How to Attack the 4-3 Under Defense

Part One
A common defense played either at the high school or college level is the 4-3 Under defense (as
diagrammed below)
4-3 Under

The first thought you must have when game planning any defense is how are they doing to
defend triple option? Who will we be reading when we run our plays in either direction? Your
second thought process should be: by them aligning in this fashion what are they giving up?
Third, in order to run triple option, will aligning in a different formation help us do so? Game
planning against this defense, gives you the head coach or offensive coordinator the chance to
examine this defense fully, then develop a game plan to beat it.
Teams who utilize this 4-3 Under type of look on defense will more than likely give you the 1-59 look to the field and the 3-5 look to the boundary. What they are trying to do in theory is to
outnumber you to the field to try to get you to run everything into the boundary where you will
have a numbers advantage. Any play that occurs in the middle of the field will likely force them
to play the numbers to what they perceive as your strong side.
When looking at this defense from a Flexbone Association Academy perspective, you will notice
you can run triple option to both sides. Ideally against any defense you want to run this to the 1-5
side if you can, although this particular defense does present some problems in doing so, namely
the defense technically has you outnumbered by using the shaded defender to that side. Below is
the diagram of how the count system would look against this defense.
Triple Option Count to 1-5-9 Side v. 4-3 Under

The blocking rules against this look are as follows.

QB Read #1, Pitch Off #2
B Aim at Inside Leg of PSG. Run Through LOS and Read the Action Key
PSA Block #3
PSWR Deep Defender
BSA Tail Motion / Pitch Relationship
BSWR Cut Off
PST Veer for PSLB
PSG Ace
C Scoop / Ace
BSG Scoop
BST Scoop
In theory you can still run triple to the 1-5-9 side of this defense, but they will have you
outnumbered if they play this defense well. As soon as they are able to get the ILB on that side to
escape the OTs veer release they will have you outnumbered on the perimeter. They will have
three to play all phases of your option. As soon as this occurs you have to look to get into a
different formation to be able to run triple to that side. Yes you can run it to the 3-5 side which
will be a topic of a future article on this topic. None the less, this offense is based on the triple
option and the first thing we want to be able to do is run triple option against any defensive front.
Likely the first thing we and you should look to do when confronted with this defense is to run
your plays out of Heavy (tackle over). If you run triple out of Heavy, you can assure yourself that

you can run triple to the 1-5-9 side because the ILB will be blocked no matter where he goes.
Once he is secured in the box and being blocked, you can be confident to once again run triple
option to this defense. (See Below)
Triple Option Out of Heavy to the 1-5-9 Side v. 4-3 Under

Future articles in this series will show you what plays you can run back to the 3-5 side, what
some common adjustments from the defense could be to your Heavy look and what choices you
are presented with at that point. The defense cannot fully prepare for the full arsenal of the
Flexbone Association Academy Offense. Your job as the head coach and or offensive coordinator
is to fully prepare your team to unleash the full arsenal of the offense. We were presented with an
extremely tough opponent on Friday. We went three and out twice to start the game and found
ourselves down 14-0. We kept prodding the defense until we found our weakness. We were able
to come away with a 41-38 double overtime victory over a very athletic team.