Examining how Missouri's defense reflects the natural evolution of modern college football.
Techniques
Techniques are the foundation of football, and it’s impossible to have a meaningful discussion about schemes and systems without at least a rudimentary understanding of techniques. With regard to defensive fronts, there are two basic families of techniques: 2-gap and 1-gap (both of which are, to some degree, misnomers), which I’ll cover briefly so that we can move on to some of the schemes and systems we might reasonably expect to see from an Odom/Cross defense.
2-Gap Technique
In 2-gap technique, each defensive lineman (DL) and linebacker (LB) lines up directly across from (head-up on) an offensive lineman (OL) or tight end (TE) and could be responsible for either of the 2-gaps on either side of that OL or TE, depending on what that OL or TE does, like so:
In practice, however, the DL and Outside LBs’ (OLBs) job is to attack directly up the centerline of that OL or TE, engage him to prevent him from moving on to block the Inside LBs (ILBs), drive him into the backfield, read his block then fight across it to get into 1 of those 2 gaps.