Virginia Tech's Bear Defense: Weaknesses, Counters and Adjustments

There is no question that Bud Foster had success stopping the rush with his Bear scheme last year. He was able to shut down both Duke's offense as well as the national champion Ohio State Buckeyes by committing five defenders to the line of scrimmage and overcommitting against the run. The Bear isn't a new defensive concept, and there are some tried and true ways to counter it. If Foster breaks the Bear out again against Ohio State, Urban Meyer will have to find ways to gain yardage through the air.

Beating Man Coverage

Let's do some quick math. Every defensive scheme (the 3-4, the 4-3, the 4-2-5, the Bear) has the same restriction, it can only use 11 defenders at a time. Now the Bear defense is excellent against the run because it places five defenders on the line of scrimmage to occupy the offensive line which frees up the Mike linebacker to attack the ball carrier. Generally speaking, six out of eleven total defenders (five d-linemen and one linebacker) are tied into the run game and only five defenders are left to defend the pass. Bear defenses normally match these remaining five defenders with the offenses five eligible receivers and run man coverage to stop the pass.

Traditional defenses (like the familiar 4-3) usually rush four defenders and try to stop the pass with seven. The two extra pass defenders allow defensive coordinators to get creative and draw up exotic zone coverage schemes to control every route combination an offense can throw at it. Bear defenses don't have that luxury. They want to stop the run first and foremost. If the offense decides to pass rather than run into the teeth of the Bear, the defense will rely on the additional pass rushers to limit the amount of time the secondary has to cover.

Defenses have been running man coverage since the forward pass became legal, and there are some pretty reliable ways for an offense to beat it. Route combinations designed to beat man coverage (conveniently called "man beaters") are the first things a coach puts into his playbook when designing his passing offense. My personal favorite "man beater" is the double slant combination. An offense will start with two wide receivers on one side of the formation and at the snap both wide receivers will run slants. The slot receiver will act as the decoy and run the first slant. He'll be drawing the slot defender with him into the middle of the field and away from the intended target. The quarterback will now have lots of room to find his outside receiver on the second slant. The outside cornerback can't safely defend a deep route and a slant route at the same time. Unless the corner is expecting the slant and is an exceptional athlete, he has very little chance of breaking up the completion. If the corner compounds the problem by missing the tackle, disaster strikes.

The double slant isn't the only way for an offense to gain leverage on a defender in man coverage. Rub routes (also known as pick routes) are designed to create space for one receiver by running a decoy receiver into the path of the defender. This forces the defender to move out of the way, giving the intended target the space to catch the ball. These are the hardest routes for man coverage to defend against. Here is an example of a rub route that Urban Meyer tried on an early third-down.

As we see in the clip, Chuck Clark was originally matched up against the intended receiver at the start of the play. As the receiver went in motion, Clark settled into the box to provide run support, and he switched responsibilities with Bonner. Bonner and Jarrett instantly recognize the route concept. Torrian Gray is one of the best in the business at teaching his secondary to read routes. Bonner takes Jarrett's initial receiver (the inside man) and Jarrett takes the motion man, closing the distance well enough to knock the ball free and prevent the third-down conversion.

The Center Fielder

When Virginia Tech has it's free safety in the box, it invites offenses to throw the ball deep against them. The offense doesn't need to complete a low percentage pass to hurt the defense, it's often well advised to throw the ball short and allow the receiver to draw an interference call from the officials.

There is little Chuck Clark can do here. It's an early down so Foster has his free safety in the box, and Clark is left all alone in single coverage. Clark does what he can to prevent the deep pass, but isn't able to stop his momentum in time to prevent himself from crashing into the receiver working back towards the ball.

Ohio State was able to pick up a few pass interference penalties early in the game by just tossing the ball up to their receivers against man coverage. Bud Foster adjusted in the second half by placing his free safety in a deep "center fielder" alignment. This prevented J.T. Barrett from just lobbing the ball in the general direction of single coverage and led to a couple of interceptions.

Taking the free safety out of the box didn't hurt Bud Foster on interior runs because of the stoutness of his defensive front. It would cause a problem on the perimeter in the run game though, one which Ohio State exploited many times. Later in the season, Duke head coach David Cutcliffe would recognize the same opportunity and he punished Tech for the center fielder alignment.

The Speed Option

Urban Meyer tried to run the speed option against Tech early in the game last year but he didn't have much success. On the speed option, the playside offensive tackle lets the defensive end free and blocks the Mike linebacker. The defensive end will force the quarterback to pitch the ball to the running back who has to get to the corner and turn up field. Now when Bud Foster is running Cover 0, he has his free safety in the box and assigned to the running back. Once the quarterback pitches the ball, the free safety has no one to block him and has a decent (not a great) angle to make a play on the running back. It wasn't until after his early success drawing pass interference calls that Urban Meyer found room for his speed option. The removal of the free safety from the box also removed the defense's angle on the running back. The Mike linebacker was blocked by the offensive tackle, the defensive end was read by the quarterback... and the free safety was 30 yards down the field and out of position to tackle the running back.

The Cutcliffe Adjustments

Bud Foster used a lot of Bear defense against Duke and wily coach Cutcliffe had his team prepared to punish the out of position safety.

This clip perfectly shows the single greatest flaw with the "Cover 1 Bear". The defense doesn't shift into a Bear scheme until the offense brings the H-Back into the backfield. Immediately after seeing the defense shift, the offense counters. You can see the quarterback communicate the play call (speed option) and communicate to which side he wants to run it. The play is run to the quarterback's left for two reasons. First, the offense knows that Jarrett is going to walk into the box late because he has man coverage responsibilities for that H-Back. They don't want to run to Jarrett's side of the formation, it just adds an extra block (which is an extra chance for a mistake). Second, the offense wants to run the play to the wide side of the field and give the runner the most room to work with. Once the play is set up, all the offense has to do is not screw up. The tackle takes out Motuapuaka, the quarterback makes the pitch, and Bonner doesn't appear until the runner is at the yellow line.

David Cutcliffe ran this play over and over with great success during the first quarter. Bud Foster needed to find a way to get an angle on the running back to prevent the speed option...but he doesn't want to give Duke the opportunity to pick up easy yardage on throws down the field. As always, Foster comes up with an elegant solution.

Before the snap, we see the five defensive linemen and the Mike linebacker aligned in the Bear. We also see the rover in the box to provide run support and match up with the H-Back in the pass game. What's unique here is the interaction on the bottom of the screen between the field corner, the nickel, and the free safety. Bonner motions to Clark to get deep, then Bonner hustles closer to the line.

Duke ends up running the ball to the inside here, but if they had chosen to run the speed option Foster had that play covered. Bonner's new alignment allows him to cover the gap in between the slot receiver and the back. If the slot receiver manages to blocker Bonner, the back will bounce it to the next gap and the nickel should be waiting for him. If the nickelback gets blocked by the outside receiver, the back will have to bounce it once more to the sideline and into the waiting arms of the unaccounted cornerback.

The beauty is that Foster doesn't even have to make this adjustment every time. All he has to do is show it a few times and Cutcliffe knows that he can't risk running the speed option anymore. If the free safety crashes down at the last moment and the quarterback doesn't audible, the offense will take a big loss and it might kill their drive. Cutcliffe would rather play it safe and run the ball away from that free safety (he did find success there on a few quarterback follows) or choose to throw at the single coverage Kyle Fuller finds himself in.

The Bear isn't a perfect scheme. It isn't going to be able to stop every play, every time. Luckily that's not Bud Foster's goal. He isn't trying to draw up a defense that can account for every possible play in every possible scenario, he is only trying to draw up a defense that stops whatever you do best. Against teams like Ohio State that want to run the inside zone read or sweep/power plays, Foster knows that he has to convince the offense it's in their interest to do something different... and nothing will convince an offense to take to the air like the Bear will.