Sometimes being conventional will get you beat. Sometimes you just have to do things in a different manner to be successful.

Last season, with just players on our roster and a limited amount of size, we had to be unconventional to be successful. The development of this defense came about by having a player whose speed, intelligence and tenacity allowed us to move him around, blitz and in the process confuse our opponents’ blocking schemes and in turn control the line of scrimmage.

In this defense, the Maniac position lines up right behind the any of the three down linemen positions and blitzes one of the two closet gaps to create havoc in the opponent’s backfield. This position has no pass coverage or option responsibilities. He is simply attack.

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The defense looks like a 50 but has a lot of 60 principles to it. We are bringing a minimum of six up front and are playing a single safety on the back end of the defense.

Basic alignments

When we call one of these base alignments, this is our alignment.

In the defensive huddle, the Maniac position determines the gap responsibility for both players in the Maniac Stack, and we are bringing six defenders up field at the snap.

The linebackers and the defensive backs read and react to the actions of the offense. If the offense motions a player from one side to another, we can counter this motion by sending the Maniac to one of the other two down linemen positions. We also can stem the Maniac from one down linemen to another during the presnap.

Bringing seven

The purpose of these stunts is to aggressively attack both of the A gaps and the B and C gaps to one side of the offensive formation. This should make the decision making process of the offensive linemen speed up and in turn create mistakes on their part.

The philosophy of these stunts is to play faster and more aggressive than our opponent. We want to eliminate all passive elements in our play by constantly attacking in this manner.

Stemming

One of the main reasons to run this defense is to create confusion in opponents. We found that by stemming the Maniac across the formation, we create more confusion and in turn are able to free more defenders into our opponents’ backfield.

After the defense receives the play call from the sideline, the Maniac communicates gap assignments to his stack partner before breaking the huddle. During the presnap phase, the Maniac slides like a basketball defender from his starting position to the Maniac stack.

We do this for two reasons: Sometimes we blitz the Maniac into a gap without a stack partner to surprise and further confuse our opponent. We want him in a proper defensive stance at the snap.

Chris Booth is the head football coach at Peterstown Middle School in West Virginia. He has had four books and nine videos published by Coaches Choice – available here– and will have a youth drill book published later in 2016.