How to Stay at Home as a Defensive End

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Sean Hobson, for Expert Village. One important thing when talking about a good defensive end is to make sure he stays at home on plays that go the opposite direction. If the defensive guy gets into a bad habit of pursuing down the line real quickly and he sees a running back and wants to be the guy to chase this play down all the time to make a tackle, eventually, he'll get burned. Somebody will see that that defensive end is leaving his position and they'll start sending guys to that side as a reverse or the quarterback will start popping the ball out and coming back. We want to make sure he keys off of this offensive lineman. When this offensive lineman fires off he'll be going upfield to hit a linebacker because we're not really concerned about this guy if our play is going in the opposite direction. If you have a running back going this way, this guy will key off of that lineman and he'll start pursuing this way. He's not going come too far because if the running back sees him coming he might give the ball off in a reverse where the receiver will be coming back in this direction. If this guy got too far inside then our reverse will be able to come back around and he won't be able to adjust to make that tackle. So, it's very important for our defensive ends to stay at home, stay outside, so nothing can be reversed back to this side and beat us for a big gain down the sideline."