Nascar

Defense

also: NASCAR package · rocket package · lightning

A pass-rush personnel package: the four best rushers on the field at once, regardless of their usual positions, used when everybody knows a pass is coming.

Defense

Nascar, the package

A substitution package that puts the defense's best pass rushers on the field simultaneously, without regard to whether they are ends, tackles or edge linebackers in the base defense. The name is a speed joke and other programs use their own name for the same idea.

It is called in situations where the defense has decided run defense no longer matters: long yardage, two-minute, and clear passing downs. The trade is stated by the personnel itself, since a front of four edge-type players is usually poor against an interior run, which is why offenses check to a draw or a quarterback run against it.

Worth understanding as a personnel decision rather than a scheme one. Nothing about the coverage or the rush pattern is implied by the word, only who is on the field.

Also calledNASCAR package
Not to be confused withdime, zone blitz

A note on how the term is used

Like joker and rover, this is program vocabulary rather than standard terminology. Hearing it tells you a defense has a speed-rush package, not what that package does.

Where you will hear it

  • pass-rush packages at high school level and above

By level

Roster-limited below varsity. A program needs four genuinely good rushers before the package means anything, and most do not have them.

Related terms