Wisconsin, LSU, Bama, and UGA all use it. A lot of really good defense from the last few years use a ton of 3 tite. It’s not a bad scheme, and it has some definite strengths against spread offenses. It has its weaknesses too, just like any other scheme. We’re just watching the scheme be horribly coached and called.
Scheme/formation gets way too overrated by people. If you’re coached well, just about any scheme will look good. If you’re coached poorly, any scheme will look bad.
Pretty much every single 3-4 defense has their DEs line up at a 4i shade. The distinction is that traditional 3 man fronts had all3 DL responsible for two gaps, whereas the 3 tite has each DE take care of the B gap, with the nose and an ILB covering the 2 A gaps.
3 tite also doesn’t necessitate not having a LB on the LOS. Most other teams, and even Orlando before he got to UT, do have a full time B-backer who plays primarily as an edge defender. Orlando should have gone back to this, IMO.
The point of 3 tite is to control the A and B gaps to kill inside zone, which is a spread staple, so that teams couldn’t spread you out to run as effectively. We did this brilliantly in 2017 and had one of the best defenses in the country and may have had the best defense against spread offenses in the whole country that year. What we did against USC, Ok St, OU, Mizzou, etc. was really damn impressive.
Since 2017, teams have made tweaks that a good DC could counter, but Orlando hasn’t figured out how to counter teams’ changes and is now so lost that the defense is a complete and total mess with no identity.
A lot of teams have actually ditched 4 wide against because the 3 tite seems to get even better the more you spread the offense out and they’ve gone to adding heavier personnel to get better leverage/angles in the run game. OU and even KU did that to us. At this point, our defense is so poorly coached that we can’t even properly react pre-snap to motion and we’re just giving teams leverage before the snap. Not all defenses running the 3 tite have that problem.
anyways, I really don’t care what scheme our next DC uses, and I’d be fine with getting a new DC who uses 3 tite as long as he’s a good coach, but I doubt we’d go with a 3 tite DC just because coaching changes often result in hiring the opposite of the outgoing coach.
But acting like the 3 tite is a horrible scheme that could never work obfuscates the foundational issues with our defense. Plenty of good coaches make the 3 tite work extremely well. The other reason scheme isn’t that important is that even schemes that work well get figured out quickly by all the great offensive minds in the Big 12. Orlando killed it in 2017, then guys figured him out and he’s been lost trying to adjust for two straight years now. Having consistent success in the Big 12 as a DC is really fucking difficult.
It’s why I’m interested in Bateman as a DC, even though his resume isn’t quite as impressive as others. He seems to be a thought leader in countering spreads and strikes me as a guy who’s a forward thinker that would be able to counter offensive adjustments made by B12 coaches.