“Techniques” are numbers that tell defenders on the line of scrimmage* where to line up and what to do at the snap. The greater the number of your technique, the farther you are from the center; even numbers tend to put defenders (at least partially) head-up on blockers, while odd numbers tend to put them (at least partially) in gaps. Those partial alignments are called “shades.” Just about every defense, kids to pros, uses a version of the technique system, which goes all the way back to Bear Bryant:
As defenses have gotten more complicated with shades and the like, techniques have gotten more detailed:
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