Defending Trips Bunch

Trips-bunch formations can ruin a defense’s day. They’re especially effective on 3rd down, in the red zone, or in other man-coverage situations. This is because they can lead to traffic that defenders have to fight through as well as free releases for at least one receiver.

Defenses need to communicate well and have multiple ways of handling this formation. The key is to take away the offense’s ability to create traffic and confusion.

Below are some of the better examples I’ve seen in recent years.

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This first play comes from a 2017 Wild Card playoff game between the Rams and Falcons and shows the defense accounting for trips-bunch with true man-to-man coverage:

A defense might play this way to ensure specific matchups or to avoid the confusion and communication issues that can occur as a result of switch releases.

What they have to worry about most in this type of coverage is avoiding the picks and rubs that can yield a wide-open receiver with room to run. The Falcons addressed that here by having their cornerbacks align at three different levels. This allowed them to match up cleanly to L.A.’s receivers after the snap:

The only receiver that Jared Goff had open was Cooper Kupp on a shallow crosser. Not only was this route short of the first-down marker, but cornerback Desmond Trufant had a clear path to Kupp and was able to close quickly due to Atlanta’s initial alignment:

By the time Goff was ready to deliver this ball, Trufant was all over Kupp and in perfect position to knock it down for an incompletion:

Another way to defend trips bunch is for defenders to play the receivers’ releases instead of locking on to a man pre-snap. This can help neutralize the effect of picks and rubs.

The example below is from a 2020 game between the Packers and Buccaneers. Tampa would respond to the trips-bunch with their DBs playing at 3 separate levels, similar to what the Falcons did on the play above: