Football's Eagle & Stack Defenses

Vanderlinden has been instrumental in restoring the “Linebacker U” tradition at Penn State, where he’s coached the 2005 and 2006 Bednarik Defensive Player of the Year Award winners, the 2005 Butkus Award winner, and two All-Americans. As defensive coordinator at Northwestern University from 1992 to 1996, Vanderlinden helped construct a defense that was instrumental in back-to-back Big Ten championship seasons in 1995 and 1996. Throughout his 29-year Division I coaching career, Vanderlinden has been part of four Big Ten championship teams, three Big Eight championship teams, and one National Championship team. In Football’s Stack & Eagle Defenses, Vanderlinden provides a thorough explanation of the two defenses, their base structures and adjustments, key reads and techniques, and positional responsibilities and requirements. He then shows how he melds the two systems and fine-tunes the attack to each opponent, presenting a formidable challenge to any offensive game plan.