Chapter 9 - SportsGamer's Defense Training Camp
SportsGamer.com presents a series of Madden training camp articles to strengthen your defense. These feature tips on
shutting down the opposition's rushing attack, defending against the deep pass, countering the tight end, and containing
a mobile quarterback. You'll find breakdowns of specific plays and situations as well as videos to illustrate the concepts.

Shutting Down the Run

By: Kyle Cooper
Playing against an opponent who has a great running attack can be extremely difficult to stop. One of the most
successful theories behind slowing down the run is stacking defenders near the line of scrimmage. In this tip, we're going
to show an example of exactly what it means to "stack" defenders in the box. It's important to remember to choose a
defense that can also adequately defend against the pass.
In our accompanying screenshot, we've come out with the New York Giants in the 46 Normal 2 Man Under. We want to
stress yet again the importance of not getting beat deep in just one play. The 2 Man Under is a solid defensive choice,
especially at the beginning of a game, because every receiver is manned up with two safeties playing over the top deep.
We would recommend controlling the deepest safety on the field and just staying back until you start to pick up on some
of your opponent's tendencies. Once you've picked up on where you opponent likes to go with the football then look to
take some chances later in the game. Before making any changes to the defense, we have eight defenders in the box,
with the second level of defenders about 4 yards off the line of scrimmage.
The next step is to manually slide each linebacker and the lone strong safety directly behind the four members of our
defensive line. By moving each one of these players we have now created a "stacked" look that makes it difficult for the
members of the offensive line to know who they are accountable for blocking after the snap.
Stack your defensive players near the line to confuse the offensive blocking scheme.
As the quarterback turns to hand the ball off to the running back, a number of gaps open in the offensive line. Blocking
won't always unfold in the same fashion but in this example, the right guard is basically useless as he stands in the
middle of the field looking to make a block. If there's a lineman not blocking anyone, it means that we will have even
bigger holes for our defenders to penetrate. However, the idea behind this theory is to create constant confusion for your
opponent's offensive line.
Copyright ©1995-2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
Only to be distributed on www.gamespot.com; if you obtain this document anywhere else, please report to matthewr@gamespot.com.