Beating the Blitz

There is no better answer for the blitz than a quarterback who knows what he’s doing, and more importantly, knows what the defense is doing.

That knowledge base comes from experience, for which there is no substitute. This is one reason why teams will often throw their rookie quarterbacks to the wolves immediately and let them learn on the fly. The more snaps a quarterback can see from the field, the more answers he’ll have for various situations in the future. This is especially true against blitzes.

It’s probably the most extreme case to use Tom Brady as an example, but I’m going to do it here anyway. The man saw some things on the football field in his 20+ years in the NFL. That didn’t mean he never got fooled by a defensive look. It just meant he rarely got fooled by the same look twice.

Below, you can see a great example of how Brady got beat by a blitz, filed it away in the catalogue of defenses he’d seen in his head, and then successfully countered when he saw the same look during a critical situation later in the same game.