The 4-2-5 Normal defense is played in NCAA college football and high school football is intended to be an eight man front defense along the lines of the 4-4. The primary difference between the 4-2-5 and 4-4 defense is that you’re replacing the two outside linebackers in the 4-4 with strong safety type players, thus you’re able to defend passing formations much better as you have five defensive backs in the game. The two strong safeties also allows the defense to easily get into multiple eight man fronts if they so desired.
Technically you could call it a nickel defense since it’s using five defensive backs on the field. The secondary consists of two cornerbacks, one free safety, and two strong safety types who’ll usually play closer to the line of scrimmage as linebackers. When mentioning a base nickel defense you’re usually referring to a defense with three cornerbacks and two safeties. There are numerous teams that will be using the 4-2-5 Normal defense as their base defensive scheme this upcoming season.
Strengths
- Does an excellent job at defending the spread offense.
- A diverse defensive formation that can handle both the run and pass.
- Easily can be adjusted to defend 2×2 and 3×1 formations.
- Keeps a minimum of 6 defenders in the box at all times.
- Gives the offense a false impression of 8-9 defenders committed to stopping the run.
- Play 1 and 2 Gap control schemes.
- Creates confusion for pass protection schemes as the offense doesn’t know who could be coming.
- Several variations of the 4-2-5 defense to keep the offense off balanced.
- Easy to Disguise coverage’s.
Weaknesses
- Need safeties who not only tackle, but also drop back in pass coverage.
A list NCAA Football 12 4-2-5 Sets
- Normal
- Okie Across
- Over
- Under
- Under Slide
Key Plays
- Bullets Dbl A
- Cover 2 Man Man
- Double Outs
- Rover Dog 2
- Smokes
Football Video Game Quick Tip:
For those of you who play Madden and are wanting to run a version of the 4-2-5 Normal, consider subbing in strong safeties in at the outside linebacker positions when running the 4-4 defense. This will give you form of the 4-2-5 Normal defense that will allow you to add more speed to your pass defense and still be able to defend the run.
Good writeup, Paul!
I actually use Gary Patterson’s style in Madden out of the 4-2-5 Under formation, found in the Cleveland and New York Giants’ defensive playbooks. By swapping in a hybrid SS/NB as the down and distance dictates, you can fairly easily manipulate a formation that everyone overlooks into one heck of a juggernaut.
It’s something that I have found a lot of interesting looks out of, and I plan on running it religiously the rest of the Madden year. My only wish is that there were other 4-2-5 formations in Madden. I also understand that more is expected of NFL nickelbacks in a day of passing offenses, so an extra SS isn’t needed all that much. Many teams have ditched their Sam/Will backer for a nickelback. The Bears are a team that do very often with DJ Moore subbing for Nick Roach. The Giants have more of the Gary Patterson style of blitzing out of their 4-2-5 (Cop and Bullets, for example).
One thing I want to see more of in NCAA/Madden is defensive line stunting. Patterson utlizes defensive line stunts to generate great pressure with only 5 blitzers, at times. And you’ll often see Bullets with man islands behind it, and a double twist in front of it called by TCU on Saturdays. It’s very good.
Zan, thanks. I am a big fan of 4-2-5 in NCAA, so I figured I would something about it on the site.
Kobra