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3rd grade boys, 6 v 6. Last season, our defensive coach ran a man-to-man defense. This season, we have a new team, but about 5 returning from the old team. The defensive coach is unable to participate, so I scoured this board looking for zone defense ideas. I chose the 3-2-1 as it seemed to fit the skills of the boys, as well as seemed to be easy to explain. We had about 4 practices, but focused on defense for 1 of the practices, and run a gauntlet drill at 2 of them. Last season, we had 0 picks and finished the season 0-6. Yesterday, we began the new season (admittedly against a first time team) with our new defense. We won 35-18 with 4 interceptions, one of them resulting in a TD. One of the interceptions, oddly enough, was on a PAT by the other team. Our kid took it the length of the field and the refs gave us one point. We are allowed to rush one rusher from a marker 10 yards out. I would occasionally move my NT back from over center and have him blitz. That was reasonably effective in order to give different looks, especially on obvious passing downs. I made one crucial, dumb defensive coaching mistake. One time, I sent in my very fast safety to blitz. I held back the LBs to cover. The QB threw a perfect pass over everyone to a kid who got behind the defense with no safety to cover. Kid caught the ball and took it home. The biggest problem so far is getting the ends (the outside guys on the line) to force any runners to turn inside. They get sucked in, or they allow the kid to get outside of them. The other problem to deal with are parents on the sidelines: "Joey, move up, move up", when I want them to cover their zone. All in all, though, a pretty good start. Our next game though is against a team that has been together since Kindergarten.