In an era where offense’s have become increasingly potent with nuanced vertical passing attacks, providing sound run fits remains as important as ever.

While many defensive coordinators build extensive packages to get off the field on third downs, without sound run fits, it’s tough to put opposing offenses in third and medium to long situations. After serving various roles on previous college coaching staffs, David Braun joined North Dakota State as their defensive coordinator in January 2019.

In the linked video, coach Braun outlines his nuanced strategy to creating sound run fits in the modern game, which forces coordinators to plan for not only traditional run plays, but the RPO, which has grown in popularity over the past decade.





How the Bison structure their run fits

While defensive run fits remain similar across the entire collegiate landscape, there are clear schematic differences between the run fits of a 3-4, 4-3, 3-3-5 stack, and so on. Coach Braun, who has coached in a variety of different defensive schemes, speaks to the fact that regardless of scheme, it is always a top priority to structure run fits around the strengths of the defensive personnel.

When Coach Braun first began his career as a defensive coach, over decade ago, defensive playbooks were solely tasked with diagnosing run, and building sound run fits for their players. In the modern college landscape, building sound run fits is only half of the battle, as a team could execute perfect run fits, but leave themselves completely exposed to RPO schemes.

Within Coach Braun’s scheme, he outlines three distinct styles of fitting the run, gap fits, layered fits, and funnel fits. Within these three distinct run fits, the Bison have designated assignments for players at all three levels, including the defensive lineman, linebackers, and secondary players.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ipXMfCqDoM

Benefits of maintaining sound run fits

North Dakota State’s gap fits allow their linebackers to react quickly, and fill downfield to punish ball carriers and lead blockers with violence. In their layered, flow-fall back fits, the linebackers are asked to be more instinctive, athletic playmakers, working downhill to pull offensive lineman away from their assignments, while simultaneously flowing laterally to stay clean and make tackles.

In their funneled fits, which work off of blitzes or designed stunt schemes up front, the Bison defensive scheme is working to force the ball carrier to a certain spot, and their linebackers are tasked with understanding where that fill will appear. Regardless of whether it is a gap fill, layered fill, or funnel fill, the North Dakota State linebackers must be able to diagnose their fill pre snap, and understand which category the fit falls into.

Conclusion

Coach David Braun joins the North Dakota State Bison program tasked with maintaining their lofty standard of defensive excellence, and needless to say, creating sound run fits will prove key to their future success. Whether through the use of gap fits, layered fits, or funnel fits, stopping the run is crucial to success of defense’s at any level, as offense’s that can repeatedly stay ahead of the chains have little trouble converting third downs.

Defensive coordinators at all level could learn from David Braun’s nuanced approach to creating fundamentally sound run fits, as while creating turnovers and sacks generate wins, good luck creating any if you can’t stop the run consistently.

Click Here to watch the entire video on CoachTube!