Last weekend I was sitting around in the Fairfax Wegman's Market Cafe when my roommate may have come up with the best new defensive strategy. Granted this isn't a great defense for a team that has good players. It is essentially a scheme that fits the Buffalo Bills, or a team with similar players. The Buffalo Bills have decent corners, mediocre linebackers, good DT's, and terrible Ends. This defense is employed when working with a 2-3 WR set on offense.
Since the Bills can't get any pressure on the QB, what is the point of playing with defensive ends at all. Pigs in a Blanket is a 3-8 formation. You line up your three best fat pig interior lineman. You place them squished over the football so you have 900lbs clogging the inside of the line. For this example you have John McCargo, Kyle Williams, and Marcus Stroud as your pigs.
You then line up Leodis McKelvin and Terrence McGee against WR1 and WR 2, leaving 6 available defenders. You then have six quick hybrid LB/Safetys line up in a straight line behind your pigs, about 5-8 yards behind. Donte Whitner, Poz, Aaron Maybin, Kawika Mitchell, Ellison, and Bart Scott. You now have 6 quick linebackers/safetys all standing up and it will be impossible for the offense to get a read of what the heck is going on. You have mass confusion of people dropping back, rushing, sitting still etc. Every play is a circus.
The premise is contingent on a few things. You need to assume that your pigs up front are good enough to stop anything up the middle and all rushing will be forced outside of the tackles. You need two good corners who can stand alone on an island. They will have help with people dropping back but need to be good enough to be able play some one on one. Your six gunners need to be fast and big enough to both effectively drop into coverage and penetrate on the blitz.
You get rid of your defensive ends who are just taking up space anyways, and teams might not be able to use their dominant offensive tackles as effectively. You are extremely susceptible to the big play with this defense, but for Bills fans, and fans of mediocre defenses, it is better watching this defense try to succeed then watch teams continuously have 12 play, 8 minute, 80 yard, touchdown drives.
Or maybe this is the worst idea ever and there is no helping a bad, weak, passive defense no matter how creative you are.
