Breakdown Sports

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.

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT BUCKY'S 5 QUARTER ON 12/5/14 The Ohio State offense is very good, as is the Wisconsin defense. In many ways, this could be the talk of Saturday's Big Ten Championship Game, similar to how the OSU offense against the Michigan State defense was the talk heading into last year's title game. In my opinion, though, when two teams have very good opposing sides of the ball, they tend to cancel out in many ways, and where the game swings is on the other end. In this way, it is up to the Badger offense to step up and make the difference. In this post, we'll look at what the Ohio State defense brings to the table, areas in which it's struggled this year and how you can expect Wisconsin to attack.

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...