[GameBreaker35]

Well, you said you're not completely clueless, but there may be some details that your missing that can make you more effective. I play in competitive simulation 32 team league, and finished this year with the best defense in all major categories, on route to a Superbowl, for whatever its worth.

First with the basics, ask yourself a few questions:

1.) What kind of team am I going to be? 43, 34, Multiple? I prefer to base out of the 43 Under/Over for example against normal sets.

2.) Does my personnel match what I want out of my defense? If not, consider your options in FA and the draft, or change philosophy.

3.) How do I want to defend two-back sets? I prefer to present the 43 Under against two back sets to defend the weak-side runs and establish edge pressure against any naked bootleg action. Typically, I will also present an eight man from front here - unless they threaten me vertically by alignment or personnel.

4.) How do I want to defend one back sets? I typically settle on the 43 Over to discourage gap blocking type runs and will again use an eight man front unless challenged vertically. I will also use the 46 Bear and 43 Over Plus as change ups.

5.) How do I want to defend Shotgun sets? This one is based on personnel; however, will usually match personnel using my sub-packages Nickel and Dime Normal unless down and distance come into play. The big thing here is: How do you want to defend trip alignments. This is critical. Most money plays in this game come out of some sort of Gun-Trips formation, and it will involve flood patterns across the weak-side of the passing strength. The key here is to study your opponents tendency before the game is ever played. When they get into formations that are familiar, you should already be ready to attack the play.

6.) How do I want to defend Empty sets? Same as before.

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It all starts with having a plan ready for when situation arise during games. There's a lot of other in-game tools available to you that people often forget about on defense as well. There's spotlighting of receivers, base align, man align, show blitz, and the most important of which, is defensive hot routes. The biggest thing is not letting the opposing QB come to the line and have a good pre-snap read. We want to make life hard on the QB - not easy. Don't get too vanilla with your looks. If you're in Cover 3, base align every now and again to present a 2-High look pre-snap. The QB will begin to realize that he will need to look to the safeties during his initial drop back, and this will allow you to sneak some overload blitzs while he is busy trying to determine where to go with the ball.

I have some more specific things that you can do in specific situations that I could go into further, but I figured some of that might not be relevant as a first response.