarterback, make him hand it off in the blitzing safety. The last thing I'll say on this is a lot of teams are afraid to our PO off of power read for a good example or for a good reason rather because you are leaving an end unblocked at the point of attack and if you're a team that mess charges or does anything like that, that is that could be trouble. So you can also screw around a little bit with your RPO defense. I think now there are a lot of teams that do this, but you got to be real brave to leave a guy unblocked at the point of attack going right in the quarterback state. So those would be my answers. Now the next question and the last part of the gap scheme portion of this podcast is playing against pin pull, I'm going to take this one first. The question was specifically pin pull to a nub with a wing. Now I don't know how many backs there are, I don't know if this is a one back situation. So I'm going to say it's one one back tight and wing. The best way to play that in my mind is undercover one. To have a nine technique that has the tight end who's latching on to that, he can get in between the tight end and the wing, have a safety outside the wing when he goes down, come off the edge. And if they try to run any sort of play action, you can have the rat linebacker away can take the crosser or whatever if he gets in some conflict. Now I was actually was funny because I was going to ask you later on about how you like to play this stuff, but forgetting that this is part of the questions. I have been advising some even front teams that are a four down quarters team play with a lot of six technique. I get this question a lot. It's not really as much for the pin and pull as the stretch. One thing I would advise doing is basically getting into the same thing out of an even straight even front. So actually getting into a nine technique, which is not something I would normally advise. You can even slide to odd so you play a four zero four eye nine. You can slide the front all the way over or just move the d into a nine technique to let the tight end go inside and then let that d and go in and wreck shop and try to take out the pours and let your linebackers run over the top. That would be the wave. Those would be the really the two ways that I would do it, but they both involve spilling, in between the tight end and way and spilling, whatever you see. Thoughts? Yeah, I think, yeah, I really like doing what you just described and I think the first two things I look at is, well, are they willing to pull their center, you know, is this, you know, when I, when I first saw this question, I'm, you know, I go back to the old days of seeing Bucksweep out of out of the wing key and then, you know, when they would, when their, their curve ball to Bucksweep where they'd basically just instead of kicking out with the front side guard, they'd, they'd, they'd log them right and it turns into what this is, this is now evolved into a spin pool, but we didn't see a lot of center pulls back in the day. And now with this, these new pin pulls, like I, we see that a lot more and so I do think that changes things, but just as far as do you want to do stuff to that center and how athletic is he and how can he, can he pull, right? And if he can and they're trying to pull them, then let's get them into the situation where they pull them, right? Because the thing about pin and pull is, is the rules are, I think they're just so different for everybody. It's just every team we would face, it's like, well, I, I try to figure out the rules of the pin and pull that they run, but if you can figure those out where you can get the center to pull or, or any alignment to pull, if they don't have a set wave, or it's not just guards, if they're, if they're pulling based off of front, try to get the guys who aren't good at pulling to pull, I know that sounds simple, but that, that has been successful for us is trying to get the guys who aren't very good at what they're trying to make them do. It's almost like, I know you would always say like break the rules, you know, find the rules and then break them. And so, so that's something that we always look at. And then, you know, the second thing is, are they, are they trying to really get outside on this? Are they just looking to put this up into the C and D gap? And so, I think that matters as well. And so, if it's more of an inside play, then we might, we might play like we play some of our power stuff. And I do think like you said, the cover is important. Now, when you say you're, you're going to play cover one, are you, are you thinking, you're going to, you're going to roll down to that, that nubling side, is that, are you rolling away, are you rotating away from that? Are you cover one, are you locking up, you putting that guy on the tight end? Like, how are you playing that cover one? So when we did this, we played, we had a special call. We put both, we were four to five. We put both of our down safeties to the same side, which is usually against the rules. We played flip. Now, I'm just going off of, now, it doesn't matter, I guess, I assumed it was wing twins tied in wing with twins. Yeah, that's what that's what I was thinking. Yeah. So either way, it doesn't matter, we, we just said screw it and we played our strong safety up in a nine technique. He usually knows how to play the stack and press stuff, which is what we call playing on the line of scrimmage, coming down, screaming down the line. And then we bring the safety over and leave our free safety in the middle of field. And normally, we would never do this. So we had a tag to basically break all the roles. But that, that's how would we have done that. So the strong safeties in a nine on the tight end, play a safety about three by three off the wing. And he would, he would have that wing, but the, the beautiful part of it is, you know, you have the, the linebackers, well, because it's a pin pull play, the back is two, he's, he's, I'm sorry, he's away from the tight and wing. So you're not going to get any like bunch passes out of this look where you're going to get the tight and wing and the offset back. So you're not worried about playing through that stuff as much unless they run the, they, they fake the stretch and then run the guy on a wheel or fake the, the pin pull and run the guy on a wheel, which then that's, you know, you got different problems. But you have that additional rad if you're playing cover one to look for any leaks if those guys miss what we didn't do this lot and we didn't really have any problems with it. But yeah, that's how I would, I would look at that. Yeah, so that I really like that, I like bringing that, I like bringing that safety on that, on that tight end, we, we would get to, we would get to that and kind of a little different way, but, you know, get people in the same spot, right, get X on the track board, get people in the same spot, mostly through stenting to that. And again, right, trying to figure out who do they want to pull. And then when they pull, do they, are they willing to do down blocks, right? Are they willing to, you know, is it more like the wing tee, but play or are they really reaching everything and pulling out of that? So I think, I think those are just two, two, they're, like I said, we've seen so many different ways, that pin and pull, curves. I'm not really sure if I'm really even given a good answer, but, that's good answer. Really? Yeah, I just, I think, I think finding who they want to pull and then are getting the guys, getting the guys who are pulling, trying to get the worst, worst pullers to pull. You know, and so if you could figure that out, which a lot of times we could and, um, and then, you know, running all the same type of stunts that we've talked about in the spot so far, right, as far as slanting to it and getting into where essentially you have, you know, every single one of those frontside linemen, including the tight end with the dude in their face. However, you can to get that, whether you line them up like you just described or whether you blitz it or stunt to it. Yeah, well, and I broke my first rule as I, you know, when you solve a problem, don't look at the, I went right for the tight end wing part instead of looking at the whole picture. Yeah. So you're right. The first question is, do they have designated pullers that they base off of the front? If they base off in the front, stand between not and even and then you'll have free runners in the backfield. Yep, yeah, that's why I think the movements key, right, pre and post that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you get those guys, you're setting traps. I actually think pin and pull is one of the, and I know people are probably going to listen to this and laugh, but the buck's sweet version of the play where you're truly down blocking. And you're right. I should have also started with that as well. Good call there. Is are they back blocking and pulling or are they trying to reach? I think the back block, the buck sweep out of the wing tee out of one back. I think it's a pretty easy play of stop in the grand. Let me say this, let me back up. It is easier than the pin and pull reach if the team can do it. That's hard, especially where you're choosing who's pulling much harder to do, which is why most teams don't do it, but that stuff is really hard, going to tell you that. Yes, I totally agree with that, totally agree with what you said there. And if you're getting that version, I don't think you have to do it. I mean, it goes back to like you said, all the other gap scheme stuff we talked about in the hour of power we've had to start this show off, but if they're back blocking and pulling, my answer is also you can slant to it by itself or blitz off the back side. But there's other things you can do that are just path of least resistance. I always try to start there path of least resistance. But if you're talking about the reach version of it, now I really want to blitz off the backside because we got to get we got to get those guys moving. Now the other thing is if you're seeing the stretch version, I would say I may just completely contradict myself, but I talked about not wanting to blitz into gobskins as much as slanting into it, but I have found blitzing into stretch plays to be the most effective way to stop them is don't try to fight the reach because if those guys, most stretch teams I've played that are good. They're better at reaching than we are getting off of reaches because I don't see reach blocks as much. Yeah. So I don't fight it. So we played a team. I've told this story a bunch in this podcast, St. Mary's a Stockton, they beat the ever-living crap out of us the first time we played them, so probably the worst ass kicking I've received at set when I was at Sarah and they absolutely torched us. We were down a bunch of starters. We meant to move people the last minute and that sounds like an excuse off the bat, but it's not because I'm about to tell you I got outcoached every which way, every which way you could ever imagine. I've never been as outcoached as I was in that game. And they could have literally done anything and our only saving grace was a couple times. I just got desperate because I'm like, well, I don't want to slam away from them if they're going to run the stretch and things like that. I don't like you kind of when I said earlier, if they're trying to reach me, why do I want to let them make their job easier? But when I found was actually slamming into and then getting north, I mean, they average probably like 15 yards of carry, but we had like three or four tackles for losses against that play off this one blitz and I will start anything in a minute. If we can't stop them from reaching us and when we're trying not to get reached, why don't we just try to beat them inside and like kind of screw up there because it's the only thing I could think of. And obviously it wasn't enough. I mean, I think they had to replace the turf on the field of the game because they ran for so much. I still have nightmares. They were running back dusty framped and well, it'll be in my nightmares for the rest of time. But yeah, that's another thought if they're doing the reach versions, maybe blitzing into it, slamming away from up it, but the biggest thing is you're going to look at the adjacent guy. So if you're playing with a six technique and the tackle and the tight end or coming to reach you as you get inside the tackle as they come to overtake you and then you get north and then that safety has to fit or whoever that DB is is having to fit right off that that tight end to close that thing. So that's that's I don't I can't believe you know, I've been doing this for so long, Mason. You I totally just skimmed over the possibility. I just thought pin pull box we down block back box. So thank you for bringing that up. Well, it's funny because it goes back to the same stuff that we've talked about like even that that double wing saying of like, you know, make, don't let them have a rounded edge. You know, what you just described is just essentially denting it wider. You know, like it's the same thing like getting getting guys up north so that they can't cut back. You know, and they have to bounce and having guys run run wide or you know, again, just changing the path of what they think. You know, that's I think stopping the run is if you what there's a bazillion ways to try it. And it all depends on, you know, what the other team personnel is and what they're doing and what your personnel is. Like, you know, getting them to get it go get put your body where they don't expect you to be. You know, get a guy where they don't expect them to be and you've got to figure out how to do that. And, you know, and all these ways we're talking about our sound and some of them will work against a certain group, right? And with a certain personnel, but if you can figure out your guys and how to get them into the backfield through penetration or slanting down or slanting to it or blitzing to it, like whatever we've described, getting that offensive coordinator and an online and the running back to all of a sudden say, like, I can't do what I really want to do. I can't go to that spot and make them react. Right. And this goes back to something I've talked about before. I'm going to go on a little bit of a tangent here for a minute. I've been pretty good so far and staying on top of that when I'm really good actually. Yeah. Yeah, I've been behaved. It's been a while since I've done the podcast. I think I'm on my best behavior, plus we had so many tech difficulties at the beginning. I was like, I don't want to waste this guy's time, but I'm working with the team. And we were talking about some ideas. And they're a very much a press cover one, bail cover three team. And they were struggling a little bit with the bail part. And they didn't want to bail too early because they didn't want to give away and let them play the hitch-fade game. And I promise there's a lesson here when I'm about to say, so I'm meeting with this team, and I'm like, do you know how to solve this problem? And they said, what? I said, put in cover two and I'm like, okay, what the hell are you talking about? We're having a press and a bail problem and you're talking to play cover two and it's like, well, if you put in cover two, you can fake your bail and then squat down and pick off a hitch. And doing that, now you can bail out a little earlier. So you've made your bail better, but you haven't lost the effectiveness of them being able just to say, oh, they're in zone, you know, and play a little bit of press three like Ripley's three. So they can't just say, oh, they're bailing at zone. It's press. It's man. And normally you wouldn't think that would be the answer to a question like, how do we make our bail three better is the play cover two. But I kind of go in against my own rule. I've talked about this a lot about the difference between horizontal and vertical thinking and trying to address the problem head on versus looking at other pieces of it. So and I actually went against my own rule. So I took this question and I just assumed it was a certain formation just because I saw a nub with a wing and just started focusing on the wing didn't even taking, taking a count. The coaches also could have been talking about like coach, you said, the whole reach thing. And then I got to thinking, you know, I'm starting to think about how to get, how to dent their pullers and how to, you know, get in that gap and move your end, you know, move your end to a nine all this other crap. Well, if they're pulling different guys based on where you line up, you could stop this play before the balls even snap by just continuing to stem your front pre snap. So they pulled the wrong guys and you got free runners. So to answer your question, which is the most effective way you've found the stop pen and pull to a nub with a wing has nothing to do. If this is the reach version has nothing to do with the front, well, it does have something to do with the front, but it has nothing to do with how you play the wing, how you're playing the force any that it's get them pulling the wrong people. That is easy. Anyone can do that. That is, it's much harder to be the team that runs that play with that concept. Then if you don't have the, the even players by just making them giving yourself TFL's by making them pull the wrong people, that is the best way to stop it. So I booked my kind of my own rule here with like stopping evaluating me stop to evaluate the question and really look at the whole thing holistically rather than just, oh, I'm going to go to the tight and wing. And now I say that to say, let that be a lesson to y'all listening that like when you, when you get a question like this or you're trying to solve a problem, I know it's hard when it's your own problem, but try and zoom out and look at the whole picture. So. All right. Great advice. Great advice. Thanks, man, I wish I would take it, my own advice as evidence to your, all right. So quick question, I'll answer this one and then Mason, you go ahead. So the question was favorite bear twists while it depends on if it's runner pass. And I'm just talking about, you know, T and T look not necessarily a true 46 or a true bearer, just the thought of having a three is zero three. My favorite run twist is to slant the three technique away from the back into the A gap. And then take the nose and have him loop out away from the back. That is because most of the time people play odd fronts, lagged their front or they lagged their nose rather. So they're, you know, if you're playing a team or they're expecting a gun, you know, a gun running back, they're expecting your nose to lag and fall into the gap to the back. And then they'll single the three away and then usually, you know, I said, I don't worry about the other guys, but if you are playing the five three zero three five and the tackle is going to block the, the five technique. So that way you get the single, you puncture the play and you get the nose kind of changing techniques. You want him to stay lagged. So the ball truly gets there until it starts to crush your face and then you can loop and add on. That's my favorite bear twist. If you, if you want to play a game where you take the three technique and do the inverse of that, put that guy to the back and have him fly down. If you think you're going to get zoned and they're going to double the zero and the tackle is going to try to block the three at the back, you could do the same thing to the back. And then in the past game, my favorite, favorite past twist is actually probably what I just said, but in reverse, so the nose is going to go first and then three is going to run around. But my all time favorite is a three man game where you are having one of the three slant inside having the zero slant to the other three techniques side and then bring that three technique around because I have to triple pass that stun off because usually if you're in the bear, you're going to eat man protection. And then if not, the only other way to block the bear is to full slide. I would have some sort of stunt in there where the five technique to the running back gets under. If you get that full slide effect gets under the tackle, makes the back come up to step up to get him, spill it and then have the three technique to the back loop outside for contain. So those are mine. Those are mine right there. Yeah, I like what my favorite past is what you described is. I think I think I got to make sure I trapped you on that, but the one of the ins or what, sorry, one of the three techniques, you know, slanting towards the nose, the nose, the nose slanting in the same direction as that guy and then bringing the other three technique around. That's what you described, right? Yeah, so it's, it's, so let's go left to right. So left five contain left three goes to the A gap, zero goes to the right A gap, right three technique steps and then comes around back to the left side. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's my, that's also my favorite. No, one thing I thought of when, when I read this was, I don't run a lot of bear where we line up and bear, but, but man, I do a lot of stuff that on the snap of the ball were in bear. You know, it's, it's, it's three, there's, there's a player who is going to attack the outside shade of the guard. There's a player who's going to attack a shade of the center and then there's another player who's going to attack the outside shade of the guard, right? Like that, we, we get into that a ton. It just happens to be maybe a nose and two linebackers or, you know, an end. You know what I mean, like, I've all, we always would start our, our, the winter and we would as a staff talk about how we were going to get to bear, like how we're going to run, do we need to run bear this year because, you know, the offensive line guys were always freaking out about bear. There's like a special call just for bear, whether it's pass pro run, and so we were always trying to figure out, we got to get in the bear, you know, and, and we would never really install it because we would figure out it and we did this like, probably fighters are real, we're already getting to bear, like, how about we do it the way we're doing it because then they won't even make a bear call because we're not in bear and then we actually get into bear. And so, um, so the thing that I like to do the most is essentially the exact same path that we just described, but I do with linebackers, you know, so I'm going to take, I'm going to take my nose and I'm going to let's, like, again, we'll do right to left, so I'm going to take my nose and I'm going to, and we're lining up in the normal three, four, we could be in fours, we could be in fives with our ends, um, and we're going to take that nose and we're going to push him into, you know, one of the, one of the agaps are at least at, at a guard. Um, let's say that the nose will move to the left, to our defenses left guard, um, that left agap and then we're going to take a backer on the right side and plug him into the right agap and then we're going to wrap a backer on the left side into the, into the begap on the right side, right? I mean, it's essentially the exact same path we described, um, that is my, that is my favorite now, which to do that looks like a bear and that's, I think it's great against the run. I think it's, I think it's also great against the past, um, but I will say when we do line up and bear, we do run the stunt that, that, that you and I, that you just kind of reiterated to me. So that, that's my, that's my favorite thing to do is to, the line up and bear or get into a bear look, but it's with all these twists going on, you know, so a bear twist, um, so I don't know if that's, I think that's probably been ran since the dawning of time, but, um, yeah, that's my answer to that. Yeah, Dan landing and the Georgia guys called it build a bear where, yeah, you have, uh, turn that door in front and you're taking the nose to the front side A and your blitz and the will back her in the begap, you know, in a lot of times, yeah, exactly. Well, it's the A gap of the begap, but you end up going to blitz the A and the guard blocks down so you end up blitzing off his butt. So, but if he steps out, you, you blitz inside, but it's, you know, six one way half does in the other. And, and to reinforce my answer or to clarify on my answer, I'm thinking X is on a chalkboard. So that bear twist that I mentioned, the three man bear twist, I wouldn't do that out of a bear, like a true TNT, like nose and two tackles on third down. I would be when we did that stuff, it was, we called it five O fronts where it'd be two ends, a nose and then a backer mugged up in the begap and a backer, the other begap mugged up. I mean, it could be, it could be an even front where you move the nose to a zero and your other three techniques, a backer that's walked, you know, I mean, it could be anything. So I wanted to make sure that I, I stress that that it wasn't just, you know, because I, I don't think there's much benefit unless you have some crazy inside rushers. I don't think there's really a benefit to being in a true bear defense on third and long, unless you're like one of those bear till you die guys, Robert Rubel, if you're listening to this, I apologize for saying when I just said it in your big, big, rare guy. Yeah, he's good, he's really good. Yeah, getting to that in an even, even front is, is good stuff too, right? Exactly what you described. Yeah. I love that too. And I mean, you're seeing, so what I just described is being run in the NFL now. So Fangey off about this a bunch, they had to whip fire zone where you're bringing the will in the A gap, you're slanting the nose to the front side and you're dropping the field side end, but they run a five man version of it where they're doing exactly what I just said, but both ends are going and because both ends are going in the three technique away from the blitzer, doesn't have to contain anymore because it's not a sin pressure. They're looping him back behind. So imagine you have an over front with the shade or the G set to the back, the three away, two five techniques and two backers, right? You're bringing the will, face, ass, the guard. So if he blocks down, you're coming off his ass. If he's out for some reason, doubles out to the end, which is not going to happen. You go in the A gap, right? So what ends up happening is the nose works to the front side. The backer goes and then the three technique away from the back. If it's pass, we'll loop back around to where the blitzer came from. So basically just getting what I said, and then furthermore, the other backer has the line, the other linebacker has the running back. And if he adds, you now basically get a cross dog to one side with an engine guy looping around. If it's pass and if it's run, it's just a boring old blitzing in the bear front. Or I know some people saying, well, if he gets front side, it's really not bear because it's C gap, B gap, A gap, you know, and then the will's hitting the A and there's nobody hitting the B and all that, whatever. It ends up very similar. So there's a lot of different ways to do it. And it's a really good idea if you're high school guy and you're low on linebackers, who's actually just talking to somebody about this the other day, you're low on inside backers, your inside backer gets hurt. And you have a bunch of edge guys that you can't get on the field, which I know is kind of a rare problem in high school, but I've seen it. You know, bringing one of those guys, having them play will linebacker, I'm doing air quotes and you can't see me. And then just having him teach him how to do a simple dropper to and then just using him as like a fifth rusher and basically what Mason said, you're creating the bear from off the ball. So those are some ideas. All right. The next question involved spread out. So the question originally was camp rules for spread out and then favorite blitz to spread out. I'll take this one first. So it depends on what your your coverage is. So so for your playing quarters and it was and also is it two by two or three by one spread out. You know, if it's two by two spread out, you're going to play your rules and quarters and then you're going to probably have the front, the middle linebacker pull up the ball. You know, if it's cover one, you know, you're going to play it differently. If it's three by one, you know, are you playing stubby? Are you playing quarters? Are you playing one high? You know, for us, if we were in quarters and we saw a spread out, we're going to try and some people would pull up the mic, but it depends on if that tight ends in the core as he flexed out. I mean, it all depends on the formations and things because sometimes if you're playing quarters and you're slid over into tight ends in the core and he's kind of blocking or he's going out to the flat and our nickel can take it out to the flat and play like flood. You could have the mic pull to change fast and add, but if he's apexed out of the box and it's three by one with three receivers open, you don't really want to have that guy be in that guy because there's a lot of space out there and you don't have great leverage on it. So you might want to bring the backer that has the back that's still in the in the box. So bring the will because you've got four strong ones. If it's three by one open in the backs to the three receiver side and you've got four strong, he's got to be the guy to pull it up. So it all depends on what you're doing, but favorite blitz. So let me say this, spread out and again, what are the routes, you know, if you're just talking about flood, then that's one answer. If you're talking about like a scat or snag or whatever you want to call it with that or a smash play, I mean, those are all different. So because you didn't put any routes, I'm going to take this for three by one flood. Flood is designed to be to every zone coverage. I think quarters does the best job out of any event matching it. The nickel can hold off the out by time for the free safety to get over to the out and then can play the guy in the flat late. But the best way to stop spread out flood is to get an outside leverage man man free. Get your backer. Your two backers on the back, let one pull the chain and go contain the thing right now. You know, obviously, I mean, I guess that answer would still be good if you're getting like smash or China, if it's just two receivers. Now my favorite blitz versus the spring out would be my favorite blitz against the power read. Same thing, except now it's to the back. So why in the end out have him jet up the field and then have your backer for three by one is apex backer and you roll down the safety behind him so you give the illusion or too high. And he's going to fit normally you haven't fit inside the back and let the other backer overlap. But it depends on where the quarterbacks launch point is if he's just trying to get to the edge, then fit outside the back and make him stop and pull up. If he's trying to get to the edge real fast and then set up inside so he gives the appearance that he's getting out there, but he wants to set inside more, then spill him out. So wherever that guy coming outside in fits depends on where he wants to launch the ball from and then just do the opposite or make him do the opposite rather. So that's the best way I would say to do it again coverage man free because you got outside leverage on the routes breaking out to the flat. And then you could use the backside rat so that guy is going to end up eating the back. And then you can have the backside back who's technically supposed to be the rat he can add as well. That would be my favorite blitz now a front that I use I know you asked about a blitz but there's a front that get the same kind of effect and I mentioned it as one of the bear twists is to have the end come inside so we used to get into something even when we were turning even front if we and some teams especially in high school give it away right they only line up in three by one with the back to the three by one especially back for our PO is that was kind of a tell and he's up and he's wide. What we would do is we we would and I got this from Mill SAS we would go Lex and what that meant was we would get from our even front. We move the three back to a four I we leave the five wide. And then we would take the nose to a zero and kind of squeeze that backside a little bit and then we have the five come underneath the back. So he would try to go off the ass of the tackle if it was like hinge if they're all turning back rather versus trying to reach. That kind of changes things too but get inside of that back with that guy and then loop the four eye outside so it's just like you're spilling. You know like a jet sweep you want to make it go real deep it doesn't matter if it gets outside as long as it gets real deep because then it's hard to actually throw the ball. So those are my thoughts on a Sprint out what about you? Yeah I got some maybe some unconventional ways to expert out. It's funny because you remember when I think it was you know it was COVID and we were doing these gosh dang it it was these zooms every night and we were we were just we're playing you know we had an offensive guy at a defensive guy where chalkboard saw and chalkboard yeah. And so I forget I did a couple of those I forget still my favorite one was when you were going to cup against the guy from Oregon. He had he had 10 guys in the field and then I had a bunch of guys who'd never played outside the year was telling me how to defend outside the year like you don't have anybody on the pits and like have you ever played outside we're you don't need like you can have a inside backer plate because you have to hit the pit so I have guys that have never played split back here and I'm usually understanding and stuff but I like snapped I'm like you guys have never seen this play what the hell are you talking about and I started getting like defensive you know what time we're like I think I went like out of like 30 plays I think I won 29 out of the 30 whatever and the one time where they're like no you don't have really the pitch I like lost my mind I just turned into a complete like plus I was just like you guys don't know what you're talking about yeah and then what was I OC and I forget he was going against so it was me and low together right so we were we were we were a staff were you were you go yeah who I forget that it was really funny it was really funny that series was fun it wasn't good we they don't do that no one right they get it's not around anymore I don't know off the ass man I talked to my everyone yeah sorry totally off off the rails but but so the reason I brought that up is there was like a I think it was third down in the chalk wars and there's a front that we've been running I actually stole it from Jason born so many years ago where we just had you know you see a lot of this stuff now it looks like the old radar defense but seven dudes up on the line and everybody playing catchman and and you know I kind of line up in this on the chalk wars and I think it was Sean Liyota what is name Sean Liyota he's he's a yeah is that right is that the right name I know yeah um oh I wanted to say Ray Liyota but that's like a movie star yeah okay it's a you guy and that yeah yeah anyway so he ran sprint out and and for whatever reason I had an epiphany in chalk wars and we we the very next year we started running that same seven dudes up front everybody look seven yards off over a over a receiver plan what looked to be catchman and then just just dropping out of it just you know simmin basically right and and we started running this for sprint out where we would line up every single line minutes covered and then there's two guys coming off the edge um and then we're just going to play cover two behind it or or we could play cover three and we really were just sending the back side of the of the you know if it's three I'm thinking three by one that's what I thought it was just like you did three by one back strong and that back side linebacker just screaming down the line and everybody else dropping into coverage and the simplest thing ever we were causing so much havoc with a four man rush sprint out just dropping into coverage it was the simplest thing ever and I don't even know why it worked to be honest but it still worked it was last year like it still works um and uh so so that's my first answer you know obviously you don't want to run that every play but like when you get in the team in this sprint out situation and they get three by one and the back strong like that's a that's a good that's a good very good alignment um and you can get into cover two or cover three and you don't have to really worry too much about the back side because they're sprinting out anyway and so um that's my first answer line up and seven dudes across make it look like uh your four DB's are playing catch man over the three receivers and drop them into country cover two and just in the backside guy and dump them the three three other guys and drop everybody else into coverage I I know that sounds silly but that works um yeah the the other thing I like to do is um actually a similar similar blitz to what we just talked about with the bear but um the pass are a little different um is a basically play like a cover one rat um and uh and stunt the back or sorry blitz plug the backer into the B gap on the again line up in a three four and plug the backer over the B gap on the running backside if if we're in a three by one back strong um and then wrap that backside inside backer um to where he's essentially uh you know a C gap contain player uh and then drop your end on that side um and then essentially stunt everybody else uh towards the towards the back um and and play cover one rat um we we did that a ton and for whatever reason that back backer away from the back looping over into the C gap becoming the the edge of the defense um could essentially just get behind the back but to the quarterback uh I don't know how I mean we had a ton of success with that um I so I think you know both those things I just described you're dropping people into coverage so it protects you against you know things like you mentioned flood I agree with you flood is is still so hard to cover and it seems like quarters the only way to really do well against that you're dropping dudes in the coverage um who they don't expect uh and so you're just pausing the clock a little bit and and that's really all you need to sprint out is is to pause that clock a little bit and get guys where you know into those flat areas or into that deep out area that um that he doesn't expect and then you don't have to overwhelm him with the blitz you only need to send four or five or whatever um but again it's kind of like when we talked about the power dinting and making them go to the different path um I think that's great for sprint out because they're they're limiting the field and they're really attacking attacking a narrow part of the field and so you've got to be able to get your defense over there um and so um I think those two are the best and I also think you know just blitzing into it right so right whether you're you know that that that nickel or whoever's out there blitzing that guy into it and and you know rolling to cover three or doing whatever you need to do and coverage um but just blitzing into it you know and again trying to like that whole idea of dinting um those are those are kind of the three ways I like to do it um and they're all kind of the element of surprise I guess you know making them not know what what's coming at him makes a lot of sense I feel like that's too easy of an answer but all right we got two questions left the first one is what are your best ways that you found to contain running quarterbacks I'll let you take this one first yeah so well I had an epiphany at one moment I can still remember this I used to I used to live about 30 minutes away from from where I used to coach and um on sundays we would meet and by that time we had most of our since you know our stuff done like we just you know and it was basically me as the decordinator dictating to my sister coaches or we're gonna do we had already kind of you know through our zooms and our off-site stuff you know we had already got what we're done but we're facing a running quarterback and you know that we were we were all you know we're spying and everything that everybody says you know be good in your rest lanes and and you know all that stuff um and I'm listening to your pod and I would I would listen to your podcast and that little 30 minute drive and for some reason it would kind of get the juices flowing in my brain the creativity and just that last kind of if I needed any creative stuff because I'm I typically um I'm kind of like let's just do it one way and then we're good and then through the meeting I would have a bunch of ideas because my assistant coaches would would be creative and so I need those creative juices and so I would listen to your pot and usually they're you know like they're longer than 30 minutes but I would listen on super super fast speed so that's two hints to listen to so anyway I remember think we um we're we're playing a passing I'm sorry a scrambling quarterback and you said you know basically blitz is something to the effect of get them you know where either do you want them to go right get them to where you want them to go right like like blitz them this way and then get them into this you know run them over here where you have a guy right I mean that's and I don't know if that's how you said it but that's what I heard and um and sure enough we we installed this I still remember a man we called it Snoop and Easy E I have no idea why we came up with that he was Snoop and Easy E and uh and that we we essentially run a similar blitz pass that we've been talking about a lot out of we we talked about it out of that bear where where I would we would we would plug a backer and then we would loop another backer around into you know like plug a backer into the in the big gap or the a gap and then we put the back the opposite inside backer into the into the c gap and and then spy away from that and I mean dude the first time we run it in that game I still I mean I can remember we we had three sacks on this on this particular thing because this guy great runner he's getting tons of pressure and so he just runs and you know we he runs right into our spy just standing there it happened all night and then all of a sudden he was seeing ghosts and um so you know again three four I'm gonna I'm gonna uh move my nose probably away from the back I'm gonna stunt uh I'm sorry I'm gonna plug my linebacker on the side of the back right into the a gap um on the opposite side of where the nose is going and then I'm gonna bring that inside backer away from the back loop him around to the big gap on the on the running back side and then I'm gonna have someone else usually might end away from the back be my spy and um again I'm just putting all the pressure where I think he wants to go this guy particularly liked to release into the boundary and so we would of course blitz into the boundary instead of at the back um and then he would just scramble out into our spy who we would always try to make our spy our best player like if our we would spy with our best player because he's the athlete who can do that um and so um that that I think that was snoop I think snoop was the odd version of it and then we did essentially the exact same thing um in uh in an even front and we basically a gap a gap uh double a gap pressure and then and then spy one of those linemen uh um you know away from where we wanted them to blitz and so um for me that is by far the best advice I ever got from someone on a running quarterback because I don't really have an answer until then uh it was always stay in your rush lanes you know stay in your rush lanes and essentially my guys weren't being as aggressive as I wanted them to be uh so blitz blitz where they you think he wants to go and then have a guy waiting for you know that I think some great advice well I appreciate you saying all that and and it it's true um we were preparing for jaden daniel's uh was he the second picking the draft playing in state championship game and toshlapoi was at alabama and he sent us some clips of what they called odd mere and he didn't really say it this way but the epiphany I had was if you spend so much time caging the quarterback especially if it's a run to throw guy it's a run to run guy that's different but if it's a run to throw guy yeah you're giving them what they want you're giving them a clean pocket because you're so worried and you're not aggressive just like you said I mean I'm basically gonna say reset what you just said but you know we never really dropped eight as a base ever and we played jaden and we had seven sacks against them dropping eight and what we basically did was we collapsed both sides and the whole theory of it was if he's gonna get out of the pocket he's gonna get out of the pocket he's that good obviously when the high is metrophy he was the second picking the draft uh i mean by the way he was great as a high school player if you would have said he was gonna win the high is metrophy i'd have been like no in fact he struggled a little bit early on in airs on the state and i did not think he was gonna be what he was shout out to him by the way uh great kid great man damn he's like a adult with a hundred million dollar contract right now i'm talking like he's 14 but um i kind of just thought well if he's gonna get out anyway i'm gonna tell him where he's gonna get out and so we built uh the odd mirror stuff we built it where an odd mirror for those of you guys you don't know is usually done out of a bear presentation so you got two fives zero and then a backer and a stand up three technique on both sides and basically you collapse both sides depending how you want to do it there's different paths there's the fish hook which is basically what you said where let's say you wanted to roll to our right his left you take the right your defensive right end up and under and then let the left side defensive end run all the way around run the circle because the tackle what they're gonna do just push and pass just push and pass just but okay we'll use the rules against them so let them run all the way around like one time you really truly run the hoop at football you know the drill you're running the the hula hoops or you could just break both sides and what we ended up doing is we carried it forward is we would play with three high safeties we would take the middle linebacker and take him out of the the coverage and just say look we're gonna take both ends up and under we're gonna take the nose and we're gonna slam them into the boundary to contain and you're gonna be the contained out of the field so we would basically force a sprint out almost like what kind of what we just talked about but we knew where we were taking him and so if you're trying to spy a quarterback it's really hard if he knows where he's gonna go before you do there's always playing catch up you're always reacting you're always playing catch up but if you are in fact telling him and you knowing where he's gonna go because you know where your stun is going before he does that's where the cold key to it was was this is like if he's gonna get out fine we're gonna we're gonna have him get out but we're gonna tell him exactly where and we're gonna study where he wants to go where he's best at it's sometimes it's not always where he wants to go the most it's where is he best at so that was really that was really it and thanks to Toshalpoi for kind of giving me that epiphany and just really really kind of teaching me that concept because I got so frustrated and it was really freeing you could really just play coverage and defend the routes and not worry about the other stuff because it got to a point where you're having to try to build the coverage into where the guy was trying to scramble and you're like you know what let him react to us kind of the whole thing we're talking about let him react to us so appreciate the kind words and I'm glad that that same concept worked out for you and before we move on to the last question I do want to say something I forgot and I usually don't like going back but this one this one was good and I feel like I need to kind of go back and mention this so back to the spring out question real quick one of my other favorite things and can't believe I thought of or I didn't remember to to say this one is yield corner blitz so take your end of the field get him real wide pull the thing up and then bring your backside corner because a lot of those spring out guys what they'll do is they'll cut their split down of their receiver to try to run that deep post over route whatever you want to call it and they'll never see it and just blitz the guy off the edge either off the edge or take both ends up field and have him blitz from the boundary underneath the end so he's already in a position where he's flattened out and then catch it from the backside if you can't really get him from the front side or push him out and try to spill an overlap another change up is especially if he doesn't he's wants to break contain and really throw on the run make him stop hold it for a second because the whole key to spring out with like flood is everything's moving together right so the quarterbacks moving the routes are moving they're all moving together but if you cut off the supply and you make him stop the routes are getting further away from him meaning the throw you know I'm not a geometry major but our math major I don't do the geometry majors that even a thing but now the throw is getting wider so it's harder to complete that throw to begin with and then he gets hit from the backside and you make it a strip sack so I can't believe I because I was one of my favorite things for a long time to do and if you're a split safety team you can play like stubby or mini or quarters or whatever on the front side man up the backside and you not really you know a spring out they're not looking to throw hot because what's the weakness of a corner but it's throwing hot into it right and then you miss the one on one tackle and it goes for 30 you're not really gonna be worried about that if they're looking to spring front side so okay last question I'm gonna let you lead this one off because it's my least favorite subject and I know you'll have a better answer than me anyway what is your favorite tackling drill okay well um this kind of my jam you know exactly in the world so um I actually have three Chris I know that's cheating all right I usually don't I usually don't answer questions like this but it's the beginning of the year like if you send me a tackling drill question in November I'm not gonna yeah listen I answer anything you send but if you're starting to ask me the week before Thanksgiving about tackling drills I'm probably not gonna answer but because it's still August I'll allow it well here I'll answer my first one and maybe it's so good that we don't even need the others but um so I've done this for years I even did this this year at colleges Sequoia it's um it's such a basic drill so what I do is you know I gotta remember I'm I have for years and years and years I was teaching freshman how to tackle it in June right that's that's when we start teaching tackling and um I learned this from the out of this guys so love out of this former sponsor best best best best um yeah honestly out of this and Chris Baster changed the way I coach defense so that's right um so so you get a guy on all fours you get a guy on all fours right so weird day good you get a guy on all fours and then the and he's the ball carrier and then you have the tackler just come up and put his hands on it back and he's standing on his side and I know this sounds really weird but um you know just imagining that all four I may have to put a warning before I put this episode out of them continue there's a guy on all fours and and I can imagine you're like trying to get up on a horse right okay I'm completely coach I grew up in Orlando I went to college in Miami and I lived in the Bay Area for 14 years or whatever it was 13 years you know he's got to have one time in clovus the only thing you think of is red dead redemption okay so I'm trying to get on the horse yeah it's a Christ so dude it's gone off the rail okay there's a guy on all fours and you got and you'd put another guy stand up next to him and he's got a hand on his back on this on the on the whistle the guy on all fours is just trying not to let the tackler put him on his back to roll him over so he's doing whatever he can it's the wrestling movie can't you you know he's staying on his all fours is moving all around and the guy with his hand on his back you're just trying to essentially get your one of your arms to pin that back one of your hands to pin that back elbow I'm sorry I'm laughing I'm thinking man people pay good money for this shit continue I can't believe there's two other ones too we got two other drills we got the other ones the other ones everybody seen it but it's the car it's called the partner partner flip drill and I'm just going to do a shameless plug just type in partner flip drill and mason use and you might find it on the internet it's a great drill for the very first day of tackling especially if you teach young kids how to tackle but I made I made I made college players do it this anyway partner flip that's great big of getting on a horse that's what you got to think about sounds like it would also be a drill seen in the villages in Florida I don't know if that's a regional joke if anybody knows that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about all right well let's hear number two mason okay so number two is I call it just angle tackle on a mat that's what I call it right super simple you get two two of those crash pads kind of face them in a V and what you laughing at me man I'm still in the last one man I've like it for the listeners I'm gonna release this hopefully the next few hours it's two 17 a.m. on the east coast mason looks like he's delirious I have no idea what's going on I'm still picturing trying I'm still stuck on trying to get on a horse and then we're face to face you can't see I should end with that one all right angle tackle drill you get an angle tackle drill and you get two mats and you just have the kid the the players learn how to push their toe in the ground and strike and be physical with the player I think crash pads and tackling are the greatest thing ever because you eliminate the injury factor and yet you can be really physical with with with tackling and so especially teaching young kids how to tackle I think using crash pads and if you can get as many as you can you know and you can make crash pads with just like step over bags but an angle tackle drill with a crash pad and again I could anybody wants to contact me I teach him about that and then the last drill is just I call it's called the one knee tackle drill and a lot of guys do this I seen a ton of schools do this my ton of colleges do this get a guy on one knee and he just works on pushing off that toe of the knee that's up right and he just works on pushing off that toe and and working on on you know using and driving off that front toe that near foot toe and you know you're literally just on one knee and you're putting your shoulder in the guy and tackling him you know and so again on a crash pad I think using the crash pad as much as you can if you don't want to do the the partner flip drill get on a horse drill he's laughing by the way I have a straight face right now don't blame this on me but yeah show shoulder tackles on to a crash pad shoulder tackles on to a crash pad I think would be you could you could come up with a bunch of different drills for that and that's my favorite drill so this is why I don't talk about tackling because it's open the Pandora's Box and you got Mason salad tackling drills that I don't know if people are allowed to and parts of this country all right I'll give mine mine's kind of cheating because it's more of a takeaway drill but partner tackling I think so many drills focus on one person tackling another and there's millions out there they're all great you know but I think that the partner aspect of how to fit off of somebody else I think is undercoached and I think that's something that really good running back coaches really good receivers coaches teach their guy C2 split 2 and how to work with somebody else and then the element of when to start stripping I think a lot of people do tackling drills and then they do strip drills and I think combining them together there's important it's not I don't know if it's a necessity especially if you're if you're pressed for time you know you're at a school where you're not platoon and you only get two hours of practice and all your kids are going you know your kids are going both ways and there's not a lot of time you have a small squad I mean this is something that's maybe down the list in terms of importance but you asked for my favorite tackling drill so that's my favorite also if you're gonna have a drill you know make it make it situational and and make it situational is not the right word I'm looking for make sure you're selling on what's important I see so many things where guys have all these different tackles but they don't tell you when to use them or when they do tell you when to use them they're so specific it's it doesn't make any sense one of like for example when the Seahawks tackling drill first came out this is again the subsequent videos have been made my complaint was they don't tell you when to use them yeah and so it was just all these tackles and then you're supposed to kids are supposed to figure out when to use them is make sure you are thoroughly explaining and giving your examples and and this is advice that you know maybe is not great now but maybe this something should have said months ago but let me get that question then is maybe at the end of this year if you remember this or if you're going back and you're listening to this in I don't know January February is make a cut up of all your missed tackles and then find tackles that were similar in those same situations and then you know showing the differences and then coming up with drills to figure out you know very functional drills to fix those I think is a good point and teaching the guys when to use the tackles I think is the most important thing so that's that's my boring answer Mason we've set it all we've been on here for a while and we get technical difficulties so we're we're hitting about four hours when we were supposed to start so thank you so much for joining me shout out your socials as you mentioned if people can reach out to you how can they oh yeah let's see I think I'm Mason underscore Hughes on on X and Twitter I'm on Twitter I'm on Twitter yeah I feel tweaked yeah I don't really have anything else yeah Mason Hughes Mason underscore Hughes yeah that's sick ass haircut college Sequoias congratulations you have a Google drive on your on your bio on your Twitter account is the drill in there what's what's in there oh that's um yeah that's a form for nevermind we'll cut that it's a prospect question here I thought it was gonna be juicy I thought it was gonna be Mason demonstrating these drills and coconut oil or some shit but it's a prospect questionnaire yeah nice and go out the season man I appreciate you joining joining me and staying late on a Saturday night appreciate your man yeah man I hey I'm in it too when I said you know big influence on me and um you know even even when I told guys I was doing this podcast you know I don't think you understand your reach I think you know especially because you've done it on a just through the web man and through podcast in this new way of doing things and I think I yeah I just I want you to know I mean you impact me as a coach made me a lot better coach whether you know it or not and you're always just willing to answer a text or provide info and it's always just been really kind to me and so I really appreciate that and you have no reason to be kind to me and and then I think there's even people who don't probably talk to you who you've impacted a whole lot man and I mean I know our staff at at COS uh the defense every single one on the defense of staff knows exactly exactly who you are and uh you know there was like they were really excited when they heard I was coming on here you know they're like oh you know that's you know and um and unfortunately I do as well yeah I was like yeah this guy um yeah man and I I know I'm I yeah you just you you really I'm really appreciative of you and I know other people are too so I'm not I'm sure you know these guys come on the podcast and they tell you all this but I just want you to know there's a lot of people who have you've really helped and so I appreciate that and um yeah I'm a lot of my defensive coaches that are that I coached at CBC you know they you know I told them I told them how you and they were always listening you know and so um and uh yeah I even have old players who are playing in college who um you know no coaches who've now gone into college who kind of were your friends and just some really cool stories that's crazy yeah um you know you know I got we had that kid Jayden Moore who's that organ and um yeah he uh he's telling me this one day he's talking about this coach they got oh bar P man and he's he's a he's a smart man and he knows so much and he's talking about Dante Barti I'm like I know that guy is and then yeah now now Kyle's over there you know and he's talking about coach Kogan these guys are so smart and I'm like yeah man these guys are famous you don't even know it you know that's wild yeah I appreciate the kind words um I really do and you know I've I've had people say things over the years and you know say things a few people have said things similar to this and it always blows me away and I'm very appreciative of it but doing a podcast like this is so strange and it makes sense because I'm also a consumer of podcasts why I wanted to do this it's why when USA football reached out to me and said we want to do something with you what do you want to do I said well I'm not writing anything because I hate writing I'm not good at it and I write way too much and I don't want to edit anything and I was like but I've always loved like old and then this is different but I always love like radio morning show stuff like I was going to do some an audio medium plus that's what I knew I made a record in college like I know how to do audio so it was right at my alley but it's just so strange because you do this thing like tonight we're gonna finish my transfer to my computer and probably get edited for four or five hours way more than it should ever be edited because it's nobody cares about how the sound is perfect but it's something and you press the send button and then you close the browser and then that's it I mean I get maybe a couple people every episode that may say something sometimes none and it's just funny because you don't realize where it goes and it makes sense like I love Conan O'Brien I listen to his podcast all the time really good but after every episode I'm not like hey Conan great episode really enjoyed when you said this sincerely Chris Vassar you know there's so many podcasts that I've listened to not that he would I don't even know one where I would send that to he would never read and he's probably got millions of listeners but even smaller podcasts where like people have had real impacts on my life and how I think you know but they they with no idea who I am or if I've ever listened I mean you see the statistic soundcloud when I was on soundcloud was cool because you can see the countries and I don't know if it was VPNs or people were saying they were like listener in Afghanistan had a listener in Madagascar I mean again these could be VPNs but you don't it's not like I don't know and also like I don't check the statistics ever so I don't know what's good what's not good and the podcast has reached certain places and it's just blows my mind when I hear some of these things because I you you have would have no idea like I had I had an NFL coach who got fired during the season a couple years ago and he reached out to me two days after he got fired and he just he found my email and he's like I just wanted to tell you that I love your podcast and again I feel bad even like like it feels like Eric and even talking about this but to your point about like reaching people that you don't know because I am one of those people too that that I get reached and my life's been changed and so it's just so exciting for me to be somewhere in that boat for somebody even if it's just one person but this guy reached out to me and he's like if you ever want to talk let me know and this guy if I said his name you would know him I have it there's an NFL defense accordingly there's one on the patreon he's been on for years and he's really good so but anyway so I reached out to this guy and he goes yes something you said on a podcast got picked up by the Rams analytics department was putting up it was putting like a presentation and he's like do you remember that I'm like I don't remember anything I say people asking all the time I remember that one thing you said I'm like I have no freaking clue what I said that's why I was just like I probably said this before but so it's really really humbling and really really awesome to hear these things and this is by the way this is not a invitation for people to send stuff you don't have to message me or anything you're not fishing for compliments or anything but it's just it is such a weird phenomenon because you just send this thing out and a lot of times like I'll launch it I'm a night owl so like I'll launch it go to sleep and then I wake up and I'm not thinking about it you know or I'll finish it and close it and I'll set it to launch later on and I just it's like it's I'll go on about my day and that's it yeah because you don't get an alert it's not like a tweet or something where if you say something and people think it's funny and you're like yeah there's no there's no like immediate feedback so I for all I know people are listening to this and this idiot people are just listening out of like think it's because it's stupid because they think I'm an idiot and they think it's funny or whatever like you know it's just it's just so it's such a weird podcasting it's so strange because you have no idea who these people are yeah yeah that's right no I mean I I wouldn't I wouldn't know that at all right I've never done one but uh just I'm yeah just I can see that I can see how it would be um yeah almost like can anybody hear me out there type of thing you know like like um and so yeah I mean I that's that's that's why I said it right I want to make sure you know that and that's really cool man I think really really it just blows my mind that there's that this can help people and because there's not a lot of stuff out there for defense you know it's more like the cause like I know I'm a coach in a few years but I still am very involved with different teams and a lot of stuff we talked about for uh we started recording but like it's you know I it's it's there's not a lot of people it's everything's for offense and so it's more of just like the cause of making defense good right again to be corny but yeah like it's just really cool because I feel like this community is tighter like there's other things that I've done and there's a community there but it's not as tight knit as this group because it's like it's just us we there's nowhere else for us to go kind of a thing um because coaching defense isn't sexy it's really hard it's really draining like uh I don't want to get political at all but um there's been some or one of our vice president candidates was an assistant coach and one of the attack lines from uh their opponents was he was just an assistant coach and I'm like he was just an assistant coach do you know how hard it is to be a defense of coordinator like whether you're a socialist or a communist or a George H.W. Bush Ronald Reagan Republican like coaching defense is harder than coaching offense I I will being a DC is harder than being a head coach unless you're it's not to me like the day-to-day stuff now the offseason when I'm talking about that but to say like that person's not an assistant coach like and like and it's kind of reflective of what I'm saying like oh oh he's just the DC I mean you've seen the reaction to some of that stuff and it's like I'm looking around going does anybody know any of these people because it's it's it's hard people don't even think we do anything and we do a lot yep well I appreciate it man like I said a lot of a lot to you and defense knowledge of defense and those 30-minute drives on Sundays I don't I only live five minutes away from where I work now so I don't listen to you as much on the journey it's all right this 30-minute drive you're great I got a question for you do you find that you almost like the drive better on your way back from practice I had a buddy I had a buddy that we were talking about this because I ended up moving really close to Sarah where it took me like two minutes to get home and I kind of you don't miss the barrier traffic and rush hour of course but at kind of that time to unwind after practice we got nothing to think about but what just happened I kind of missed a little bit of that I don't know how you feel yeah I mean yeah so definitely definitely missed parts of it right like you just said like I I loved to getting home immediately after um not you know and all that stuff but you know I had a stretch there where um my I was my son was playing so my my son I don't have one son and two girls and my my son was playing football at the youth team probably when he was at fifth or sixth grade and so for about five years my son and I were driving after practice right and you know it's if I called my my son up uh right now and said hey I just talked to Vass like he knows exactly he heard you a whole lot right he was he's been he's been in the car while we're listening to you and stuff and so um I missed those right but then he once he started driving and he wasn't gonna go home with that anymore and so um you know so so but yeah I did I mean you know you missed time for its reflection right like yeah you know we're talking about the football thing and I was I was listening to a podcast getting better at it but I was listening to other podcasts when it wasn't football you know and reflecting on different things and um yeah that that drive of 30 minutes I think it was uh a lot of time to yeah to reflect or to prepare and um you know so there's definitely good things about it too I definitely yeah I don't know what's the drive but there were aspects of like I miss being because I'm ADHD so I got the music on in the TV and I've got you know I'm like texting and all this stuff but it forced it forced you when you drove to I did some of my best problem solving on my drive home my my drives home when I was living far away from Sarah but anyway all right man I've kept you too long thanks so much for joining me I appreciate you so much and uh good luck this season thanks Chris thank you again to Mason Hughes for joining me I'm really excited to see how his college journey is going to go and his transition from a head high school coach to a position coach to junior college while remaining the principal of that high school as you can probably tell from the podcast just a great guy always willing to lend a helping hand and take him up on his offer reach out to him if you like any of these drills I'm sure he will get it to you he's just the best also check out the patreon patreon.com/coachfast if you need help in season with game planning webinars check out the silver tier if you want to get the hottest offences and defenses film to get ideas to help you with your team check out the orange tier and if you want both check out the gold tier again patreon.com/coachfast I wish all of you the best the beginning of your season good luck and if there's anything I can do for you reach out at coach vast the shows account at mdga podcast I promise I'll be better about answering those dns and always remember the quarterback can't see what tears in their eyes [Music]