Miami Hurricanes Defense Explained: Coach Macho Breaks Down the Bench Front, Block Destruction, and Why TFLs Are Overrated (Part 2)
14 min read
Last week, I posted Part One of an interview with @Coach Macho breaking down the back seven of Coach Hetherman's defense. This edition focuses on the front. Below is the transcript of our conversation from the CanesInSight podcast:
DMoney: We briefly mentioned the bench front Miami likes to employ — shoutout to MatchQuarters.com, they laid this all out and helped me understand it better. But you've been in there with Coach Hetherman himself at clinics. Fans are used to 3-4, 4-3, not that complicated. What is a bench front?
Coach Macho: The bench front, otherwise known as the under front, is basically your three-technique — the defensive tackle outside shade of the guard — lined up to the weak side. Stereotypically, the three-technique has always been put to the strength. But in the bench front, which we're seeing more of today, it's not a new concept, it's just got a new name. They're putting that three-technique to the weak side, which creates that natural B-gap bubble we talked about last episode.
Field, Boundary, and Personnel Matching
DMoney: Last week we talked about field and boundary. Is there a difference in how the three-technique lines up based on that?
Coach Macho: In a lot of modern systems, the strength is called to the field, to the wide side, because most teams are in some type of 4-2-5 or nickel personnel and you want that nickel to the wide side since he's more athletic. So strength is no longer just called to the formation like it was back before nickel packages, when you aligned strength based on the tight end. Now, particularly in a tempo offense lining up fast, you can call strength to the field. Your front doesn't have to move much — usually just a step this way or that — whereas your secondary has to move a lot more, the nickel potentially running across the field if the strength call changes. Some DCs set the back seven first, establish a passing strength, and let the front set based on tight ends, running backs, and so on.
DMoney: Basically matching bodies.
Coach Macho: Personnel, yeah. Some teams move their linebackers based on "quicks" — skill guys. Georgia Tech, for example, sets their coverage backer three-strong if there are three receivers to the strong side, or two-weak if there are two receivers to the boundary, since he's the coverage guy and needs to match up. You're trying to get personnel on personnel — quicks versus quicks.
DMoney: One thing I found interesting — we don't know the exact reason, but I was told the three-technique lining up weak and the defensive end opposite him aren't that different in terms of role and body. Armondo Blount, for example, could be the end opposite the three-technique or the three-technique himself. Is that unusual?
Coach Macho: That's something I'd like to learn more about myself, but if I had to guess, it has to do with wanting a guy to that side who's strong at the point of attack and can set the edge and condense it. If you've got a lighter guy to the field one-on-one with an offensive tackle taking a base block, he's going to get moved — sometimes without the team even realizing it on the field, but you see it on tape, the guy started here and ends up there. When he's moving like that, you're creating a bigger space for the B-gap defender to fill. What you want in that scenario is to condense that space, make the B gap really tight. If you've got the nickel in the run fit, you may not worry as much about the edge getting turned — you're more worried about beating up that offensive tackle to shorten the edge. Even if the ball bounces outside that end, you've got Keionte Scott out there, a linebacker running, a safety coming down. That's just me guessing at the logic, but it's something I'd look into running myself.
Getting There Post-Snap
DMoney: What are Miami's front responsibilities?
Coach Macho: One thing I didn't realize until I researched it is how much movement they do — slanting, stunting, usually attached to their blitzes. Hetherman has spoken about this: they try to get into whatever front they want post-snap. People get caught up in what things look like pre-snap. I hate that, because if someone asks me what we run, I can't tell you — it depends. I don't like getting caught up in pre-snap labels. Our defense, and Miami's, is predicated on a lot of post-snap movement. If you want to get into a five-front to stop the run, you don't have to line up in it — you can line up in your traditional even front and bring a blitzer, a nickel, a free safety, a linebacker, and turn it into a five-front post-snap. Miami does that a lot because they believe in getting their best eleven on the field. If you've got five animals on the D-line, sure, you could line all five up, but you're not surprising anybody, and one of your best eleven — probably Keionte Scott — has to come off the field. Would you rather have five D-linemen out there and sit your best player, or add your best player into the blitz to create a five-man front post-snap? That's what Miami wants to get into.
DMoney: From a fan perspective, you notice a guy standing up versus a guy with his hand down. What dictates that?
Coach Macho: It could be the front call — a more odd front will have one guy standing up. Sometimes if a lineman is going to drop into coverage, he'll be standing up, though we don't do much of that at Miami. I saw a clip of Mesidor dropping into coverage from a three-point stance, which I like because of the element of surprise — if you're always standing up before you drop, eventually people catch on. It may also just come down to what that specific D-lineman is asked to do. Hetherman used to run more stuff with guys standing up, but lately you're mostly seeing four guys with a hand in the dirt.
Guidry vs. Hetherman: Linebacker Discipline
DMoney: One of the more controversial aspects of Guidry's defense at Miami was the movement up front — coming from Marshall and the G5 level to a different level with different tools, still a lot of movement, and it clearly underachieved relative to the talent. Tyler Baron played in the NFL last year, Simeon Barrow was productive, you had Bain and Mesidor. What's different between how Guidry played the front and how Hetherman played it last year to much more success?
Coach Macho: From what I understand, even at linebacker, the previous scheme's linebackers were very aggressive downhill — see ball, get ball, hit it. Our linebackers now are taught more patience, so they're not running themselves into the wash. It sounds like before, linebackers were almost over-aggressive to the point they'd see a run, run themselves down there, get caught in the wash, and then the ball would bounce with nobody there. Now you see linebackers playing a little further back on their alignment, very patient. Georgia calls it stack-fit backers, Miami calls it a fall-back technique, we call it a rocker-step technique — the linebacker reads with patience, and if his gap closes, he falls back. The patience matters because gaps move, and with a D-line like ours, gaps don't just move, they get completely condensed because Rueben Bain is grabbing somebody by the sternum and shoving him into the gap. Before, our linebackers would run into that condensed gap and render themselves useless. Now, if the primary gap closes, they fall back to wherever the ball should bounce — same with a zone read, crashing on the back but staying alive if the quarterback pulls it. We're a little less aggressive at linebacker because we were aggressive to a fault before, but ultra-aggressive at D-line.
DMoney: Mauigoa comes to mind, especially his first year in Guidry's system — a ton of plays behind the line of scrimmage. Toure, similar profile on paper, size and length as a pass rusher, much less productive in tackles for loss, but the run defense was significantly better.
I know Hetherman wants size and length at linebacker — I don't see many sawed-off guys on the roster, maybe Ezekiel Marcelin, and Popo Aguirre transferred out. Is that profile related to what you're describing — not being able to sit and wait a tick as a smaller guy?
Coach Macho: It's not so much size as it is length — they're looking at wingspan big time. Even a guy who's 190, 195 pounds, a large wingspan often means broad shoulders and the ability to add weight without getting fat. If you look at the wingspans of recent signees, they're long guys. It helps in coverage, but bigger than that, long arms let you keep offensive linemen out of your space a lot easier than short arms do. That's not to say short guys can't be good — Denzel Perryman, Sean Spence weren't the longest or tallest guys. There are always outliers — Marcelin isn't the longest or biggest, but he does exactly what he's supposed to do, more of that sawed-off role. It's not the end-all-be-all, but they want plus athletes with ankle flexion, athleticism, guys who play like big safeties — which dates back to the Jimmy Johnson days. It's not a foolproof evaluation process, because a guy can look phenomenal and just not see things well. But from a length standpoint, it helps take on blockers and keep them out of your space.
Why Tackles for Loss Is an Overrated Stat
DMoney: Under Manny Diaz, tackles for loss was the mantra. This defense didn't rack up TFLs at that same rate, but nobody would call it less disruptive. Minnesota barely got TFLs and was still a tremendous defense. Why isn't TFL the end-all-be-all under Hetherman?
Coach Macho: I was never a fan of leaning on that stat, because it's an easy metric to boost the perception of a defense — yeah, you got tackles for loss, but you also gave up 385 rushing yards to somebody because your ends were running upfield out of their gaps. TFLs are often just a byproduct of being ultra-aggressive, and it's diminishing returns once a good offensive coordinator figures it out — runs counter, lets your ends run themselves out of the play. We saw that in the UNC game, 600 yards rushing. Our ends aren't taught to run upfield versus a puller — they're taught to go hit him right in the sternum. It's a scheme built on splash plays until someone figures it out and gashes you for 300 yards on the ground with no fallback, because that aggressive upfield approach is your only mode. Kids love playing that way because they get to pin their ears back, but it's not really sound defense.
Our defense is aggressive in how we blitz — number two in the country in blitz rate — but not to a fault up front technique-wise. I'd actually argue running through people and putting your hands in a guy's chest is more aggressive than running from contact and chasing splash plays.
DMoney: Miami finished only 25th in tackles for loss per game. Ohio State, who I thought had the best defense in the country outside of Miami, was 64th in TFLs per game, and we know how good they were up front. Pittsburgh was fifth in that category and I didn't think that defense was overwhelming against Miami at all. Some hellacious defenses — Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Texas Tech — rank high there too, so it's not that TFL teams are all bad. But it's not predictive.
Coach Macho: At the end of the day, the only number that matters is points per game.
Block Destruction and a Culture of Violence
DMoney: With Manny's defense, there was a lot of slipping and going around blockers — Leonard Taylor, some of those ends, Gilbert Frierson going under everything. It works sometimes, but here it looks like a lot more going through people. What does that emphasis look like from a coaching standpoint?
Coach Macho: Hetherman showed clips at a clinic of Miami's DBs going through people — including Xavier Lucas, Keionte Scott taking on tight ends 40 pounds heavier than him. That mindset is built in, almost an "insulted to be blocked" mentality. If you're a 200-pound safety and a 185-pound slot receiver is trying to block you on a bubble screen, you go through him, because receivers don't want to block. Going around him does him a favor and creates a bigger seam. People think about interior run gaps, but there are gaps on the perimeter too — the space between the outside receiver and the slot is a gap, and with spread offenses moving the run game to the perimeter via bubble screens, somebody's in charge of that gap. If you're always running around blockers, you're creating bigger gaps for yourself and making it an easier block. From corners to safeties, everybody on Miami's defense drills block destruction daily — the same hands-above-the-eyes technique we've talked about before applies to everybody, not just the front.
Hetherman showed a clip of a simple perimeter screen where Jakobe Thomas ran straight through the blocker and put him into the ball carrier. Receivers are catchers, not blockers — if you try to finesse a guy who's not trained to deliver blows, you're doing him a favor. But if a safety or nickel comes down and runs right through that receiver, he doesn't want to block on the next perimeter play. You're creating a mindset that takes those plays out of the playbook. Running through people is way more aggressive than blitzing or shooting gaps, in my opinion, and Miami's staff has done a great job installing that in every guy.
What we teach at MacArthur is that violence and running through people is a decision, not an ability. Jakobe Thomas wasn't the most gifted athlete, but he made violent decisions in the situations our coaches put him in. Forty speed, a vertical jump, length — those are abilities you're blessed with. The desire to run through somebody or make a tackle is a decision. If you can get eleven guys — or nine out of eleven — making that decision every play, you get what Miami's defense looks like. I don't think they put a kid on the field who won't make that decision.
DMoney: That takes me back to Miami-Alabama in Atlanta in 2021, D'Eriq King's last game before the staff got fired — I remember Mallory, an NFL tight end, getting blocked one-on-one by a corner, and I think it was Josh Jobe who knocked him back and made the tackle. I remember thinking, if our tight ends are getting knocked around by defensive backs, we're in trouble. How much of that block-destruction emphasis traces back to the Saban coaching tree, given Mario's background?
Coach Macho: Remember the point-of-contact tape we talked about a couple episodes back — that's exactly what they're looking for in recruiting. What decision are you going to make at the point of contact? Are you going to run through him or run away from him? That's not the only factor in who they recruit, but it's something they compile on tape, because it's one less thing they have to coach once the kid gets on campus.
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DMoney: We briefly mentioned the bench front Miami likes to employ — shoutout to MatchQuarters.com, they laid this all out and helped me understand it better. But you've been in there with Coach Hetherman himself at clinics. Fans are used to 3-4, 4-3, not that complicated. What is a bench front?
Coach Macho: The bench front, otherwise known as the under front, is basically your three-technique — the defensive tackle outside shade of the guard — lined up to the weak side. Stereotypically, the three-technique has always been put to the strength. But in the bench front, which we're seeing more of today, it's not a new concept, it's just got a new name. They're putting that three-technique to the weak side, which creates that natural B-gap bubble we talked about last episode.
Field, Boundary, and Personnel Matching
DMoney: Last week we talked about field and boundary. Is there a difference in how the three-technique lines up based on that?
Coach Macho: In a lot of modern systems, the strength is called to the field, to the wide side, because most teams are in some type of 4-2-5 or nickel personnel and you want that nickel to the wide side since he's more athletic. So strength is no longer just called to the formation like it was back before nickel packages, when you aligned strength based on the tight end. Now, particularly in a tempo offense lining up fast, you can call strength to the field. Your front doesn't have to move much — usually just a step this way or that — whereas your secondary has to move a lot more, the nickel potentially running across the field if the strength call changes. Some DCs set the back seven first, establish a passing strength, and let the front set based on tight ends, running backs, and so on.
DMoney: Basically matching bodies.
Coach Macho: Personnel, yeah. Some teams move their linebackers based on "quicks" — skill guys. Georgia Tech, for example, sets their coverage backer three-strong if there are three receivers to the strong side, or two-weak if there are two receivers to the boundary, since he's the coverage guy and needs to match up. You're trying to get personnel on personnel — quicks versus quicks.
DMoney: One thing I found interesting — we don't know the exact reason, but I was told the three-technique lining up weak and the defensive end opposite him aren't that different in terms of role and body. Armondo Blount, for example, could be the end opposite the three-technique or the three-technique himself. Is that unusual?
Coach Macho: That's something I'd like to learn more about myself, but if I had to guess, it has to do with wanting a guy to that side who's strong at the point of attack and can set the edge and condense it. If you've got a lighter guy to the field one-on-one with an offensive tackle taking a base block, he's going to get moved — sometimes without the team even realizing it on the field, but you see it on tape, the guy started here and ends up there. When he's moving like that, you're creating a bigger space for the B-gap defender to fill. What you want in that scenario is to condense that space, make the B gap really tight. If you've got the nickel in the run fit, you may not worry as much about the edge getting turned — you're more worried about beating up that offensive tackle to shorten the edge. Even if the ball bounces outside that end, you've got Keionte Scott out there, a linebacker running, a safety coming down. That's just me guessing at the logic, but it's something I'd look into running myself.
Getting There Post-Snap
DMoney: What are Miami's front responsibilities?
Coach Macho: One thing I didn't realize until I researched it is how much movement they do — slanting, stunting, usually attached to their blitzes. Hetherman has spoken about this: they try to get into whatever front they want post-snap. People get caught up in what things look like pre-snap. I hate that, because if someone asks me what we run, I can't tell you — it depends. I don't like getting caught up in pre-snap labels. Our defense, and Miami's, is predicated on a lot of post-snap movement. If you want to get into a five-front to stop the run, you don't have to line up in it — you can line up in your traditional even front and bring a blitzer, a nickel, a free safety, a linebacker, and turn it into a five-front post-snap. Miami does that a lot because they believe in getting their best eleven on the field. If you've got five animals on the D-line, sure, you could line all five up, but you're not surprising anybody, and one of your best eleven — probably Keionte Scott — has to come off the field. Would you rather have five D-linemen out there and sit your best player, or add your best player into the blitz to create a five-man front post-snap? That's what Miami wants to get into.
DMoney: From a fan perspective, you notice a guy standing up versus a guy with his hand down. What dictates that?
Coach Macho: It could be the front call — a more odd front will have one guy standing up. Sometimes if a lineman is going to drop into coverage, he'll be standing up, though we don't do much of that at Miami. I saw a clip of Mesidor dropping into coverage from a three-point stance, which I like because of the element of surprise — if you're always standing up before you drop, eventually people catch on. It may also just come down to what that specific D-lineman is asked to do. Hetherman used to run more stuff with guys standing up, but lately you're mostly seeing four guys with a hand in the dirt.
Guidry vs. Hetherman: Linebacker Discipline
DMoney: One of the more controversial aspects of Guidry's defense at Miami was the movement up front — coming from Marshall and the G5 level to a different level with different tools, still a lot of movement, and it clearly underachieved relative to the talent. Tyler Baron played in the NFL last year, Simeon Barrow was productive, you had Bain and Mesidor. What's different between how Guidry played the front and how Hetherman played it last year to much more success?
Coach Macho: From what I understand, even at linebacker, the previous scheme's linebackers were very aggressive downhill — see ball, get ball, hit it. Our linebackers now are taught more patience, so they're not running themselves into the wash. It sounds like before, linebackers were almost over-aggressive to the point they'd see a run, run themselves down there, get caught in the wash, and then the ball would bounce with nobody there. Now you see linebackers playing a little further back on their alignment, very patient. Georgia calls it stack-fit backers, Miami calls it a fall-back technique, we call it a rocker-step technique — the linebacker reads with patience, and if his gap closes, he falls back. The patience matters because gaps move, and with a D-line like ours, gaps don't just move, they get completely condensed because Rueben Bain is grabbing somebody by the sternum and shoving him into the gap. Before, our linebackers would run into that condensed gap and render themselves useless. Now, if the primary gap closes, they fall back to wherever the ball should bounce — same with a zone read, crashing on the back but staying alive if the quarterback pulls it. We're a little less aggressive at linebacker because we were aggressive to a fault before, but ultra-aggressive at D-line.
DMoney: Mauigoa comes to mind, especially his first year in Guidry's system — a ton of plays behind the line of scrimmage. Toure, similar profile on paper, size and length as a pass rusher, much less productive in tackles for loss, but the run defense was significantly better.
I know Hetherman wants size and length at linebacker — I don't see many sawed-off guys on the roster, maybe Ezekiel Marcelin, and Popo Aguirre transferred out. Is that profile related to what you're describing — not being able to sit and wait a tick as a smaller guy?
Coach Macho: It's not so much size as it is length — they're looking at wingspan big time. Even a guy who's 190, 195 pounds, a large wingspan often means broad shoulders and the ability to add weight without getting fat. If you look at the wingspans of recent signees, they're long guys. It helps in coverage, but bigger than that, long arms let you keep offensive linemen out of your space a lot easier than short arms do. That's not to say short guys can't be good — Denzel Perryman, Sean Spence weren't the longest or tallest guys. There are always outliers — Marcelin isn't the longest or biggest, but he does exactly what he's supposed to do, more of that sawed-off role. It's not the end-all-be-all, but they want plus athletes with ankle flexion, athleticism, guys who play like big safeties — which dates back to the Jimmy Johnson days. It's not a foolproof evaluation process, because a guy can look phenomenal and just not see things well. But from a length standpoint, it helps take on blockers and keep them out of your space.
Why Tackles for Loss Is an Overrated Stat
DMoney: Under Manny Diaz, tackles for loss was the mantra. This defense didn't rack up TFLs at that same rate, but nobody would call it less disruptive. Minnesota barely got TFLs and was still a tremendous defense. Why isn't TFL the end-all-be-all under Hetherman?
Coach Macho: I was never a fan of leaning on that stat, because it's an easy metric to boost the perception of a defense — yeah, you got tackles for loss, but you also gave up 385 rushing yards to somebody because your ends were running upfield out of their gaps. TFLs are often just a byproduct of being ultra-aggressive, and it's diminishing returns once a good offensive coordinator figures it out — runs counter, lets your ends run themselves out of the play. We saw that in the UNC game, 600 yards rushing. Our ends aren't taught to run upfield versus a puller — they're taught to go hit him right in the sternum. It's a scheme built on splash plays until someone figures it out and gashes you for 300 yards on the ground with no fallback, because that aggressive upfield approach is your only mode. Kids love playing that way because they get to pin their ears back, but it's not really sound defense.
Our defense is aggressive in how we blitz — number two in the country in blitz rate — but not to a fault up front technique-wise. I'd actually argue running through people and putting your hands in a guy's chest is more aggressive than running from contact and chasing splash plays.
DMoney: Miami finished only 25th in tackles for loss per game. Ohio State, who I thought had the best defense in the country outside of Miami, was 64th in TFLs per game, and we know how good they were up front. Pittsburgh was fifth in that category and I didn't think that defense was overwhelming against Miami at all. Some hellacious defenses — Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Texas Tech — rank high there too, so it's not that TFL teams are all bad. But it's not predictive.
Coach Macho: At the end of the day, the only number that matters is points per game.
Block Destruction and a Culture of Violence
DMoney: With Manny's defense, there was a lot of slipping and going around blockers — Leonard Taylor, some of those ends, Gilbert Frierson going under everything. It works sometimes, but here it looks like a lot more going through people. What does that emphasis look like from a coaching standpoint?
Coach Macho: Hetherman showed clips at a clinic of Miami's DBs going through people — including Xavier Lucas, Keionte Scott taking on tight ends 40 pounds heavier than him. That mindset is built in, almost an "insulted to be blocked" mentality. If you're a 200-pound safety and a 185-pound slot receiver is trying to block you on a bubble screen, you go through him, because receivers don't want to block. Going around him does him a favor and creates a bigger seam. People think about interior run gaps, but there are gaps on the perimeter too — the space between the outside receiver and the slot is a gap, and with spread offenses moving the run game to the perimeter via bubble screens, somebody's in charge of that gap. If you're always running around blockers, you're creating bigger gaps for yourself and making it an easier block. From corners to safeties, everybody on Miami's defense drills block destruction daily — the same hands-above-the-eyes technique we've talked about before applies to everybody, not just the front.
Hetherman showed a clip of a simple perimeter screen where Jakobe Thomas ran straight through the blocker and put him into the ball carrier. Receivers are catchers, not blockers — if you try to finesse a guy who's not trained to deliver blows, you're doing him a favor. But if a safety or nickel comes down and runs right through that receiver, he doesn't want to block on the next perimeter play. You're creating a mindset that takes those plays out of the playbook. Running through people is way more aggressive than blitzing or shooting gaps, in my opinion, and Miami's staff has done a great job installing that in every guy.
What we teach at MacArthur is that violence and running through people is a decision, not an ability. Jakobe Thomas wasn't the most gifted athlete, but he made violent decisions in the situations our coaches put him in. Forty speed, a vertical jump, length — those are abilities you're blessed with. The desire to run through somebody or make a tackle is a decision. If you can get eleven guys — or nine out of eleven — making that decision every play, you get what Miami's defense looks like. I don't think they put a kid on the field who won't make that decision.
DMoney: That takes me back to Miami-Alabama in Atlanta in 2021, D'Eriq King's last game before the staff got fired — I remember Mallory, an NFL tight end, getting blocked one-on-one by a corner, and I think it was Josh Jobe who knocked him back and made the tackle. I remember thinking, if our tight ends are getting knocked around by defensive backs, we're in trouble. How much of that block-destruction emphasis traces back to the Saban coaching tree, given Mario's background?
Coach Macho: Remember the point-of-contact tape we talked about a couple episodes back — that's exactly what they're looking for in recruiting. What decision are you going to make at the point of contact? Are you going to run through him or run away from him? That's not the only factor in who they recruit, but it's something they compile on tape, because it's one less thing they have to coach once the kid gets on campus.
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