Pressuring the Tight End and Complimentary Pressures

The most profound lessons I've learned in football have come through failure, not success. Each setback drove me to seek out solutions from other coaches or resources: much like Michael Jordan famously said, “I took that personally.”  

In 2019, while coaching what was arguably the most talented defense of my career, I encountered a significant challenge. During a game against Mandarin High School, led by Carson Beck, their "check with me" system caught us off guard. First, they knew we didn’t have a valid pressure to the tight end, so they were able to set the slide away all night. Secondly, their “check with me” caught us tipping several pressures that night. Like many coaches, we had two options: either kill the blitz or leave it on. We opted for these strategies all night, but the result was that Mandarin’s offense controlled our level of aggression. Ultimately, we lost the game. We tipped our hand all night and had no answer to pressuring the tight end. 

The loss wasn’t entirely on the defense. We had a late opportunity to win by blocking a field goal, but we failed to recover the ball, and  Mandarin scooped and scored. However, had I devised a better game plan, the outcome might have been different. The loss was on me, and the pressing question was: what was I going to do about it?

Where to Start 

Where does a high school coach go to find answers? I started with coaching friends, Twitter, clinics, and the usual resources. It’s not surprising that I ended up speaking with several college defensive coordinators about how they handle this issue, and I ended up where many others do—at Alabama. This led to a meeting with Charles Kelly, where I posed the same questions I had in every other meeting: “How do you pressure the tight end?” and “How do you check pressures quickly?” The answer, as usual, was simpler than I expected but absolutely spot on.

Pressuring the Tight End

Moving forward, we knew we needed to have the ability to attack the tight end, so we implemented a few fire zone pressures to achieve this. For us, fire zones weren’t costly to install since we already had 3 under, 3 deep coverage in place. After our research, we added four extra pressures: three fire zones targeting the tight end and one complementary pressure to the open side, which we'll discuss later.

The first tight end pressure was “Y Sting.” The concept is simple: bring the first available player outside the tight end. In 11 personnel 2x2, that means we’ll bring our free safety, and in 3x1, we’ll check the pressure on our money backer to allow the strong safety to stay in coverage.

(Y sting applied to the H-back)

The next pressure is Carolina, which is more of an interior pressure to the tight end side. The key on Carolina is both defensive ends garner attention from the offensive tackles.This allows the defense to overload the three interior offensive linemen. 

(Versions of Carolina to 10 Personnel)

Both of these pressures were an easy install as the pressure was always set to who we identified as their “Y” or tight end. If the tight end was motioned or traded, we could easily reload the pressure since it just became a check right or left. 

Our favorite pressure to the tight end was called Texas, in which we will outline that below while talking about complimentary pressures.

Complimentary Pressures

An answer to the “check with me” problem was to pair pressures to the open side and closed side. For example, Oklahoma would be a fire zone pressure to the open side while Texas would be a fire zone pressure to the closed side. Both pressures bring similar paths including the play side linebacker and safety. Therefore, both pressures make good compliments to each other. 

As pictured above, Texas is our pressure to the tight end or closed side. If the offense runs any “check with me,” and we get caught  tipping our hand, we can easily check Oklahoma and run our compliment to Texas. Since we install these pressures together the defense is confident in checking them quickly. 

Conclusion

There’s a timeless debate about whether to keep things simple or get complex on defense. Both sides have their merits, but I always hated going into a game without solid answers—or worse, predictable ones—for the challenges that arise on Friday nights. By installing these pressures, our players could at least become familiar with the concepts. We didn't have to carry all four every week, especially against teams running heavy 10 or 20 personnel. What we learned was the importance of having an answer, and even more, pairing these answers together as complementary concepts to counter offenses. With the rise of no-huddle and “check with me” systems, finding a way to gain an edge is crucial. Allowing players to seamlessly check between complementary pressures became our solution.

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