What is a dime package in football? A dime package is when a defense plays six defensive backs. With the constant advancement in the way the sport of football is played, defenses have had to make adjustments...
With the constant advancement in the way the sport of football is played, defenses have had to make adjustments to keep up with offenses.
For instance, the Indianapolis Colts and quarterback Peyton Manning have so many athletic and agile weapons on offense that it sometimes forces other teams to put their more agile and athletic defensive players on the football field to cover them.
For instance, the Indianapolis Colts and quarterback Peyton Manning have so many athletic and agile weapons on offense that it sometimes forces other teams to put their more agile and athletic defensive players on the football field to cover them.
When a defense goes to a formation that includes six defensive backs-usually the quickest and most athletic guys on defense,they are playing a dime package scheme.
Donovan Rose is entering his 15th season as a member of the Hampton University coaching staff, third as an assistant coach. An NFL defensive back for the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins of the NFL, Rose has tons of experience with dime packages.
"A dime package consists of six defensive backs," he said. "And mainly you do that when teams use four wide receivers spread out across the field. You don't want to get a mismatch with a linebacker covering a receiver. I guess today most teams would like to put the best receiver in the inside slot so they have more range. So it's basically matching up the defensive backs with the four receivers."
A four wide receiver set has become more and more common in today's game. So, Rose said that there are other key situations when a dime package will almost always be called for the defense.
"Third and long is when I would definitely say an offense would have to pass," he said. "You might be able to get away with not going with a dime package on first down because again you might play certain things. But you normally know that if a team is in a throwing personnel format, you are not going to do a lot of match up with regular personnel against them."
So who gets to decide who will be included in the dime package? "Normally you want your best four cover guys in your dime package," Rose said. "For example I have a have a safety that's a pretty good cover guard. So he is one of my defensive backs when we have a dime package or nickel package. So it's just those with the best hips and feet and that's how we try to match up."
Dime packages have become so common in today's football game that Rose said that they very rarely have to tell the players who goes into the game. But based on the situation, they already know what players should be on the field on what downs.
"As a matter of fact it's not a lot of new learning for our defensive backs because they are replacing the outside linebackers," he said. "In one of our particular packages we have a Sam (linebacker) and we call our outside guy Parrot (linebacker). So the nickel will replace the Sam and the dime replaces Parrot.
"It will be the same thing that they normally do," he added. "Except that we have a quicker faster guy and he is still responsible for the same blitzes and all that we call."
