Shadowing.

[Marcus]

Shadowing is a very useful skill... but only on a player with 7 plus movement - since normally the opponent's dodgers are fast moving catchers.


This is why I generally use my shadowers as passrushers. Kick deep and charge down the quarterback. Throwers generally aren't the fastest players on the team and if you can get a couple of block, dodge, sidestep, shadowing GRs marking a quarterback can really put a crimp in your opponent's drive.

I imagine Marcus doesn't spend much time receiving.


If you can score every time you kick to the opponent you'll never lose - QED - since every time you score you kick to your opponent again. That's why I generally build my teams for D.

Marcus

[Dangerous Dave]

I agree with all that... however, if you have Block, Dodge, Shadowing, Side Step Gutters, I certainly wouldn't leave my thrower unprotected - A couple of players with tackle should do the trick.


Dave

[Marcus]

Keeping some good tackling players back defending the thrower has been de riguer in our league since people started falling foul of my passrushing game.

There is of course the tradeoff that the more players you hold back to defend the thrower, the less you have screening off the line. That means more players the kicking team can run in behind your line and isolate the thrower with.

There's also the point that you can only blitz one of those gutter runners off (cf: chet's axiom about having pairs of everything) And with blodge/sidestep it ain't the easiest thing in the world.

Admittedly tho, I get a lot fewer turnovers when people actually bother to defend their own backfield off the kickoff =)

Marcus