Personnel & Purpose of the 5-3 Football Defense

The game of gridiron football is an icon of Americanism. From its roots in early versions of rugby football brought over the Atlantic from England, football takes it place alongside baseball as the most American of sports. Though its name is somewhat deceptive, and in fact logically unsound, football is the most widely watched sport in the United States, and its championship game, whose name is not known only to those who have been living on the moon for the last fifty years, the super bowl is the most watched television event in the United States. The sport is the caretaker of the Greatest Game Ever Played, the NFL championship game from 1958, which hosted 15 then future hall of famers and historic names such as Johnny Unitas, and continues to delight audiences with its mix of complex strategy and physical play.

In this free video series, our expert Billy Kidd will show you how to run a 5-3 defense in American Football. He will talk to you about personnel and purpose, he will talk about gap assignments and filling gaps, and he will talk about the objectives of the 5-3 defense. Billy will also teach about gains, creating confusion, and stunts before teaching you how to read the offense in your 5-3 defense.

"Hi I'm Billy Kidd, I'm here at Expert Village, we're going to talk about the 5-3 defense. Here were going to talk about the 5-3 defense. When we're talking about offensive or defensive football and using the chalkboard, we use what we call X's and O's, or letters, to dictate the personnel we are going to be playing. We'll draw the offense up as we dictate the center, we've got an offensive guard, offensive tackle, a tight end, offensive guard, offensive tackle, and tight end, a quarterback. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 personnel, and we've got 3 running backs. On the defensive side talking about the 5-3, we've got a defensive tackle, defensive end, a defensive tackle and defensive end, a linebacker and a linebacker. The 5-3 defense is primarily because you know whoever you're playing does nothing but run the football. They've already decided either because you've scouted them or because of the league and the associations that you play in, that it's primarily a running league and they are going to bunch everybody up in there and try and run the football, so you're going to bunch everybody up there and meet them man on man and stop them."