Dave Aranda/Ron Roberts Baylor Defensive Scheme-Fronts, Pressures and Coverages

 Dave Aranda-The innovator of 4 man Simulated Zone Pressure System

Dave Aranda is well known throughout the college ranks for his simulated zone pressure package. This is a package that involves bringing a LB as a 4th rusher and dropping a defensive lineman into zone coverage. It's a term used to bring a 2nd level defender yet drop a defensive lineman to replace him at the next level. The nice thing about it is you can bring the defender and still have all your coverage responsibilities taken care of with 7 players playing zone concepts on the back end. As an offense you have to account for any of the front 7 and on the hash a CB coming in pressure. As far as man, I don’t have the percentages, but from the film I’ve seen I would say they play it less than 10% of the time.

Protections:

They know their calls vs certain protections and really excel on defense because they understand each teams major protections and how they are going to block it. They do a tremendous job understanding the different protections they expect to see. Whether its man, half man, 4 man slide or full slide, they excel in this area and devising their schemes off it.

Here’s the protections:

A. Slide/Man-bluff inside with LB and bring the Nickel or weak safety

B. Full Slide-Bluff b/c to the predicate side and bring 2 off the edge vs the RB

C. Fan Dual protection(often vs the odd front) -Show the OLB and rush the ILB

D. Empty-OLine will block the 5 down men, QB has to throw hot. bluff the hot read and drop him to that side.

That’s it in a nutshell!

Coverages

They run a ton of split field concepts with the pressures and have various coverage checks, which I don't have all the answers to but if you study them you will see several variations and concepts in which they check coverages with what looks like different tags depending on formation. 

He will also run some what is called creeper pressures. A creeper or what I call a show pressure is basically a mug look with either 2 or 1 LB showing pressure. From here, you will get some type of pressure with a LB or Safety that isn't aligned on the line of scrimmage and that player dropping. 

That is really the major difference between a creeper and simulated pressure. Coach Hoover gives a good breakdown here. 

Fronts

Let's look at some of the concepts as he runs them from both his tite front and 4-2 package:

Tite Front:

Baylor plays it a few ways:
One is standard with 2 4i's with Pitre to the field.

Adjustment #1

They can adjust either side and play an eagle look as demonstrated below on the right hand side.

Adjustment #2 

Bear  Adjustment

vs. Oklahoma State, Baylor played some snaps of Bear front.

 Also, they can play a base 4-2-5 and run their pressures out of this look. Often they play it with  3 technique and a shade NG.

4-2 front

4-2

Part 1 Zone Coverage Concepts