3-4 Personnel, not 3-4 Defense!

[BestBIrish47]

I like what Charlie said in his signing day presser about the diffference in the 3-4 and playing 3-4 personnel. You have to like the mentality here behind the terminology. 3-4 personnel means that you lose d Dlineman and ad a linebacker hybrid style player to get more speed on the field. The difference in playing 3-4 personnel is you move a guy one gap or so and now you are playing a 4-3 over /under Defense! This can be done very easily with the 3-4 personnel, and most of the time the great 3-4 teams actively change their looks late before the snap. I love the versatility this Defense gives us , just the same way Charlie's Offense gives us match ups, this D should give us favorable match ups as well. If an opposng O line is weak somewhere, we can now move our 3-4 personnel to attack that weakness with allignment as well as stunting and blitzing. In the 4-3 we would have to walk a safety up, show blitz much much sooner. I think the idea of matching your gameplan to take advantage of your opponets weaknesses is what makes our Offense so good. Hopefully the same can be said about our defense this time next year!

 

[ND4life]

im not a pro at defense but, i was thinking. if we had that 3-4 personnel for example and did put in a smaller LB/DE with quickness in the 4-3 over/under would our defense be more suspect for large gains during running attack teams (ex. UM), since we have smaller players on the field anf they would be pushed off the line of scrimmage?

go irish!!!

 

[TexasDomer]

I guess it all depends on how well those LBs tackle. Even Minter's scheme depended on the D-line to hold up the O-line so that LBs could read and tackle. If you've got solid hitters/tacklers in the LB corps and fast OLBs to help turn plays back inside to pursuing D-linemen and DBs, it can work.

At the end of the day, the front 7, regardless of configuration, have to work together against the run. Speed can trump power when applied at the right point of the attack, and that's the intention of a 34 scheme, from what I can tell.

 

[TexasNDFan]

im not a pro at defense but, i was thinking. if we had that 3-4 personnel for example and did put in a smaller LB/DE with quickness in the 4-3 over/under would our defense be more suspect for large gains during running attack teams (ex. UM), since we have smaller players on the field anf they would be pushed off the line of scrimmage?

go irish!!!

Well there would probably be only be one of these hybrid players on the field at one time. He would be small by DE standards, but he would be big by LB standards. If any thing the personel in the 3-4 alignment are bigger overall. The Dline has to be bigger and more physical, so that they can keep the OL off the linebackers. The linebackers also have to be big and athletic, so that when someone does put a body on them, they will be able to shed the block and make the tackle. So I don't think this defense, lined up in 3-4 or 4-3, would be any more vunerable to the run than any other defense. The only big gains that you see is if the defense is not tackling well or if the offense gets lucky and happens to run a play away from the blitz. The one thing I like about this defense is that you have so many options of attack that you can really confuse a offense. If the 3-4 can rattle the likes of Peyton Manning, just imagine what it will do to a college quarterback, seeing this defense for the first time.

 

[stonebreakerwasgod]

For once, ND will have the advantage of surprise, instead of playing essentially the same way for as long as I can remember.

 

[leprechaun4life]

There are quite a few teams that run the 3-4 personnel in college, and quite a few of them are good teams. One team that comes to mind is USC. As much as I hate 'em, USC has a good D, and part of the reason is the strategy they employ. They have so many athletic LBs that they simply move one up into the DE position (usually it was Brian "man-boobs" Cushing). The three-four personnel will keep the offense guessing, and hopefully, blitzes will be more effective.