I had a very athletic defense with a very low lacrosse IQ. They understood how to get after the ball carrier, press, and stay on their bottom hand. But they did not understand off-ball team defensive concepts.
Thus, I created a few defensive concepts they could follow—regardless of whether we were in a zone, man-to-man, or even man-down.
I figured if they could follow these three simple rules, we would be great.
There were exceptions to these rules, but I tried to minimize these exceptions in order to minimize confusion.