Team Within a Team: Big men in the middle ‘fight the face, chase the tail’

The most direct route to the end zone is a straight line, right up the gut between the tackles.

It’s up to the interior defensive line to stop that from happening.

“The defensive tackles, I think at any level of football, those are the guys who have got to anchor the center of the defensive line,” said Stevenson coach Brent Becker.

The job, he said, is this: “Playing the run, trying to kind of eliminate any inside runs, and trying to make the quarterback uncomfortable by getting in his face.”

To do that, Stevenson is using a base 3-4 defense with multiple looks off that base.

“It’s pretty much a standard 3-4,” said Stevenson defensive line coach Dwight Davis, in his first year with the Patriots after coaching at Lake Forest College.

He’ll line up a defender in the 0-gap, right over center, and defenders with a hand on the ground on either side of the football in the 4-gaps, inside each of the offensive tackles. Linebackers come up to the line on the outside of each defensive tackle.

“It’s play the gaps, an attack-and-react defense,” Davis said.

Or, the defense may base its approach off what the offensive linemen are doing, be more reactive.

“It all depends on the game plan for that week,” Davis said.

Coaches and players watch game film, coaches compile the plan, and drill that game plan in practice leading up to the game.

“You could be an attack and react, where you are hitting the gaps, looking to penetrate and cause disruption,” Davis said.

“Or you could be more of a read and react, where you’re going to take on the offensive lineman and then recognize the block that they are trying to execute against you, and then defeat it and make the play.”

Using low pad level for leverage, and strong, active hands to fend off a blocker from getting into the body, the defensive tackle takes it to his blocker. If not, run defense may be at peril.

At one point in the second half of Stevenson’s season opener Friday at Prospect, while the Patriots’ defensive unit sat on benches behind a table with tablets and a monitor able to show game video, defensive coordinator Brian Burja cautioned his linemen against “catching blocks” rather than initiating contact.

Occasionally, when the offense runs a trap or pulls a man off the line to make a block elsewhere, the tackle will find himself alone and will have to improvise. He certainly can’t relax.

“We call it ‘fight a face, chase a tail,’” Davis said. “If an offensive lineman is coming out to block me I’m going to have to take him on. If he’s blocking down then I squeeze the gap, but it all depends on the offense that we’re playing that week and then what the game plan is.”

In Stevenson’s base 3-4 defense, which the Patriots started out in against Prospect, they lined up defensive tackles Anthony Adams, 255 pounds, and Sunny Tsai, 265, with 275-pound Milan Nikolic directly over center at a nose guard position. All are seniors who bring speed, power and experience.

On many defensive snaps the Patriots dispensed with a nose tackle and had only two linemen with their hand on the ground, Adams and Tsui.

“We did a pretty good job of stopping the interior run. They didn’t have a lot especially when Sunny and Anthony were in there together,” Becker said.

“I think our defensive coaches might like a little bit more pressure on the quarterback.”

Sometimes, a program is fortunate to have a smaller, exceptionally quick and tough player at nose tackle. He can cause major havoc getting off the snap and penetrating the line quicker than a guard or center can throw a block.

Wheaton Warrenville South won two state football championships using 160-pound nose tackle Spartacus “Sparty” Chino, the 2011 Class 3A 152-pound wrestling champ.

“The cool thing about being a defensive lineman, it’s aggression,” Davis said. “If you’re attacking or reacting, just being aggressive either way. Using your hands, playing hard, playing fast. So you’re just kind of like, just go.”