Coaching Football Cornerback Mentality

Anyone who's designed or implemented a defense, at any level, knows one of the toughest decisions is deciding what the Linebacker reads should be. Options for linebacker reads include: one offensive lineman (most commonly a Guard); one offensive back; multiple offense linemen; or multiple offensive backs. There are many other variations, particularly for specialty offenses. An example of this would be coaches reading the butt of the Quarterback vs. a Wing-T.

In order to be successful, it is necessary for linebackers to read more than one player or action in a given play. Instead, you should teach a Triangle Read of some sort. For our 4-3 Defense, our Linebacker read Triangle was:

1. The snap of the football. See the football from the corner of your eye. This is not necessarily the "Primary" read, but something you have to see before anything else can happen. It may be possible to play a base defense without ever seeing the football - simply move when your 1st key moves. However, with our extensive blitz package, I believe players need ball movement to time up blitzes. Therefore, they should get used to moving on ball movement.

2. The Nearest Running Back. The Mike Linebacker would always read the Fullback - an easy concept vs. the I-Formation. The Will and Sam backers read the nearest back to them. In the I-Formation, they both read Tailback. Against certain offensive styles, this will change. It is common to "Cross-key" or read the back opposite their alignment, against a Wing-T. We may also cross-key against Zone Read Teams, including the Quarterback as one of the reads if there is no pitch back.

3. Nearest Offensive Guard. We want to look through the Guards to the backs, picking up anything strange in Guard movement with our peripheral vision as we see our primary key, the nearest back. The "Pretty Girl in the Mall" concept usually catches their attention - see guards just like you see a pretty girl in the mall. You're walking along, minding your own business - and then a good looking girl catches your eye, let your attention go to it. A Guard is usually firing out, run blocking. If you see something different - pull inside, pull outside, or high hat pass read - react to it! You will find that while Guards are the key to the offense, at the high school level they are hard to read when they are not doing something out of the ordinary (the Pretty Girl theory is stolen - but I don't know who from!).

If your experience has been anything like mine, you have found that some players prefer one type of read, while others are more comfortable with another. Perhaps if you are 100% certain that one way or another is most effective, you are more effective in coaching it. I am not, so I often find myself conflicted and tailor the reads to each individual player - so long as they generally accomplish the same objective.



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