Defensive Football Strategies

Rating:
Summary: Defenses of the 60s in a book that comes out in 2000??
Review: Aww come on! This is the best the AFCA could do? Lets call it what it really is THE BEST OF THE AFCA MANUALS (DEFENSE). Now granted some techniques and fundamentals are ageless, but the AFCA has members at every major college and most professional teams. This is not the best it could do.

Rating:
Summary: Better than Average
Review: Strengths: The book broadly covers most of the elements of defensive football strategy. Most defensive approaches that have been attempted successfully in the last 40 years are reviewed and explained. Football coaches, especially at the HS level where the athletes' practice time is limited, will appreciate the book's simplicity and its ability to convey the essence of a particular defensive approach. Do these philosophies work? They have, in various forms, for decades.

Weaknesses: The strength of the book is also its primary weakness. It covers so much material that nothing is covered in detail, and coaches seeking the finer points of a particular defensive scheme may have to look elsewhere for assistance. Some of the newer defensive philosophies, especially the incredibly specialized schemes used in the pro ranks (defensive ends dropping off into coverage in short zones, linebackers who only play in running situations, or cornerbacks involved in intricate blitz schemes) are not covered. HS coaches will probably not have the time or athletic talent to indulge in that level of detail anyway.

As for the critique that defensive schemes designed to stop offenses from the 1960s don't belong in the book, I would beg to differ. In many areas of the country, especially the deep south, HS football coaches still employ the offensive systems in which they themselves played in decades before. Perhaps the most prominent example is the use of the triple-option out of a wishbone formation, once a staple of college football (Oklahoma and Alabama in the 1970s), never used in the pro ranks and abandoned by almost all college teams except the Air Force Academy and the Naval Academy. It was not unusual to find Tennessee HS football teams still running this offense through the 1990s. In this regard, the book's coverage of defenses designed to stop antiquated offensive game plans is a strength at the HS level.