Football
Basics
Explaining the Cover Two
You watch 47 football
games a weekend. You read every football publication, chirp on message
boards about your team, and talk about the sport 24/7. Even so, you
might not necessarily know all the terminology and occasionally get lost
in what the announcers are saying. That's fine ... you're not alone.
Professor John Harris will explain some of the terms and schemes and
what they mean.
By
John
Harris
The concept of the cover two defense has been around for many years, but
it’s been only in the past ten years, since the introduction of the
cover two by Tony Dungy in Tampa, that it started to gain popularity in
both the NFL and college football. The scheme is simple, really, and
when played effectively, with key players at key positions, it’s
extremely difficult to move the ball effectively through the air. The
key to a cover two defense is to demand accurate, pinpoint accuracy from
the opposing quarterback, which is why it’s a perfect scheme against
most college quarterbacks.
The easiest way to think about the cover two is
like a zone defense. Two safeties and two corners split the field into
two halves, playing those halves equally.
That's it.
Each safety has what is called “deep half
responsibility”. The safety aligns 12 to 15 yards from the ball,
dependent on offensive formation, down and distance, and opposing game
plan. He then ‘roams’ from middle of the field to the sideline on
passing downs and “fills in the alley” on running downs. Covering an
entire half of the field seems difficult against the pass, but with
solid linebacker play and a good cornerback ‘jam’ (more on those later),
the safeties' job can be relatively easy. Without either one, the
safety is going to have no chance to be successful. As with most other
coverage schemes, the safeties responsibility is to not give up the deep
ball – keeping everything in front.
The corners responsibility is “jam, release and
stay in the flat”. A corner in this scheme doesn't have to be a jet
with 4.3 wheels (it helps, of course), but he does have to be a guy with
good hips and the ability to be physical at the line of scrimmage. Most
corners will play from four to five yards off the outside receiver and
will adjust if motion comes to his side. Once the ball is snapped, the
corner must disrupt the receiver coming off the ball, jamming him to the
inside, or “funneling” him to the inside. He CANNOT allow the receiver
to take a direct route on his pattern or the safety will have too much
room to cover, too soon. If the corner can “redirect” the receiver
inside, the area with which the safety has to cover is now cut down
significantly. If the receiver takes an outside release the corner
“squeezes” him to the sideline as much as possible, giving the safety
time to get “off his hash” to play “on top of him”. The corner will
then play underneath the receiver until another threat comes into his
area, the flat. Once that happens, he will slow down, squat and read
the quarterback’s eyes, reacting to a ball thrown in the flat. Good
cover two corners can bait QBs by staying underneath the outside
receiver as long as possible, knowing that a flat threat is approaching
then breaking on the ball before it’s even thrown by the unsuspecting
QB.
The linebackers are also key to the cover two
defense. The dilemma, though, is that linebackers must think to stop
the run first, then pass drop. In the cover two, that pass drop, to
alleviate some of the pressure on the safeties, has to be at least 12 to
15 yards in depth. That’s tougher than it seems. So, the quicker the
run/pass read by the linebacker, the sooner each one can get to his drop
zone, the more difficult it is for a quarterback to throw over their
heads. In some cases, strongside linebackers will run with tight
ends/inside receivers down the seam to allow the safeties more freedom
to play closer to the sideline.
Offenses will try to beat the cover two in two
different areas – the “hole” (behind the corner and in front of the
safety) and the aforementioned seam (roughly down the hashmark).
Throwing the ball into the hole is as tough as it gets, but a receiver
who beats the jam easily and gets outside with little resistance gives
his QB a bigger hole to throw into…and a nightmare for safeties. Many
teams are now trying to use slot receivers to get down the seam to put
that safety in a world of hurt, but if the smaller receiver gets bounced
around by linebackers, he may never get to a point where he can hurt the
deep half playing safety.
