Denver Broncos: Study the Past If You Would Define The Future
By Carl Dumler
Formations:
I thought it might be easiest to break this down by formation type and then play type. The Raiders like to run a 4-3 over/under style defense. What you will see this Sunday is many times in their base formation it will look more like 5 men on the LOS with 2 LB’s behind them. Essentially the Raiders are bringing one of the LB’s to the side they believe the play will be run and shifting the DL a bit more to try and plug up the running lanes.
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Now what I found interesting is that teams have really liked keeping the Raiders in their base formation. These LB’s are really young and/or first year players with this team. I think what they are seeing is they can take advantage of some inexperience getting the LB’s especially out of position at times. I saw quite a few teams go with some very big formations with 2 TE’s and even a FB to really attack that base formation. In fact the teams that seemed to have the best success running used a FB quite a bit.
One final note on formations is that teams really liked moving players around. Again just going back to the youth of that LB core I think teams used this as a way to confuse them of what was going on. The more information you make them have to process the more you can maybe catch them out of position or a half step behind. I look for the Broncos to use a decent number of motion plays to see how they adjust and if they can catch them out of position.