Breakdown Sports

The defense du jour against modern spread attacks is what is commonly known as the “Tite” front. Over the past couple years, you’ve seen Big 12 teams run it increasingly often, and SEC and other teams start to incorporate variants of the look more often as well as they begin to deal with an increasing number of spread formations. But what exactly is the “Tite” front? Like any front, say, a 4-3 Under, it isn’t necessarily any one thing. You can have single-high, two-high, or even three-high safeties. You can attach your overhangs differently. And with Tite, it may even mean different box numbers. And of course, there are multiple techniques that can be employed along the way. This post is a primer to the Tite front. At the end, I’ll link some of the better articles that get into greater depth for those interested, but for now, we need to understand the basics, so that we can understand how to attack it.

Cover 2 is often one of the first zone defenses taught in football. This is because it requires minimal movement, allowing defenders to focus on the “zone” aspect of the coverage. Just as important, because of the minimal movement and design of the coverage, it lends naturally to being a great run defense as all eyes are often focused on the backfield. Once seen as the go-to defense in football, it has fallen out of favor in the past few decades with the development of more advanced and complicated vertical passing attacks. However, recently it has seen somewhat of a resurgence with the “trap” concept, and it remains a favorite near the goal line. For completeness, man under will be treated in a different article.

Back in January, Ian Boyd dropped the disrespect alarm on many within the Spartan fan base when he seemed to indicated that the Michigan State run of success may be coming to an end. Review: Has the window closed for Michigan State I don't necessary believe that Boyd was necessary calling the demise of MSU football with his article. Nonetheless, it's understandable for MSU fans, who have been hearing that same, repetitive rallying cry for nearly a decade, to attempt to shoot him down. In the process of doing so though, I believe some pertinent points have been missed. In this post I'll discuss my thoughts on Boyd's article, where I agree with him, and where I'd like to expand on his thoughts.

Illinois didn’t have a lot of success against the Ohio State defense, but they did have a really nice run-pass option (RPO, aka package play) that they went to in order to take advantage of the Buckeye’s base Cover 4 defense.

We talked previously about the variety of Cover 4 coverages that allow defenses to mix up their look and reaction to routes while still playing what is essentially the same basic scheme. This time, I’m going to move away a bit from what is done post snap and look at how a defense can be benefitted by pre-snap positioning; that is: leverage and depth. In this way, you can combat some of the offense’s strengths while still maintaining your base scheme. This article will focus on the position of the front 7 and what they can do to benefit the coverage scheme.

Upon hiring Chris Ash away from Iowa State, OSU switched from primarily a Cover 6 look to a press Cover 4 base. The change was part of a plan to put more pressure on the offense, from the front 7 to the back 4. And there is no bigger push in college football than the implementation of press coverage. All coaches have their tweaks to the technique based on leverage, offensive formation, play call, and player abilities. After the jump, Chris Ash goes into detail from his ISU days about Man Press technique.

At its most basic, Cover 4 plays as a four deep, three under defense; and at its most aggressive, it plays almost identically to a tight Cover 0. To the average fan, Cover 4 may sound like a passive, prevent-type defense, while to the more nuanced fan, it may seem like an aggressive coverage that can bring 9 defenders into the box. The truth is that it is all those things and more. One of the greatest powers of the Cover 4 is its ability to adjust, the intricacies, and tweaks that can be made to the same look to both confuse the offense, and remain fundamentally sound. In this article, we’re going to look at the basic elements of coverage in a Cover 4 defense.

Even with an offense that has sputtered lately in Northwestern, there are still some really cool intricacies and chess matches that can be found from game-to-game. In my opinion, most casual fans get caught up with “is it working or not?” Obviously, in the end, that’s ultimately what’s important. But the issue that I believe catches fans is when they try to figure out “Why?” Often, they converge to mostly meaningless catch-phrases such as “predictable”, “not innovative”, “stupid” and the like. The idea being that they see, they actually see with their own two eyes, a team execute a certain thing with ease and they assume “it must be the play design.” That’s because you can see the play design, you can see it develop in front of you and you can kind of understand it and when it works, obviously it works. Compounding matters may be video games, where many casual fans can call their own plays and feel some sort of ability to do what this guy getting paid a bunch of money can do. But ...

Northwestern threw a lot of cover 4 at Nebraska in an effort to get bodies down into the run game. One thing that Cover 4 allows is for the LBs to flow a bit more freely and quickly to the initial look, because the safety takes care of backside cutbacks . What we saw in the Nebraska vs Northwestern game was Northwestern initially having success bottling up Nebraska because of this. The safety crashing down from depth allows him to defend either the QB keep or the RB cutting back across the grain. Later on, however, we saw Nebraska adjust some of their play calls to take advantage of this scheme. In this post, we’ll look at just that.

Minnesota’s run defense played pretty well against Northwestern. Mostly utilizing Cover 4 , they were able to maintain numbers advantage inside the box for most of the game. When they did get gashed though, it was mostly because the backside was slow in pursuit. In Cover 4, the LBs, particularly the backside LB, must flow fast. If he reads the play immediately, he can tend to read “cloudy/clear” and shoot off the butt of a pulling OL or beat a zone blocking OL across his face and blow up the play in the backfield. If he can’t do that, he must scrape over the top quickly to get to the playside.

Over at the PAC 12 Website, Rich Neuheisal had a very cool segment with regards to how Oregon found and exploited a flaw in MSU's scheme. Take a look:

The aspect of MSU’s defense that gets the most focus is undoubtedly the CB position. Fans and media folk love to point out the fact that the CBs are often left on an island by themselves, remaining hip-to-hip with their receiver from the snap of the football to the play is dead. But it is my opinion that CB may not even be the most important position in the Spartans Cover 4 secondary. In fact, it is the safeties that are consistently taxed mentally, pulled between run support and coverage. While CBs receiver the brunt of the bait, the safeties are left with the largest quandary. It has long been my opinion that, at the heart of attacking MSU’s defense, lies attacking the safeties. Unfortunately for teams facing the Spartans, Michigan State’s safety rarely make that an easy task either.

Last time we looked at how Michigan attempted to stop Nebraska’s speed option attack with a Cover 1 . Not finding much success, the very next week, facing Northwestern, they turned to more two-high coverages in the face of the Kain Colter lead spread attack. In this post, we’ll look at how Michigan utilized a two-high man under and Cover 4 to defend the speed option. How the Speed Option is Run Be it under center or from the shotgun, the speed option is essentially the same. The offensive line, in the case of most modern day offenses, will run their standard outside zone blocking scheme. The one difference is that the offense will bypass the defense’s EMOL toward the play and instead work to the 2 nd level. The defender left free with be the option defender, the player that the QB will read to determine if he will keep the ball and run it himself or pitch the ball to his RB. Here is how it looks: Northwestern will also occasionally run a true triple option from th...

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT MAIZE N BREW Introduction Last time we discussed MSU's front 7 scheme . Their front 7 sets up a lot of their success, but that success is also tied to their favorite coverage: a variation of the Cover 4 . State is pretty much aggressive at every defensive position on the field, and this steps from how the back 7 play together in coverage. In this part, we are going to look at how MSU's cover 4 differs from most, how they run their cover 4, and how it all ties together to make one of the better defensive units in the nation. Cover 4 By looking at this play diagrammed, it looks like it's some sort of soft, prevent defense. The way MSU plays it is anything but. Still, most teams that run a cover 4 play a little softer on the outside, but still is far from a cover 4. In fact, the cover 4 plays more like a man coverage than a zone coverage, how so and why, well let's look at a table that describes some of the defensive responsibilities. P...

PREVIEW By most measures, the Wildcats appear to have a pretty good defense. According to advanced statistics they fall back into the average range. After watching them on film, I tend to lean toward the latter mark. While they can force offenses into so unfortunate down and distances, there appear to be some good ways for Michigan to get preferred match ups if they continue to execute in a manner similar to the OSU game. In this article, we will look at how Kansas State plays their defense and how Michigan can take advantage of some of KSU's weaknesses. *     *     *     *     *     *     * 3x1 Formations When KSU goes to their nickel package, they line up against 3x1 formations (3 receivers to one side; 1 to the other) in a distinct way that isolates their CBs. The OLB will carry the #3 up to the FS. He will also try to prevent any crossing route underneath. But this opens up everything to the outside and puts...

I've compiled a decent amount of work focused on these two teams this year. For those interested in some of the X's and O's and schematic things. Here's the links: Ohio State Thought I'd start a thread for those interested in what OSU runs, and that sort of thing. I should have two more posts come out today/tomorrow sometime, which I will link on here. I'll give a brief breakdown of each link so you know what you're clicking before you click it. Hopefully this is alright, and if you have any questions for me in regards to breaking things down, feel free to ask. Apologize as well for linking previews, but again, it helps me track readership better than I can on SBNation, and my goal is to start writing more non-Michigan-centric content and start getting further in depth with the other B1G teams. Here's a general look at OSU's Flood play, which is probably their favorite way to attack defenses deep, something like this will be a play OSU will like...

Ohio State has been a solid defense this year, but not without its flaws. In this post we are going to point out some of those flaws and look at them in the context of MSU, and how MSU can run certain plays within their playbook to take advantage of these weaknesses. Power O to the Nub First, let’s define what the nnub is to get that out of the way. The nub is a side of a formation without a WR. A nub side can have a TE or a TE and wing, just as long as there is no one split out wide it is considered a nub. Generally, teams that run cover 4 will convert the nub side of their defense to a cover 2 while maintaining a cover 4 look to the other side. This is typically known as a cover 6 or a quarter-quarter-half coverage (this because of the deep defenders). OSU runs quite a bit of cover 4, but they don’t adjust their front a whole lot and instead just check into their cover 6 defense. This tends to put a DB, particularly a CB, as the outside leverage defender. As far a...

For how basic much of MSU’s defense is, on third downs when the offense is behind the sticks, the Spartan’s defense is anything but. Much of the focus is on Narduzzi’s blitz package, and often rightfully so. But what I took away from Saturday’s game against Michigan was a very interesting coverage on the back end. In this post we’ll look at how Narduzzi pulled out a very unique Cover 3 look (some have called it an inverted Tampa 2 defense, which it kind of is, but I honestly think it’s closer to a cover 3) and we’ll discuss why this is such an effective context within the scheme that MSU often runs. MSU’s Cover 4 I’ll briefly discuss the Cover 4 just to give a primer of what it looks like. Basically, the cover 4 will look like a flat back. Two safeties will be even about 10 yards off the LOS and will not retreat on the snap. They have responsibility for the #2 receiver, while the CBs on the outside will essentially be playing man coverage on the #1 receivers. Tampa 2 ...

In this post we are going to look at a few different options that Michigan's offense has to get MSU a bit out of their comfort zone and to try to take advantage with favorable match-ups. In this instance, the run game would just be simpler to explain, so we'll focus more on how Michigan can do some things to present favorable match-ups for Michigan's passing attack. Stack/Bunch Formations Michigan under Borges helm has not shied away from stack or bunch formations. While they don't run them as often as I would like them to be run, they are quite prevalent within the offense. Against MSU's press coverage it makes sense to run them more. Why you may ask. Well here's MSU's coverage normally. Here is how they adjust Stack Bunch The big difference is that they no longer press the outside, instead preferring to play and in/out release against the stack and an in/out high/low against bunch. What this allows is for the Michigan receiver...

Michigan faces off against one of the nation's top defenses on Saturday, and moving the ball through the air will be no small task. Michigan State's defense is legit, so let's not mince words there. Still, every defense has weaknesses or tendencies that can be exploited. Now, the Spartans have minimized these weaknesses, and when they do make mistakes they are often fundamentally sound enough to keep gains relatively low, which is what makes them one of the better defenses in college football. The goal of this article will be to look at some of the ways that Michigan can attack some of MSU's tendencies from a schematic point of view to get relatively favorable match-ups on their end. MSU Primer Over the summer I wrote two preview pieces about Michigan State's defense. One was about their  4-3 Over front , the other was about their  Cover 4 . For the vast majority of the snaps they will be in this set up. They will run some man under, they will run  cover 3 behind...