As the defensive coordinator at the University of Hawaii last season, Dave Aranda would get his weekly dose of read zone schemes from teams such as the University of Nevada and Utah State University, which is ironically where he’ll call the defensive shots this season. So, he’d get frustrated at times watching offenses pre-determine who they were reading in the option game based on pre-snap alignment. Aranda, who runs a 4-3 base quarters package used to play single-gap control defense and wind up getting gashed for big yardage on zone wind backs because of a numbers advantage on the offense because of his two-safety look.
"No matter how you draw it up, the offense will have four guys at the point of attack: the QB, the tackle, the guard and the running back. If you're a one gap type team and you're playing it that way, whether your have a five and a 1-tech or a 3- and a 5-tech it really doesn't matter because it's four on three," says Aranda. "You have two DL and one LB. The DE gets the shaft because he has to play two aspects: the dive, the bend of the dive to the inside out to the QB. You're cheating a guy. An easy answer is to use someone from outside the box and bring him inside the box. The problem with that is the bubble screens and the now screens that are thrown by these offenses. Teams will read the LB that is walked out. If that LB steps up and reads run on the play action to handle QB on zone read. Once the QB sees him step up, he disconnects from the RB and throws the slant over the top of his head. It's a tough play (diagram 1). I found you needed to get four and four and equate the numbers post-snap."