Made famous in the 1980s, the Buddy Ryan 46 defense was all the rage in the NFL. The 1985 Chicago Bears defense is considered the greatest of all time. This fun scheme is in College Football 26.
As you can see, the alignment is interesting. It’s an eight-man box with four defensive linemen shifted to one side while all three LBs are on the other side with two on the line. The Strong Safety (SS) #46 sits behind the line side. It’s designed to shut down the run.
The formation is in the 4-3 & 4-3 Multiple defensive playbooks. It only has nine plays as shown above with seven being blitz-based. Three plays are Cover 0 beaters while the rest are Cover 1 or Cover 3 which is typical for one-high safety looks. The oddball play is Engage Eight as you send everyone but the CBs and FS to handle deep coverage.
You can have fun with this formation if you run a 4-3 defense. It has plenty of blitzing opportunities while also offering several coverage plays to handle any 1-3 WR formations. I would prioritize a great secondary that can handle man coverage. At the very least, it is a look many don’t see which would be an advantage. The alignment itself is very intimidating as it should be.
