Which formation is your preferred formation to stop the run ?

Which formation is your preferred formation to stop the pass ?

Which formation is your preferred formation to stop 50%rush/50% pass ?

I suspect that somebody will reply with "it depends upon which positions your best players play" .... which is a fair answer, but I've mainly used a 4-3, although I did recently try a 3-4 as my LB's are probably as good as my DL if not better .... the 3-4 didn't seem as good against the run as the 4-3 .... maybe it's just me

Nothing beats two solid DE's. (19 speed minimum and 17 strength min, unless 5* bpos). Pressure the QB and you will get as much success as you can on the defensive side

Daudy wrote: I usually play the 3-4. The reasoning is purely because of who pressures the QB. DEs and LBs are the only players as far as I know who get pressure and sacks, with DT/NTs being quite useless. A 3-4 minimises useless players (DT/NT) and gives you one extra LB who may influence that (and I guess help out with TEs and WRs to some extent). I've also tried the 2-4 (just the DEs) in recent times. Extra CB or SF to put on a side I think my opponent would throw more to. Still got plenty of pressure on the QB, but unfortunately, the extra DB didn't seem to halt the throwing game. EDIT: On an unrelated note, I also started using the 3-4 because I had more LBs I wanted to raise in BPOS than I had DLs.

Agreed!
For the current engine, I think 3-4 is better all round defence.
4-3 is better for the run defense. But then at higher levels, the run dissappears.

viktor wrote: Gatr22 wrote: Nothing beats two solid DE's. (19 speed minimum and 17 strength min, unless 5* bpos). Pressure the QB and you will get as much success as you can on the defensive side that and 3-4/4-3? 5-3

Personally, I don't think it matters. I've played both the 3-4 and the 4-3 and I find that two solid DE's will get you the most pressure on a QB game in and game out. If you have solid LB's, you will get a fair amount of pressure, but it's not as consistent as the DE's will do in my opinion. You can check just about any of my league games and you will see quite a bit of DE pressure over the last two seasons and I parallel that with the reduction in my opponents scoring over the same period. My current DE's are 20/17 and 19/19 on the speed/strength scale and they are fairly well rounded in builds.


Edit: Pressures from my DE's over first 3 games, game 1-10, game 2-6, game 3-8. Averaging 8 pressures per game at this point and 1.3 sacks per game from the DE position