there were 39 pass attempts that i counted.

11 i couldn’t tell what the coverage was, either the camera was too shallow or the pass was too quick for anyone to drop. 1 was a goalline pass. that leaves 27 passes:

man - 8
two - 3
three - 5
four - 11

Most of the cover three situations (at least 4) were because of a trips alignment or zone blitz. You can’t really run cover 4 against trips, and 3 is an easy coverage to zone blitz from. That makes sense. It still gives cushion on the outside.

Most of the man came early. We only ran it twice in the 4th quarter.

Ditto the cover 2. We ran it once in the 4th.

I went back and looked at the trips formations vs. the balanced ones. Against trips, cover 4 doesn’t really work as well and isn’t as much of an option. So obviously, you’d expect to see more of a difference:

Trips:
Man - 4
Two - 1
Three - 3 (with 2 zone blitzes)
Four - 2

Balanced:
Man - 3
Two - 2
Three - 3 (2 zone blitzes)
Four - 9

Those are the 27 I could tell. 53% of the time, in a balance formation, we ran cover 4. In the fourth quarter, that number rose to 75%.

So what was the point of my post? That we give up too much cushion on the corner because our safeties play so aggressively. I made specific mention of the fourth quarter. We ran cover two ONCE, and still had our CBs like 9 years off.

We did run more variety than I caught at the game. I should not have said we don’t run anything else. Hyperbole, thy name is ChrisApplewhite.

Overall, we ran hard corners, hypothetically, 3 times all game (not including run plays, of course), and once in the fourth. From watching our last three games, when we go cover two, we still have our corners play a little too deep.

Again, I stand by my point.

And even when we play cover 2, as evidenced by the last two games, we still give up too much cushion on the outside.

I stand by my point.

Bring on some more football discussion!!

The defense in this post is often described with something like cover 2 switch. So the little spat here is probably due to terminology.

That said, we do seem to run this switch defense a whole lot, and we hardly ever run a cover 2. You can tell because our corners are always turning and running with the WRs on deep patterns. If it was cover 2, they would bump those guys and then let them go.

The only one of those deep balls where we might have been playing cover 2 was the last TD to Kelly. Palmer and Jackson both stayed in the short zone until Jackson saw the ball going deep. I don’t know which one of them screwed up there.

Hook’em