As they installed their new defense last year, the
Indianapolis Colts emphasized it wasn’t a pure 3-4 scheme, but a hybrid.
Looking back, coach Chuck Pagano says
in 2012 Indianapolis didn’t use a lot of the sort of 3-4 scheme most of us think of at all.
“With a nose and two big defensive ends, 5-technique types, playing 2-gap?” Pagano said.
“I would say very, very, very little were we ever in a straight 2-gap. I think trying to go from a straight 4-3, which we ran for so long here and the way that our roster was set a year ago personnel-wise, it would have been asking a ton of these guys to go from the system and scheme they’d been running. It was hard enough asking the guys to make the transition and they did a great job.”
In free agency and the draft, Indianapolis added three defensive linemen (
Ricky Jean Francois,
Aubrayo Franklin and
Montori Hughes) and three outside linebackers (
Erik Walden,
Lawrence Sidbury and
Bjoern Werner). That group will help the Colts dramatically reshape their front. All of them but Werner, the first-round pick, can be labeled as 3-4 players coming in, arriving in Indianapolis with 3-4 experience.
But, Pagano said, don’t rush to drop the hybrid tag.
“
We’re not going to say, ‘Hey, we’re a 3-4 team, we’re a 4-3 team, an under team, an over team,'” Pagano said. “So it’s best to classify us as a hybrid 3-4 defense. The system that I came from [in Baltimore], the systems [defensive coordinator] Greg Manusky has been part of, they’ve all had flexibility to them."
http://www.espn.com/blog/afcsouth/post/_/id/49898/with-more-3-4-people-colts-still-hybrid
