Gains & Reductions in a 5-3 Football Defense

"Hi, I'm Billy Kidd, I'm here at Expert Village and we're going to talk about the five-three defense. In the middle here you can work games with your nose and with your middle linebacker. He can shoot here, he can shoot here or vise versa. You want to give them further confusion, then what you do, you reduce one of your defensive tackles. You take that defensive tackle and reduce him down here. Now, you've covered both the center and the guard you can work games with these guys. One way or the other it doesn't matter because you've got linebackers back here to support you and cover you and fill in the gaps. You can reduce this defensive tackle and again work games. You can reduce both of them and now you've got the center covered up. Maybe they've been hitting you hard right up here in the middle. Now you've got all three of these guys covered up here. The objective there is to drive hard and get penetration with these three allowing this linebacker here to move to where ever he needs to, to fill whatever else he needs to fill to step up and make a play and also leaves these linebackers to step up and take over these gaps."