Most football defenses spend most of their time in a balanced defense. Players are positioned and deployed to defend at any moment against either the run or the pass, either inside or outside. There are times, however, say when the other team is on your one yard line when you do things differently. The coach would then put virtually his entire defense at the line of scrimmage and give up the possibility that the other team will throw to the back of the end zone. Similarly if you don’t have great pass coverage, you blitz which means that you take players who would seem to be in pass coverage and surprise the other team by having them rush the quarterback instead. Most consider the blitz to be a very high risk defensive call in that it trades off a quarterback sack or hurry for the possibility of a big play up the middle or into the zone emptied by your extra pass rusher. (some would say that we're blitzing the tailback in this case instead of the quarterback who just threw long to the wide receiver)
For the last three years, the US military has been blitzing. So far, no one other than Mother Nature has run up the middle on our system of homeland security, but how vulnerable are we? Second, why would anyone call a defensive coordinator who blitzed on every play any kind of conservative?
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