How do you defend pick and rub concepts in 11v11 football?
In 11v11 football you defend pick and rub concepts with banjo and switch rules that are called before the snap for a specific alignment, because at this size the rubs come out of stacks and bunches designed to make man coverage impossible. The rule is simple and the discipline is not: the inside defender takes whoever goes inside and the outside defender takes whoever goes outside, whatever the receivers did before that. Zone remains the answer that needs no rules at all.
Nobody is standing here. Your CB is the closest defender to this spot and he is 4 yards away from it when the ball arrives. That is not a beaten defender, it is an empty one, and no amount of effort closes that gap after the throw.
Why the sweep keeps working in 11v11
The formation tells you it is coming, which no flag format does
Stacks and bunches exist to create legal traffic, and they are visible before the snap. That means the answer can be a call rather than a reaction, and a defense that has a bunch rule is never surprised by a rub. No five-player formation gives you that warning.
Banjo is a rule about direction, not about people
Two defenders over a stack do not each take a receiver. One takes whoever breaks inside and one takes whoever breaks outside, decided after the release. It removes the crossing entirely because nobody is ever following a man through another man.
You have the bodies to bracket the bunch instead
Eleven defenders means three over a three-receiver bunch is affordable, which converts the whole thing into a numbers problem the offense cannot win. That is not available at any size where spare defenders do not exist.
Your defenders keep running into each other and it is not their fault
Two receivers cross, two defenders follow them, and the defenders collide while the receivers do not. That is the concept working exactly as designed. It is legal in almost every rulebook, and telling your players to try harder is asking them to solve geometry with effort.
Switch, do not chase
The answer is for the two defenders to trade receivers at the crossing point rather than both fighting through it. Whoever comes out on your side is yours. It is one sentence, it needs no vocabulary, and it converts the whole concept into two ordinary matchups.
Zone defeats it without anybody having to communicate
A defender responsible for a patch of grass never follows a receiver into traffic, so there is nothing to collide with. That is why the simplest answer to a rub-heavy team at youth level is often to stop playing man rather than to get better at playing it.
The same concept, covered
Same offense, same alignment, same defenders. One man's landmark is the whole difference.
- What happenedOpen11v11: the defense plays it wrong and the receiver is uncovered.
Your CB goes where the play tells him to go rather than where the ball is going. By the time he reads it the throw is already gone.
- The fixCovered11v11: the same defender takes the receiver's landing spot instead.
He takes the spot the concept is throwing to, and gets there before the ball. Nothing about his speed changed.
Cover the spot, not the man. At this age a defender who chases a receiver arrives behind him every time. A defender who stands on the spot the play is throwing to makes the quarterback find somewhere else, which is usually nowhere.
Three answers, and what each one costs
Banjo the stack
Where it excelsIn and out, decided by the release. Neither defender ever crosses the other's face, so there is nothing for the rub to catch, and the rule is one sentence long.
Exposed · the combinationBoth defenders are reading rather than covering for the first half-second, and a route that breaks late exploits exactly that hesitation. It also hands the offense the choice of which defender ends up where.
Zone it and cover grass
Where it excelsNo rules, no reads, no collisions. A bunch running crossers into a zone is three receivers running into a patch of defenders who are already standing where they need to be.
Exposed · the flatBunch formations compress your zone defenders toward each other, which leaves the field outside the bunch wide. The quick throw to the single receiver on the back side is the answer to it.
Press the point man of the bunch
Where it excelsDisrupting the front receiver breaks the timing for everybody behind him, because a bunch works on all three arriving together. One jam ruins the whole picture.
Exposed · deepA missed jam on the point of a bunch releases three receivers into a defense that is now out of position, and there is a lot of open field behind a compressed formation.
Zone against bunch, banjo against a two-man stack
Match the answer to the picture rather than picking one. Three receivers tight together is too many combinations for a rule, so cover grass and let them run into you. Two receivers stacked is exactly what banjo was invented for and the rule holds. Say which one you are in when you see the formation, before the snap, out loud.
What a good offense does about it
They motion out of the bunch
Motion from a bunch is usually an attempt to make you declare. Do not chase it with the whole call: keep the same rule for whoever is left and let the man in motion be covered by whoever he runs to, which is a rule your defense already has.
Your banjo defenders both take the inside receiver
The rule has been taught as a description rather than as a direction. Say it as two words each: you have in, you have out. A defender who has been given a direction does not have to work out what happened.
When this is the wrong fix
When your players cannot switch cleanly
A switch that half happens is worse than no switch: both defenders take the same receiver and the other is uncovered completely. If it is not practised to the point of being boring, play zone instead and come back to it next season.
When switching is what they want
A good coach runs a rub to force a switch and then puts his best receiver on the defender he knows will end up on him. If the same mismatch keeps appearing after a crossing route, they are ahead of you and the answer is zone rather than a better switch.
Take it to your team
Draw your plays in the free play designer, collect them in the football playbook maker, and print wristband play cards so every player knows them come Saturday.
Draw it for your own team
Open the designer at 11v11, put your defenders where this page says, and print it so everybody shows up on Saturday knowing the same thing.
Open the free play designerRelated questions
How do you defend pick and rub concepts in 11v11 football?
What is a banjo call in football?
Why is zone better against bunch formations?
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Coach Ray Carroll
Coaches 5v5 flag football from kindergarten through 7th grade in San Mateo and San Carlos, California, and built RC Football to design, teach and print the plays his own teams run.