Employing TCU's Bullets Thunder 0 Cop Blitz

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the 4-2-5/4-4 defense, defenses in general. I recently ran across a post over at Blitzolgy about TCU’s Bullets Thunder 0 Cop Concept. Oneback has already described in his guide the basic calls TCU uses on defense out of their 4-2-5:

BULLETS - linebackers (Mike / Sam) blitzes
SMOKES - Safeties (Strong/Weak) edge blitzes
DOGS - Safeties & linebacker blitzes



The Bullets call, that involves the blitzing of both inside LBs through they're respective gaps, A of the Sam backer and B for the Mac backer. You can also send them into different gaps if you see fit. I.E.: The call “BULLETS A” would call for the Linebackers to blitz their respective “A” Gaps.



The next call is Thunder which tells the the Safety to the TE side that he’ll be blitzing from the outside. The next part of the call is 0 Cop. 0 is for the coverage, meaning all out man coverage with no safety help and the Cop Tag is a call used to tell the DE that he’ll have the TE in man to man coveage. TCU has very athletic DEs that allow them to be this creative on their blitzes. If you dont have athletic DEs I suggest using the LB Pass Rush package.




You can create this concept out of a number of looks from the 4-2-5, 4-3 and 4-4. I like to use for this concept out of Nickel Strong - Under Smoke.