How to Play Defensive Line

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Jesse Shale and I'm the Head Football Coach here at Miami Christian School in Miami, Florida. In this clip I'm going to show you how to play defensive line and there's some basics you need to know no matter what position you play on the defensive line. It all starts with stance and of course, attitude. You're going to be controlling a line of scrimmage. In order to do that, you need to have the mentality that no one's going to stop you whatever you do. After that comes the stance. We're going to get a good balance position; we'll start off with a three point stances; probably the most common. Again, fifty percent on the hand, fifty percent on the legs. Another common position on the defensive line is the four-point stance. That just means the other hand goes down as well. Some people like to do this to try and tunnel especially when it's goal line situations. The last stance is the two-point stance. You see this a lot of times with the defensive end that's on the end of the defensive line. Okay. It gives a little bit better vision; might not get as good of a pick up. So you can use any one of those three. Today we'll be using the three point stance. From there with using your stance, we also have to work on next our steps. From our stance, "Go ahead", our first two steps need to be quick and have us engage whoever is trying to block us because during these first two steps, we're going to be reading the kind of play it is whether it's a run or it's a pass. So we'll do a drill with an offensive line where we'll just step, two steps quickly and engage. "Set, hit"; two steps and engage. Eyes are up, hands and arms are out because if we let them get into us, they win. As we have them out, "Go ahead and step up to the dummy; go ahead and step up to the dummy"; we are now reading of whether or not we have a run going on or a pass. So as we look at this, we look at the back field, we look at the quarterback; whoever's got the ball we say, "Is this a run, is this a pass?" If this is a run, we need to control our gap; we need to control the line and not try to get nine yards down field. We need to control this area; our responsibility right here; two or three yards within the line of scrimmage because if we don't, if we go that far; then we get taken out of the play and that's no good. If however it's not a run play, we've engage them and we see it's a pass, now you will relentless. Nobody stops you from getting into the football and you can use a rip move or a swim move or any other combination of moves to get to the quarterback. In that case he used the swim move to get to the quarterback. Nobody stops you. You need to control the line of scrimmage on the defensive line. Thanks for watching."