Everything A Nebraska Fan Could Possibly Want To Know About The 3-3-5
Everything A Nebraska Fan Could Possibly Want To Know About The 3-3-5
The Huskers have their third new defensive scheme in the last five years, one that remains untested in the Big Ten but also might be its future
NEWSLETTER BACK!
I know you have been missing these extremely long and tedious Husker posts hitting your inbox since the season ended. I always like to do a little football detox for a few months, but now that some of the details under the new coaching staff are solidified, it’s possible to start looking ahead to what Nebraska’s future may look like under Matt Rhule.
If you checked out of Husker football this winter, here are the big brushstrokes: Rhule hired longtime Temple and Baylor collaborator Marcus Satterfield from South Carolina to run his offense, poached hot-name defensive coordinator Tony White away from Syracuse, scored several major recruiting wins — including keeping the best in-state prospect in years from committing to Coach Prime, took all the players Georgia didn’t want from the transfer portal, and got NU back in the race for the top recruit in the 2024 class, who also happens to be a Husker legacy.
While I was and probably will remain pretty skeptical of the “CEO coach” model Rhule brings, if you’re going to go that direction, this is the offseason stuff you absolutely have to nail: leveraging your personal connections, aura of competence and likability to attract big-time assistant coach and player talent. Rhule’s gotten off to a good start; he turned a moribund recruiting class into a top-30 group filled with tons of speed, and while the offensive coordinator hire felt pretty generic, White was one of the flashier, rising-star names on the coordinator market. There still a lot for Rhule’s style to prove on the field (where this stuff actually matters), but it hasn’t been unpromising so far.
The most interesting offseason development to me is White, so that’s where I’m starting. The 44-year-old is coming off a three-year stint at Syracuse where he helped turn one of the worst Power 5 defenses in the country into a top-30 unit in total yardage in two seasons, without having access to elite talent or recruiting and in the middle of a pandemic. But he’s also interesting for his scheme: White runs the 3-3-5, a base defensive structure primarily composed of three down linemen, three linebackers directly behind them, and two overhang safeties moving around the field.
Since its development in the early ’90s, it’s been mostly a niche defense run by smaller schools, but the 3-3-5 gained prominence in the last five years with some of the sport’s biggest programs for its flexibility, aggressiveness, and ability to counter spread offensive concepts.
It’s a defense that will bring a lot of blitzes, late coverage and structure shifts, and attempt to cause chaos — something that’s likely to welcome news to Husker fans, who just got done living through the Erik Chinander “You’ll Have To Send In The National Guard To Get Me Out Of Even-Front Two-High” era. It’s also a defense that got roasted so badly the last time it was used in the Big Ten it hasn’t been attempted again in over 15 years and represents an interesting experiment in the conference’s modernization.
The History
The story behind the 3-3-5 is not quite settled, but Joe Lee Dunn is widely credited with “inventing” the defense in 1991 while coordinator at Memphis (then called Memphis State). Dunn needed an answer for the Tigers’ season opener that year against Southern California’s flexbone option attack, knowing that attempting to play the Trojans’ far-superior talent, strength, and speed straight-up would likely not go well.
Memphis State used a four-down defensive line structure as its base defense the previous season, but Dunn had experimented with three-linemen structures and amoeba-type concepts while the defensive coordinator and head coach at New Mexico in the ’80s. But for the 1991 game against the Trojans, he fully committed to the junk pitch: He took a defensive tackle off of the field and added a defensive back, shifted his nose tackle’s alignment directly over the center, and brought his strong safety and the extra DB into the box to play in overhang positions just outside the offensive tackles. The increase in overall speed and the two new bodies at the edges allowed Memphis State to generate confusion and penetration against USC’s option game, helping the Tigers, in what was essentially a buy game, hold the No. 16 Trojans to just 276 yards in a 24-10 upset in the Coliseum. The hottest defense of the 2020s had just been born.
If Dunn, who parlayed his new Memphis defense into multiple decades of SEC coordinator jobs, is the “inventor” of the scheme, the “father” of the 3-3-5 is Rocky Long.
Long worked as an assistant with Dunn at New Mexico in 1980, but in 1991 was the defensive coordinator at Oregon State. Seeking fresh ideas and a change-up after a 1-11 season for the talent-deficient Beavers, Long visited Dunn in the offseason with two of his assistants (one of whom was a young Brady Hoke) and, more or less, cribbed Dunn’s idea. He then turned it into a buzzsaw.
After taking OSU from 100th in scoring defense in 1991 to back-to-back top-40 finishes in 1994 and 1995, Long brought the system to UCLA as a coordinator in 1996. There — where he recruited a young Texan named Tony White to play linebacker — he led a defense that allowed just 21 points per game for a top-five Bruins team in 1997. He then became the head coach at New Mexico from 1998 to 2008 — where he hired a young GA named Tony White to be his linebackers coach — and won a school record 65 games. His next stint was as defensive coordinator and head coach at San Diego State from 2009 to 2019 — where he was the winningest coach in Mountain West Conference history and employed a secondary coach named Tony White for eight seasons). Since that visit to Dunn after the 1991 season, Long’s defenses at Oregon State, UCLA, New Mexico, and San Diego State have allowed a season-long average over 30 points just three times, each of which was his first season at a school installing the new scheme.1
While it was successful throughout the 2000s, the 3-3-5 was still a mostly niche defense — employed only by Long and his handful of acolytes and viewed by the bigger programs as a gimmick — but that began to change in late 2017, when Iowa State defensive coordinator Jon Heacock threw out his 4-3 playbook for the final games of the season and introduced a modified version of the scheme to the Big 12.
The Cyclones’ D had been torched in head coach Matt Campbell’s first two years at the school, struggling to stop the Air Raid offenses that permeated that conference. Iowa State was not able to recruit the impact players it needed to stop the super-spread, one-on-one-matchup-creation offenses it was facing in the Big 12 through traditional means. The program needed to find a curveball.
It discovered one by adjusting the traditional 3-3-5 stack defense, eschewing some of the heavier-front adjustments to essentially play with just three defensive linemen at all times and moving all three of its safeties to the third level, creating a “three-safety” defense.2 What emerged was an Air Raid-killing defense of (essentially) three linemen to stop the run and eight players to drop into coverage: the two corners and three linebackers playing the shorter popular route combos like Mesh and Stick, and three safeties deep to take away verticals and the popular post RPOs:
The move also gave the Cyclones more flexibility in disguising their coverages and blitzes, with six more-or-less interchangeable hybrid players up the spine of the defense who could all disguise their responsibilities pre-snap and then play almost any role post-snap.
The Iowa State defense jumped overnight in Defensive SP+ from 88th in 2017 to 28th in the first full-time year of the new scheme, and it’s finished 25th, 11th, 19th, and sixth in the metric in the years since, all with recruiting classes no one would call elite.
Coaches across the country responded to a good football innovation as they always do: by widely stealing it. The ISU variation of the 3-3-5 became popular across the Big 12 — at one point something like seven of the 10 teams in the conference were running it — including Rhule’s Baylor teams, the last of which finished 18th in Defensive SP+ in 2019. It was adapted across the FBS, including by coordinators with elite talent like Brent Venables at Clemson (now the head coach at OU) and Dave Aranda at LSU (now the head coach at Baylor).
The 3-3-5 scheme was recently in national prominence at TCU, where a major defensive turnaround helped fuel the Frogs’ in their unexpected run from seventh in the Big 12 preseason poll to the national championship game; the Horned Frogs’ 3-3-5 created 13 tackles for loss and several turnovers against Michigan in a surprising CFP semifinal win.
The Big-Picture Concept
The advantage of the 3-3-5 boils down to two words: speed and chaos.
The optimistic take behind the structure is that by removing a (probably overmatched) defensive linemen from the field and replacing them with a defensive back to be in Nickel defense full-time, you will have (a) an overall more athletic unit that can swarm to the ball from depth, (b) more pure speed at the intermediate level of the defense, making it better in pass coverage and at shooting through gaps against the run and on blitzes, and (c) a flexible and amoeba-like center of the defense, providing the coordinator more ability to disguise and adjust quickly. The added speed and flexibility are also key elements in most modern defensive gameplans to stop spread offenses, which … just about everyone is running now.
Sounds awesome, right? Why doesn’t everyone do this? In short: You’ve just taken a defensive linemen off the field.
Defensive football is largely about resource allocation; unless you are the Georgias or Alabamas of the world and have athletic advantages across the board against almost everyone you face, you can’t make one area of your defense stronger without making another weaker. You only have 11 bodies to place; if you put some of them in one spot doing one thing, it’s not possible for them to be in another doing something else. Taking a defensive linemen off the field — even a non-elite one — weakens your front and makes it easier for blockers to get to the second level. The thought is that the increased speed, backfield penetration and created confusion will make up for the vulnerabilities at the line of scrimmage, but the weaknesses are still there.
Though just because it’s a gamble doesn’t mean it’s a bad one. If you think about the schools mentioned here for running the 3-3-5 — Memphis State, Oregon State, New Mexico, San Diego State, and Iowa State — none is likely to be pulling a Jadeveon Clowney in recruiting. Or is even likely to be pulling defensive line talent that’s commensurate with its conference opponents’ offensive line talent. But what is out there in abundance for these smaller schools? Speed. Long said as much in an interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2009:
“There are a lot more smaller fast guys in this world than there are big strong guys who run fast,” Long said. “There are a lot of big strong guys, but most are offensive linemen. Defensive guys have to run the whole field.”
So part of the 3-3-5’s adoption is a program-building strategy; teams with limited recruiting resources found this the best way to play in an overarching, economic, long-term-thinking kind of way. But we’ve seen programs with elite recruiting resources like Clemson, LSU, Oklahoma and even Georgia adopt the 3-3-5 in recent years, so there have to be some genuine schematic advantages to the structure beyond smaller programs exploiting recruiting inefficiencies.
In the big picture, it boils down to this: Speed, flexibility, and chaos are increasingly valuable in the modern game. With virtually every offense in the Power 5 incorporating spread formations and RPOs3 — and the rise of 7-on-7 camps and sophisticated high school offenses pumping out better quarterback and pass catcher recruits than ever before — it makes sense defenses would try to counter by adding more athletes of their own to the field. Additionally, more flexibility with your personnel in the era of no-huddle and hyper-speed offenses allows defenses to adjust more quickly to what offenses are doing without subbing; a coordinator can pretty much only use a defensive tackle as a defensive tackle, but a hybrid linebacker/safety can be a rush end, play at the second level as a linebacker or in the flat, or drop down the field as a deep safety. And as offenses improve and are able to pick up more yardage consistently, the importance of your defense being able to force havoc plays — tackles for loss, sacks, fumbles, pass breakups or interceptions — to derail drives also increases. Your typical base 4-3 or 3-4 group still has a role in football, but it’s far more situational now.
The 3-3-5 also has some more granular advantages in just “playing football:”
Faster players can avoid blockers entirely. In a traditional, four-down surface, offensive linemen are an arms length away from your primary run defenders; it’s easier for that more-talented offensive linemen to engage, say, your 3-technique, and make their talent advantage evident. But in a penetrating defense with depth like the 3-3-5, one more of your primary run stoppers is at the second level, a faster linebacker or safety shooting into a gap. It’s hard for even the most athletic offensive linemen to get their hands on a guy who runs a 4.6 or 4.7 sprinting into a hole; the speed allows them to just run around or past that offensive linemen. Instead of getting into a one-on-one contest you’re probably going to be in a disadvantage in, you can avoid the contest entirely.
More speed on the field makes your defense better at pass coverage. Not groundbreaking here: Having more people who run fast on the field is going to help your unit match up better against receivers. You consistently see defenses that run a 3-3-5 finish higher in pass coverage metrics than their talent indicates they should.
Second-level players can do more things competently … . A defensive linemen, even an exceptionally good one, is only going to be good at playing the run and rushing the passer. But speedier, hybrid players can play the run, rush the passer, drop into coverage, or spy the quarterback on any given down — all at a competent level.
… Which gives you more ability to create confusion before the snap … . Imagine being a quarterback or center setting the protection, looking across at a 4-3, two-high-safety structure. You know the four defensive linemen are probably going to rush, the three linebackers are probably going to play coverage unless it’s a blitzing situation, and the corners and safeties are going to play coverage. Now do the same for a 3-3-5 in an Odd Stack. You know the three defensive linemen are probably going to rush and the two corners are going to play coverage, but beyond that, there are six players (probably moving around before the snap) whose roles are undefined. You know at least one of the linebackers at the second level may rush, but you don’t know which one. You know one of the two overhang “safeties” is probably going to drop into deep coverage, but you don’t know which, and you don’t know which coverage. When more spots on the field can do more potential things, you make the offense think.
… Which creates chaos. The slight increase in disguise may not sound like a lot, but more offensive confusion leads to more offensive mistakes, and more offensive mistakes leads to more more negative and chaos plays. An offensive line that can’t totally pinpoint who it’s supposed to block before the snap is going to have more busts, meaning more free runners for a sack or a tackle for loss. A quarterback who can’t totally tell who’s blitzing and who’s dropping into coverage is going to have a slower process, meaning more time for the pass rush or more pass breakups and interceptions when a throw goes into an area where an unexpected defender sits.
Keep in mind that all this is the best-case scenario. There are weaknesses with every way you want to play. Runs to the edges — especially with multiple pullers to get to the second level — are going to be harder to stop. If the offense can sort out the picture before the snap, there are some pretty big gaps in coverage and potential for big plays. But you hope you can make a tradeoff with those yards where you’re forcing the offense into a lot of mistakes that derail drives.
The Position Groups
While it’s called the “3-3-5,” in actuality the defense more often functions like a 3-5-3, with three down defensive linemen rushing the passer and playing the run; five linebackers or strong safeties typically at the second level playing the run, blitzing, or playing short coverage, and two corners and a depth-safety taking deep coverage.
It’s an unorthodox setup that requires some unorthodox personnel and asks them to do some unorthodox things. Keep in mind that I’m using generalizations in this section; the “3-3-5” can mean a million different setups or personnels in 2023.
Defensive Line
The defensive line in the 3-3-5 is going to do a lot of your dirty work; they’re put in disadvantageous alignments and asked to do jobs that won’t generate a lot of stats or notice from casual fans. But without them eating the garbage, the defense doesn’t work.
The D-line personnel needed for a 3-3-5 is not totally dissimilar from what’s required for Nebraska’s previous base defense, the 3-4, though it asks them to play in some different ways and have some slightly different traits.4 It also can be very flexible depending on who is on your roster.
Like in the 3-4 and basically any three-man front, at the center of the defensive line in the 3-3-5 is your typical big, space-eating NOSE TACKLE.5
This player’s main job is, really, “don’t get moved.” They have to be strong enough to hold their ground from a 0 Technique position (lined directly across from the center) or a shade 1 Technique (just to the outside shoulder of the center) where they’re going to get hit with a cascade of double teams from big offensive guards the entire game. The nose will have the responsibility of filling one of the A gaps to either side of the center, but the biggest part of their role is eating blockers to keep interior offensive linemen from getting to the linebackers, allowing the second-level players to stay clean and make the tackles.
Immovability is a priority at this spot, so you want this to be a strong, big player. A typical three-man front nose tackle in a Power 5 conference is typically topping 310 or 320 pounds, but in the 3-3-5 you’ll often see teams trade that size for explosiveness.6 Syracuse’s nose tackle last year was 270 pounds, and the Orange used him as essentially a third defensive end, routinely sending him on stunts to outside gaps. One of the better 3-3-5 noses of the last five years was Ray Lima, who was listed at 305 pounds on Iowa State’s roster. So there’s some flexibility here.
The only real typical big-boy nose tackle body on NU’s roster is junior Nash Hutmacher (6’4, 330), who played the role last year when Nebraska was in its base 3-4 personnel. I would imagine that’s the route Nebraska chooses to go? Also factoring in could be junior Ty Robinson (6’6, 310), who played some nose early in his Husker career, and senior Stephon Wynn Jr. (6’3, 305), though they’re probably better fits at defensive end. If Robinson and Wynn are playing end, I would not be shocked if NU targeted a nose tackle in the post-spring portal season for some depth.
Aligned outside the nose tackle are two DEFENSIVE ENDS.
Also as in the 3-4, 3-3-5 defensive ends have to be big enough to hold up against the run when lined up in a 5 technique (directly over the offensive tackle) or a 4i (just inside the tackles) and when they slide inside on four-man fronts. But there are some slight differences at this spot: The 3-4 Nebraska primarily ran under Chinander was a “two-gap” defense, meaning defensive linemen were responsible for filling two gaps along the offensive line. The ends’ technique in the old scheme was less about getting into the backfield and more about holding up the offensive linemen at the point of attack and then reading and filling the proper hole depending on where the ball would go.
But it’s the opposite in the 3-3-5, a “one-gap” defense; the defenders know which gap they are responsible for before the snap and can shoot into it right away. When people talk about the “aggressiveness” of the 3-3-5, this is what they mean. In Nebraska’s last system, players were reading at the snap and then reacting. In this new one-gap defense, they’re just aggressively going.
The ends are also going to be asked to do more stunting and twisting than in the last defense; they’ll often be looping around other players into gaps other than where they lined up or setting picks for the other players to do the same.
What does that mean for personnel? Your end players still need to be big enough to fight off the run and slide inside, but whereas the 3-4 typically looked for bigger, 280-to-300-pound players to hold their ground for longer time, the 3-3-5 ends need to have more quick-twitch ability to explode into their single gaps or on stunts. They also need have more pure one-on-one pass-rushing chops than 3-4 ends, as they’re going to be asked to rush the passer from disadvantageous techniques. So Nebraska will probably be looking to trade some of the size it currently has at end on its roster into slightly more athleticism.
But there’s room for flexibility. Some notable 3-3-5 defensive ends you may have heard recently include Will McDonald IV (6’3, 240) of Iowa State and Felix Anudike-Uzomah (6’4, 260) of Kansas State, both of whom are likely top 100 draft picks and are on the smaller side of what you’re looking for at the position. But one of the best players in Rhule’s tenure at Baylor was James Lynch, who won Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year and was a first-team All-American from the 3-3-5 end spot at 6’4, 295. You can play to your roster’s strengths.
Nebraska is pretty stocked with the 3-4 size ends, including Robinson, Wynn Jr., and sophomores Ru’Quan Buckley (6’6, 290) and Elijah Jeudy (6’3, 300) (a transfer from Florida). But the recruiting class has some more diverse player types with Vincent Carroll-Jackson (6’5, 270) and Riley Van Poppel (6’5, 275) being on the heavier end and freshman Princewill Umanmielen (6’4, 230) and transfer Kai Wallin (6’5, 235) looking more like the speed rusher-types. Rocky Long-tree 3-3-5 coaches play quite a bit of four-man front alignments and even in some old playbooks designate one of the ends as a “boundary tackle,” so I wonder if the plan is for one end spot on the field to be the bigger, physical mauler who slides inside to a 3 technique when NU is playing even-front looks and for the other to be the more edge-y speed rusher.
Linebackers
The responsibilities of the linebackers in a 3-3-5 are sort of an amalgamation of the 3-4 and the 4-3; two primarily in-the-box players have roles similar to the 3-4 inside linebackers, with a third playing mostly out of the box in the hybrid “Will” spot like in the 4-3.
At the middle of the second level of the 3-3-5 is the MIKE LINEBACKER (the “M” in Mike stands for “Middle”). This player will usually be lined up directly across from the offensive center and be responsible for the other A gap not assigned to the Nose Tackle. The Mike will rarely, if ever, be asked to leave the box, and their primary coverage responsibilities will be middle-of-the-field short zones or backs and H tight end/fullback-type players in man. They’ll also be a key blitzer, especially on inside stunts and loops.
Because of the weight of their role in the run game and because they won’t often be asked to cover out wide in space, you want this player to be your most physical run defender, a thumper who’s willing to stick their nose into the line of scrimmage and is big and strong enough to take on and shed offensive linemen. One of the more well-known 3-3-5 Mikes of recent years is Clemson’s James Skalski (6’0, 230), who ran a 4.72 at the combine and looked like this:
Skalski represent the “neck roll/psychopath/lateral agility of an Amtrak train” archetype of this player, but there is room for some flexibility, here, too. Speed on penetration and blitzing can also make a good 3-3-5 Mike, as long as they still have the anchor to hold up against the run.
To the strength of the formation in the 3-3-5 will be the SAM LINEBACKER7 (The “S” in Sam stands for “strength” … do you see where this is going?). The “strength” of the formation is almost always the side the tight end is toward, so you’ll often see the Sam lined straight up over the tight end. This player will also often shift down onto the line of scrimmage as an end when you shift into four-man fronts. The Sam will generally have the B gap (between the offensive guard and tackle) or the C gap (between the tackle and the tight end) depending on which the defensive end to his side is assigned.
The Sam is also going to be the player in this defense who blitzes the most, so you want this to be your best pass rusher. But they also have to be good in space, as they’re going to have to occasionally drop to cover flats and hook/curl zones outside of the box and take the tight end in man coverage. And if an offense comes out of in an empty or detached trips formation, they’re also going to probably be aligned outside of the box.
You could make the case this position, a sort of defensive end/linebacker hybrid, is the most important and versatile (and interesting) player in this defense: They have to be able to take on blockers and stuff runs in the box like the Mike, they have to be comfortable working on the line of scrimmage like an end in an even front, they have to have juice and bend as a pass rusher, and they have to be able to play in space against receivers and tight ends. Finding a player who does all of those things well is going to be difficult.
If the responsibilities and alignments of the Mike and Sam in the 3-3-5 are similar to the roles of the inside linebackers in a 3-4, the WILL LINEBACKER in the 3-3-5 more resembles the Will in a 4-3 scheme.
In a traditional 3-3-5, the Will will almost always be to the weak side of the offensive formation (The “W” in “Will” … OK I’m not doing another one of these parentheticals again) and often be split out of the box to the side of the slot receiver in an open doubles or trips formations. White seemed to not be doing this, however; his Will’s seemed to hew pretty closely to the box no matter the offensive alignment.
Like the Sam, they’ll mostly be responsible for the B or C gap, but they’ll probably have to attack it further outside the box and. This player also has to be stronger than the Mike and Sam in coverage, but they’ll also be a huge part of your weak-side blitz package, so you want them to be strong pass rushers, as well. I also saw some snaps where White had his Will walked down to play as a defensive linemen, which I’m not sure is something that will happen with NU’s personnel.
Nebraska should be pretty set here at two linebacker spots. Nick Henrich (6’3, 230) played the Mike in the 3-4 and seems like a shoo-in to play it again here, and Luke Reimer (6’1, 225) has a skillset that’s a pretty good match for the Will spot (though he’s probably a little undersized to be playing on the front).
That leaves the Sam. Nebraska doesn’t have a super translatable position group from the old defense to handle this spot. From spring media reports, it sounds like a lot of the outside linebackers in the old defense (the spots manned by departed Garrett Nelson and Caleb Tannor the last couple years and likely to be inherited by Jimari Butler and Blaise Gunnerson) are being moved to this role, which it seems like they’re calling the “Jack.” For what it’s worth, when NU played some 3-3-5 last year, Nelson was often the standup Sam, but that was a different staff. My bet is the starter is Butler (6’5, 245), but it’s something I’ll be watching for in the spring game. It sounds like Georgia transfer MJ Sherman (6’3, 250, Georgia) was also working there, too.
One final thing on all the linebackers: They all have to be great tacklers. In this defense — with the defensive line largely getting swallowed up by blocks — your second level needs to bring people down. If a ball-carrier gets past it, they’re going to run for a while.
Safeties
If the Sam isn’t the player with the hardest job in the 3-3-5, then it belongs to the two overhang safeties.
One of these players in the Long-tree 3-3-5 is typically designated the BOX SAFETY and the other some fun, badass name; White called it the ROVER at Syracuse. These are players that need similar skillsets and are asked to hold similar responsibilities; these will be the two pieces used most in disguise and secondary rotation, so they have to have a good understanding of what each defense call is trying to accomplish in the big picture. They’ll both also be used as the players who fill in the box on run fits as seventh and eighth defenders against heavy looks. They also just have the hardest job post-snap: They have to be able to play the run like linebackers while also being able to play in pass coverage like safeties. That’s a tough ask.
But there are some subtle differences in the positions. In the Long 3-3-5 tree, the Rover is traditionally more of a linebacker-type who is going to mostly play in the middle of the defense and is not often asked to cover deep; the Rover is often bracketed by the other two safeties to ensure they're never isolated one-on-one with receivers down the field. While the Rover will play a lot in the middle of the defense at depth, they're also more likely to line up to the strength of the formation, as they often cover the tight end. This player will also spend plenty of time rotating down into the box to play as a seventh run defender or as a blitzer. Syracuse's Rover last season was 6'4, 220-pound Justin Barron.8
But the Box Safety is probably closer to your traditional Nickel corner, a bigger secondary player who can cover receivers well and will be assigned more downfield coverages but also has some physicality and chops in run defense and as a packaged blitzer. The Box Safety is more likely to end up being to the multi-receiver side than the Rover, playing at linebacker depth or a little deeper but not as deep as the Free Safety, and they’ll often play further outside the box than the Rover. But they’ll also be asked to rotate down to play inside the tackles, too, against heavy offensive formations or in pressure packages.
But still: very similar players! Both are going to be asked to play a lot of hash and flat zone coverages, take tight ends and slot receivers in man coverage, and asked to play the run from depth and width.
I’m not totally sure who’s playing what in the spring, but Myles Farmer (6’3, 200), Isaac Gifford (6’1, 200), and Javin Wright (6’5, 215) all played box safety snaps for NU last year, so I would think those would be the best candidates for these two spots.9 Gage Stenger (6’2, 190), Phalen Sanford (5’11, 200), Javier Morton (6’2, 195), DeShon Singleton (6’3, 205), and Koby Bretz (6’2, 210) all could be depth at both of these spots.
Last is the FREE SAFETY. While NU’s split-safety looks under Chinander often made both deep safeties a big part of the run fit, in the Long-tree 3-3-5, the FS is, in a way, a third corner. They’ll be primarily pass-first player tasked with almost exclusively playing deep-field zones in Cover 2, 3, and 4 while putting a top on the defense and cleaning up people’s messes in Cover 1. Coverage ability is the key here.
The free safety will be rolled down into the box or asked to blitz on occasion, but, generally, if they are making a tackle on a run, it’s because someone else messed up. I would expect Marques Buford Jr. to probably be the starter here, as he was NU’s best coverage safety last year, but he suffered a major injury Week 12 of last season and may not be ready for the start of 2023. I’m not totally sure how the corner/safety designations are going with the new staff, but I could see Omar Brown (6’1, 195), Noa Pola-Gates (6’0, 180), and Florida transfer Corey Collier (6’1, 180) being in the spot if Buford can’t go.
Corners
If the spine of the 3-3-5 is an unorthodox structure the cornerbacks are just … mostly normal?
As with any outside cornerback in any scheme, coverage ability is the most desirable quality. You’ll take weakness against the run or poor tackling if the CB can lock down a receiver one-on-one or is a playmaker when the ball is in the air. That comes above all else.
With that being said, though, Nebraska will want physical outside corners willing to stick their nose into the running game because of the amount of outside zone-based offenses they face in the Big Ten every year. I also expect NU under White to run a lot of Cover 2, which keeps the corners close to the line of scrimmage in hard flat coverage and asks them to make tackles on outside runs or set the edge. Corner blitzes with the overhang safeties replacing are used in the blitz package, too. Syracuse didn’t play a ton of press, but I’m not sure if that was a choice of necessity of preference.
Nebraska has two returning starting corners in senior Quinton Newsome (6’1, 180) and sophomore Malcolm Hartzog (5’9, 170). I’d expect both to retain their roles, with senior Braxton Clark (6’4, 195), junior Tommi Hill (6’0, 200), and sophomore Tamon Lynum (6’2, 180) providing depth.
The Fronts
When you think of the 3-3-5, you’re probably thinking of this:
Three linemen head-up over the center and tackles, three linebackers stacked behind, and a five-man coverage shell arrayed around it. This is the STACK alignment, and a three-man front with a 0 nose and two 4i- or 5-aligned tackles is called a TITE front. The “3-3-5” in the popular imagination looks like this, and a team running the Iowa State variation of the defense will probably be in this front/alignment most of the time as they counter the Air Raid.
But, while the Long-tree coaches do play this look plenty, especially when they want to drop eight players into pass coverage, the Stack is only one of the alignments in their toolbox, and they’re just as likely to use their flexible personnel (specifically the Rover and Box Safety) to get into more traditional, old-school fronts as the situation warrants:
These are the exact same personnel but now playing four-man Over (the 3 technique aligned to the guard to the strength of the offensive formation10 ) and Under fronts (the 3 technique aligned over the guard opposite the strength of the formation). These two looks are almost indistinguishable from a 4-3 Over or Under front:
and all that had to happen is rolling one linebacker down and adjusting the three safeties.
This is where having the Rover be a more linebacker-type player is useful; if the Sam is a hybrid defensive end/linebacker and the Rover is a hybrid linebacker/safety, the Rover can fill in as the Sam’s role is adjusted. That’s a good way to think about how the fronts in this defense work and the Rover’s role as a whole: As linebackers are sent to the line of scrimmage, the Rover (and then the Box Safety) backfill in their roles behind them.
Based on watching a little Syracuse film and knowing how Big Ten offenses operate, I also expect NU to play quite a bit of Bear Front by pinching the defensive ends in a bit and bringing two of the linebackers to the edges to occupy all five offensive linemen, then walking the Rover and Box Safety to the second level:
This is a two-man shell over the top, so the Box Safety is staying deep, but there were also variations on the Bear where the BS came in as a linebacker to create a 5-3 shell.
I also saw Syracuse line up quite a bit in “overload” concepts, where they place the Nose Tackle directly over the center to keep them from sliding and then outnumber the offensive linemen to one side of the formation to hopefully get a free rusher (this side is three defensive linemen to the weak side against two blockers:
They did this more as a pressure look on third downs, but it was still a big part of how they seemed to want to line up in the games I watched.
The beauty of the 3-3-5 is that you can also get to any of these fronts without having to line up in them before the snap.
Here, Syracuse aligns in the basic odd-front, three-man setup. But after the snap, one of the linebackers fires into the place of where a 3 technique would be in an Under front, while the Nose widens in the opposite direction:
What looked like a normal 3-3 surface to the offensive line before the snap has become a 4-2 Under just after the snap, without ever aligning that way.
The same can be done to make turn an even-front surface into a Bear look:
Here, Boston College is in heavy personnel on an early down. The Orange are pre-snap in what looks like a 4-2 Over front, which should be an advantage for the offense: seven blockers on just six players in the box. But at the snap, everyone along the line shifts a gap to the left, while the Rover, initially aligned as a safety, rolls into the box just before the snap to create what was essentially a Bear look:
Now the math is different: five along the line, plus two linebackers is seven defenders to take away the extra gap the offense had.
When I mention “flexibility” or “disguise” with the 3-3-5 earlier in the post, those are vague terms, but this is what I mean specifically: Because more of your players can do different things, you’re (a) able to play in more ways without subbing, and (b) present a different look after the snap than you did before it.
The Coverages
I’m planning a post later on some more specifics of what White actually likes to run, but from some brief film study, Syracuse’s primary coverage seemed to be Cover 3. It was able get there from the pretty obvious three-high structure but also liked to rotate down from two-high into the shell:
Here the Rover is lined up as a deep safety11, but rotates down after the snap. The walked-up linebacker drops out as a spy against an athletic quarterback, but there are only three-rushers.
One thing to note is that Syracuse checked into Cover 3 almost every time I saw someone come out in a trips formation against them. That’s something I’ll dig into later.
White also seemed to be running a lot of Cover 1, especially when bringing pressure:
In the above clip, the Orange are bringing a six-man pressure with all of the defensive line and linebackers. Everyone else is locked up in man coverage from various spots, except for the Free Safety, the deepest aligned player, standing in-between the hashes, who is playing a deep zone to cover for any mistakes.
And he also ran quite a big of Cover 2:
I’m planning to get more into the specifics of what he’s running and the different looks he’s running it from at a later date, but this post is already long enough.
The Fit In The Big Ten And At Nebraska
While many Big 10 teams have utilized some version of a 3-3-5 look as a pressure package or passing-down/nickel look — including Nebraska late in last season after its coordinator switch — by my recollection, only one Big Ten team has tried to run a 3-3-5 as its base personnel in the 2000s: Rich Rodriguez during his tenure at Michigan. It … didn’t go well. Rodriguez’s successor, Brady Hoke — who, if you remember, was on the Oregon State trip with Rocky Long where they lifted the 3-3-5 from Joe Lee Dunn and who also ran it in his previous job as San Diego State’s coach — even bailed on the structure upon reaching the Big Ten to run a 4-3.
So, Nebraska is about to adopt a scheme that got so steamrolled so badly by its conference it hasn’t been attempted again in almost 15 years. Seems problematic!
But on my ETERNAL OPTIMISM grind, I would argue the time is ripe for a 3-3-5 return, both because of the modernization of football in that period and because of what it can do specifically for Nebraska with its current resources and stature.
While you hope the 3-3-5’s speed should make up for its weaknesses along the front, it has some schematic vulnerabilities and is probably going to struggle against offenses that utilize heavy personnel and a lot of downhill, pull-heavy gap run schemes (see, TCU giving up 500+ yards and 45 points to Michigan). That would … seem to be a problem in the conference of Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes.
But the “ground and pound” reputation of the Big Ten has been misleading for a while now: Ohio State is running a spread passing offense based around getting its 11 personnel freaks the ball in space as much as possible. Penn State’s scheme is built around heavy linebacker-conflict RPO usage. Wisconsin will be switching from the Pro-I it’s run since the Stone Age to the Art Briles-esque “Veer and Shoot” we’ve seen recently at places like Tennessee, Ole Miss and North Carolina. Teams like Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois use a lot of heavy personnel and definitely are trying to run you over with a freight train, but they’re more and more doing it out of spread formations and utilizing lots of RPOs, which the modern 3-3-5 is built to match up with. The last remaining team in the conference that really wants to line up in 21 personnel and play “Big Ten football” is Iowa, which just produced one of the worst Power 5 offense by advanced stats of the 2000s.
So, while the Big Ten will probably always be a league built around physicality and strength, teams across the conference are playing a fairly different version of football than they did in the 3-3-5’s last appearance. Think about how much football as a whole has changed, even in the last 13 years. Your defense doesn’t need to line up with four linemen over 280 pounds to avoid getting blown off the ball by most Big Ten offenses anymore; having guys who can be fast, physical and smart in space is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity.
And from a big-picture program view, I also think the 3-3-5 fits well with Nebraska’s current place in the college football hierarchy and how it wants to win.
While “nEBrAsKa’S CaN’T rEcRUiT AnYMoRe” is one of the more annoying and uninformed talking points that gets trotted out by national writers when NU is struggling, the program is not ever going to recruit at the top 10 level it takes to play toe-to-toe with the elites of the sport. And it’s also likely not going to be pulling in the individual blue-chip recruits who so often prove to be program-defining players. But what it can do with its insane facilities and the stupid-rich, Succession-level amount of money in its football budget — especially with the increasing importance of NIL — is to consistently sign top-20 classes. And within those top-20 classes, it can take advantage of the “speed” inefficiency the 3-3-5 allows you to exploit; NU can’t sign five-star defensive linemen like Will Anderson or Jalen Carter, but it can dominate the market for the dozen or so quality safety/linebacker hybrids that seem to show up in the 500-mile radius every year.
But if the goal for this program is still contending for division and Big Ten titles with a season of national relevance every so often when the right elements come together, getting those top 20 classes is only one of the needed parts of the equation.
That’s where I think the specific benefits of the scheme come in. Good — but not great — recruiting is not going to push Nebraska to that point on its own. Good — but not great — recruiting plus a system that breaks the orthodoxy of its conference, is difficult to prepare for, and causes a lot of chaos events will let it punch above its weight and reach those higher aspirations. It’s not dissimilar from NU’s general program strategy the last time it was nationally relevant; the 3-3-5 could be considered the “triple option” of defensive schemes. Team like Iowa State and Kansas State have shown in recent years this curveball of a scheme can help you play above your recruiting on defense, and it’s not difficult to imagine Nebraska, with a top-20 recruiting ceiling compared to those programs top-40 ceilings, taking it even a slight step up from there. It’s, more or less, what TCU just did.
As with basically everything in football and in this newsletter … there’s a chance I’m wrong and it just doesn’t work. Minnesota could come out with its nine offensive linemen in Week 1 and start a run of Big Ten teams just ragdolling this thing into oblivion. It could sign the wrong recruits, suffer the wrong injuries, catch the wrong breaks or not have the patience necessary to pull it off, etc. It is a risk! But from a process perspective, it seems to me to make sense.
If you’re still with me after that novel-length post, thanks, as always, for reading. How are you feeling about the 3-3-5? Think it’s a smart decision? Think it’s going to get ripped limb from limb? Have a question or correction? Always happy to get comments and will try to respond as best I can.
Long’s next job will be … replacing White as Syracuse’s defensive coordinator.
Some analysts have nicknamed Iowa State’s variation of the 3-3-5 the “3-3-3.”
The sport’s most staid and storied “three yards and a cloud of dust” programs like Michigan, Ohio State, and Alabama are running schemes that would be unrecognizable to them even 10 years ago.
NU primarily spent most of the last two years playing an even-front 2-4-5 Nickel look on the majority of its snaps, even if its “base” defense was still designated the 3-4.
Rocky Long-tree 3-3-5 coaches will probably call this the “Field Tackle” in their playbook, but they are essentially a nose tackle in normal-people football parlance.
Keep in mind that this defense was specifically developed because of teams’ inability to recruit big defensive linemen.
Nebraska, from media reports, appears to be calling this player the “Jack”.
Maybe the best “Rover” ever is … NFL Hall of Fame linebacker Brian Urlacher. Urlacher was a junior when Long arrived at New Mexico. Long adjusted the position a bit so that Urlacher played the “Lobo-back” (his UNM name for the Rover). Urlacher was better at running the Tampa 2 hole coverage from the spot than maybe anyone in football history, but he was also a demon against the run, too: He finished his UNM career with 442 tackles with only two years as a starter — he had 178 in his junior season alone. He also caught six touchdowns in a part time role as a wide receiver and returned kicks and punts for the Lobos. What a sick player!)
Ernest Hausmann, who transferred to Michigan in the offseason, would have been a great Rover … I’m not salty …
The tackle here is in more of a 4i alignment, but it’s essentially doing the same thing as the 3 tech: controlling the B gap.
Remember … you don’t want that guy lined up deep, so if he’s aligned there pre-snap, expect something weird.
Just absurdly good offseason content.
I loved this and thought it was great. However I would be remiss to not mention that literally every defense is effectively the same anymore. It’s all 3 true d lineman and 1 swing guy, two true linebackers, and 5 defensive backs. Whether it’s a nickel, 3-3-5, 3-4-4, it really doesn’t matter.