Coupeville Sports

The football doctor will see you now.

Son of a coach and younger brother of a legendary quarterback, Noah Roehl grew up on the football practice field at Coupeville High School, building forts out of blocking pads and surviving off of stray orange wedges.

Later, he would go on to be a star Wolf player himself, before transitioning into his current role as a high school assistant coach in Seattle. These are his thoughts:

In many sports, speed, the ability of an athlete to move from one spot to the next more quickly than their opponent, is a huge factor to success.[i]  Athletes at the professional level in almost all sports spend years, even decades trying to increase and maintain speed.

For this article I am defining speed as the time it takes a person to travel from point A to point B,[ii] whether that is by running straight ahead, moving laterally, tumbling on the ground or jumping through the air; the actual mechanics of moving are inconsequential.

The reason speed is so important in most sports, and specifically in football, is that it is very hard to coach.

As a coach you can get athletes to recognize a defense, exploit a weakness and run effective plays, but in the end, the athlete still has to be fast enough to make all of those pieces come together.

This unique situation is what Coupeville football Defensive Coordinator Dustin Vanvelkinburgh has found himself in.

Coupeville’s football team has a unique collection of speed.[iii]So how have Dustin and first year head coach Tony Maggio decided to harness this speed?Well, they looked around the NFL and college to see what other teams have done with a lot of speed and settled on a defense called the 4-2-5.

The 4-2-5 defense has its roots in the NFL, commonly (and often incorrectly[iv]) referred to as the nickel defense.But the true 4-2-5 is a hybrid of the 4-3 defense, which in turn was a hybrid of the 4-4.

I know most moms are wondering if we are still talking about football or math at this point, so here is how a defense breaks down.

The first number usually indicates the number of defensive linemen — those are the guys down in a three point stance on the line of scrimmage.The next number refers to the amount of linebackers on the field — these are the players standing right behind the defensive linemen.And finally, the last number typically refers to the number of defensive backs (fast guys) on the field — these are the guys relied upon to help cover the pass.

Each position is strategically placed on the field to stop different aspects of the offense.Defensive linemen and linebackers are primarily in place to stop running plays and some of the short pass plays while the defensive backs primarily cover pass plays and assist in tackles if a running back gets through the previous two layers of defense.Typically the defensive backs tend to be the faster positions on the field because the position is required to cover more space on the field than the other positions.

Now, the term “Nickel Defense” refers to the number of defensive backs a team has in the game; these are the positions designed to protect against the pass.

What is unique about the 4-2-5[v] vs other defenses that incorporate five defensive backs, is that the 4-2-5 relies on “hybrid”[vi][vii] players.These “hybrid” players posses some of the run stopping skills of a linebacker while also having the speed and ability to cover the pass, like a defensive back[viii], and are commonly referred to as strong safeties.

At the NFL and college level most teams have enough depth on their rosters that when a defensive coach wants an additional defensive back in the game they can sub the players and move in and out of a “Nickel” defense, basically going from four defensive backs to five.But as you move away from the NFL and away from some of the really big college programs[ix] you start to see teams and programs that don’t necessarily have the depth or type of players to sub in and out of “Nickle” coverage.

The creative solution that teams have started to utilize is to employ the “Nickle” coverage as the base defense, thus not requiring the coach to sub players when he thinks the offense is going to pass the ball.

The most striking program to employ this strategy is Texas Christian University.The Horned Frogs out of Texas have been a BCS buster the past eight seasons using a 4-2-5 defense[x][xi], very similar to what Coupeville has installed this season.

TCU has been running the 4-2-5 as an exclusive defensive package for the better part of the last nine years.Instead of subbing guys on passing downs, TCU just gets the fastest guys they can at those five spots and coaches them up so they can play every down.[xii]

These “hybrid” players are now on the field for almost every play, and instead of being limited by slower linebacker, TCU can use speed to attack the offense from different angles and different methods because they have a faster group of guys on the field.

While Coupeville isn’t yet knocking down the doors of Kings, ATM and Lakewood, the blueprint for success is being drawn.Coupeville’s defense has a lot of speed.They have an abundance of defensive backs and “hybrid” type players which has allowed Coupeville to take a few lessons from TCU.

Utilizing three safeties, two strong safeties and one free safety, coach Vanvelkinburgh can rotate between many looks and play a variety of coverages (man and zones).This ability is aided by Coupeville’s large and skilled defensive line, and has allowed Vanvelkinburgh to try to dictate what the offense will do by using blitzes from various places and positions to try to get to the quarterback, but also maintain coverage down field.

The Coupeville defense follows six simple rules:

1)      Swarm to the ball – 11 guys on defense all get to the ball carrier

2)      Punish the ball carriers and offensive players – stay physical and wear them down

3)      Stop the Run – Force teams to pass

4)      Don’t allow big plays – keep things in front of the defense and rally to the ball

5)      Create Turnovers – rip, strip and punch the ball loose

6)      Don’t flinch – give 100% effort at all times

With a lot of young fast players, like Jake Tumblin and Bryce Fleming, what Vanvelkinburgh and Maggio are going to need to do is harness that speed and unleash their defense on the rest of the Cascade Conference. 

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