- 1,110
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Stephen Garcia reinstated at USC.
Good news everybody...
Good news everybody...
2011 College Football "The Real been hacked!!!!" .
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by Chester McFloppy,
- Start date
- 9,622
- 783
I can tell you this for sure, as long as their is a Big 12 with Texas & or A&M in it, Houston will not be apart of it.
Idk where that guy was going with that article.
Idk where that guy was going with that article.
- 9,622
- 783
I can tell you this for sure, as long as their is a Big 12 with Texas & or A&M in it, Houston will not be apart of it.
Idk where that guy was going with that article.
Idk where that guy was going with that article.
- 31,964
- 1,056
its a sarcastic article.
...
...
- 31,964
- 1,056
its a sarcastic article.
...
...
- 1,110
- 10
Good article breaking down Manny Diaz's defense.
Link has videos. http://barkingcarnival.fa...g-the-new-texas-defense/
Link has videos. http://barkingcarnival.fa...g-the-new-texas-defense/
Spoiler [+]
[h1]Manny Diaz: Building the New Texas Defense [/h1]
Posted by LonghornScott on July 26th, 2011 under Football
As you know we’ve been talking a lot of offense this summer. And while there is still a lot of discussion worth having on the offensive side of the ball, it’s time we turned our attention to what Manny Diaz is building on the defensive end. If we’re going to do this right it’s going to be lengthy but let’s start with the core concepts that Diaz is putting into our defense and then build from there. Philosophically, our defense breaks into two basic trees: middle of the field safety and split safeties with middle of the field being our bread and butter and split coverage being our change up. Let’s investigate each tree with some examples from the Spring Game.
Middle of the Field Safety Coverages
Manny Diaz’s base defense is a pattern match Cover 3 that is derived from the Saban school of thought. If you are interested in a more technical approach Brophy Football has some beautiful posts on the pattern match Cover 3. Spend some time there, you won’t be disappointed. Essentially, I’m repackaging his insights and attempting to relate them to what we saw in the Spring Game, but I highly recommend reading what he has to offer if you have the time and interest. The pattern match Cover 3 is the heart of Diaz’s defense because the understanding of position maintenance that his players develop in this defense feeds into their technique in every other part of this coverage tree. Here’s the basic concept of a Cover 3 zone:
As you can see it’s a 3-deep 4-under coverage. But it’s important to understand that the Texas defense will not be a traditional zone defense with the defenders dropping to landmarks and simply reading the quarterback. This is a much more sophisticated approach that is adaptive to alignment threats and timing from the offense. In a pattern matching the defenders are taught how to dynamically identify the offensive threats and their coverage works to deny the routes available to the offensive players rather than to defend a portion of the field. It’s a philosophy that teaches players to understand the field from their opponent’s point of view and then deny that opponent the leverage and spacing they want.
The offense’s passing game operates differently on 3-step and 5-7 step passing so Diaz’s defense will as well. The 3-step (Quick) passing game is designed to give the offense high percentage plays and spread the defense thin with shallow timing routes. To take away the quick game, the defense has to be able to defend the flats which is precisely where traditional Cover 3 zone is weakest. The 5-7 step game is designed to threaten the defense deep and unless your defense is better athlete for athlete across the board, you need help on the vertical threats presented on a longer play. At that point, you would lean toward a Cover 2 Man Under(sometimes called Cover 5). But with the proliferation of the running game out of spread sets and the challenges posed by the extra threat of running Quarterbacks, the defense needs to be able to bring a safety down to keep the offense from having a consistent numbers advantage in the running game and that means you are down to playing a lot of Cover 1. If you have the athletes to play Cover 1 man consistently, great. But against top shelf competition there are going to be a number of 1-on-1 match ups that are not in your favor and building your defense on a principle that isn’t going to deliver in crunch time seems like a recipe for mediocrity.
Pattern Match Cover 3
Saban’s (and Diaz’s) answer to this conundrum? The pattern match Cover 3. it offers a response to the quick game, it gives the defense the benefit of 3 deep zone coverage, and it allows him to get 8 in the box against the run if they want to. In order to accomplish this, the defense has to approach the play just like the offense does: in timing phases.
Alignment
There are far too many iterations of alignment to go through all of them. But let’s just touch on the basic ideas about spacing and leverage. Each defender is responsible for the threats to his portion of the field. Consider the corner in the Cover 3 and the 1/3 of the field he is responsible for. If you divide this portion of the field in half and think of the line that runs through the middle of it, this is the key to spacing and leverage that the corner must use to position himself correctly in response to the receiver. If the receiver aligns outside this line, the corner is being threatened by inside breaking routes. If the receiver aligns inside this line then the corner is threatened by routes that break to the outside. This fundamental will be the key to the corner’s decision making about his positioning throughout the play as he stays over the top of the receiver. Brophy has a great series of posts that go into more detail: here and here.
Against the Quick Game
Here’s an initial alignment from a Cover 3 defense (notice that it presents as a split safety coverage, more on this later).
The offense is presenting 4 receiving threats to the wide side and 1 threat to the short side. After checking run/pass with an initial read off the offensive line, the corners are going to begin getting depth while they read the quarterback’s drop.
Notice (above) how the defenders have all positioned themselves in this initial phase in relation to the offensive players. Since the back is still in the protection, the #3 threat is being bracketed by the linebacker and the strong safety. As the quarterback sets his feet and the receivers stem their routes the defense is alerted to the quick throw and begins to break reading the quarterback’s aiming point.
By the time the ball is completed on the quick out, the defense is in great position. You probably remember what this play looked like at full speed:
Against the 5-Step Drop
Same thing here. The defense gains initial depth and reads the drop of the QB.
This time it’s not a 3-step so the defense now adjusts to the stemming routes from the receivers. One general thing to note about this initial phase is the positioning of the strong safety (above). One of the crucial elements to the success of the Cover 3 is that the underneath defenders don’t allow both seams to be exploited at the same time as this puts the Free Safety in conflict deep. Since the strong seam is the furthest from him, the strong safety is going to try to attack and reroute any route from the #2 receiver on his side (#2 route in from the sideline) first, and then he is going to adjust to the pattern distribution on the strong side (usually by defending any threats to the flat). Notice the dilemma for the Quarterback: his outside receivers have their vertical routes capped by the corners, the slot’s route is outleveraged by the Sam under and the Mike over, the backside flat route is being broken on by the Will. Just about the only route with a shot is the flat release to the running back but the strong safety is en route. Let’s see if anything opens up:
Everything is well covered and the pocket has broken down. Great job of recognition and pattern matching from the defense.
Against Vertical Seams
In a 4 wide look the offense can quickly threaten the seams with the slot receivers.
We revisit the play again as the receivers stem (above). At this point the threat to both seams has emerged. A few things need to happen for the defense, first the weakside corner should use his depth to squeeze the seam and gain leverage on the slot receivers route. Second, the strong safety needs to come through here and reroute the strong side seam threat to buy time for the free safety. Third, the free safety needs to continue to backpedal and then read the QB and break on the ball. Let’s see how things play out:
None of the 3 things developed as they should have: the strong safety didn’t reroute effectively, the free safety overcommitted and had to 180, and the corner didn’t use his positioning to clamp down on the seam route. Learning to defend the seams effectively will be an important theme for this defense. Saban has some built in calls in his Cover 3 that help him deal with the challenges posed by 4 verticals in 4-Wide 2×2 and Floods in 4-Wide Trips called Rip/Liz and Mable, respectively. Both calls essentially allow the defense to play man rules if 2 vertical threats present on the same side of the field and cover 3 rules otherwise. I believe that Diaz has the same build ins as they provide an essential bridge between the Cover 3 pattern match and the Cover 1.
Incorporating Cover 1
The positioning lessons that the Cover 3 teaches will help the defense understand man coverage positioning much better because they will understand how each receiver’s positioning relates to the route possibilities. The main difference between the two coverages is the vertical space. In Cover 3 the defenders are trying to keep the receiver in front of them and break on the play, in Cover 1 they want to pressure the route and then trail it, denying the pass and relying on the deep safety for help over the top. Both coverages offer the defense a number of pressure options, but the Cover 1 offers the benefit of really clamping down on the Hot Routes for the QB. Perhaps most importantly the Cover 1 allows the corners to play really tight coverage and this takes away the quick screen game. Let’s take a look at some man defense in the Spring Game:
Cover 1 defense is something that Texas fans should be pretty familiar with. Out of all of the iterations of the Texas defense in the last 13 years one constant has been Akina’s ability to develop great footwork and mechanics in man defenders. I originally had concerns about the Diaz/Akina mix primarily because I didn’t know if Akina would flourish in a defense that was focused on zone coverage. Having spent more time getting to know what Diaz is trying to accomplish, I think the new scheme is going to play right into Akina’s strengths because the pattern matching concepts are only going to enhance our ability in man coverage and Akina’s physical work is going to help our secondary get more out of their athleticism in this scheme. Corner had been the position I was most concerned about on this side of the ball but now I think it will become a source of strength very quickly in this defense. The nagging concern is that we don’t seem to have a true center fielder that the cover 1 needs to be a staple.
Split Safety Coverage
As I said in the intro, Diaz will base out of middle of the field concepts and change up with split safety concepts. The reason is simple, the split safeties coverages are strong where the MOF safety coverages are weak.
So sometimes we will align in Cover 2 and stay in Cover 2:
But very often Diaz will disguise his coverages. One of the advantages of having speed at the corner position is that is allows you to get close alignment pre-snap but still bail deep for the deep zone on Cover 2:
We also showed quite a bit of Cover 2 Man and Cover 4 (Quarters) in the Spring Game which are variations on the split safeties coverage. In this case the progression probably starts with the defense learning to pattern match effectively in Quarters and then going down through Cover 2 pattern match and into Cover 2 man. The pattern matching principles will be different for these coverages compared to Cover 3 because the deep support structure is different, but the learning arc is the same… the better the defense gets at decision making the tighter they can play their coverage effectively. Split safeties are strong against the seams and shallow flats but are susceptible to deep outside routes and deep middle routes. And this is exactly why Diaz wants to create confusion between the two branches each is strong where the other is weak, so the offense has a hard time targeting his defense with coverage calls.
Fire Zones
You may have already heard a lot about Manny Diaz and Fire Zones. Here I’m going to build on some great articles that are already out there. In this article, again from Brophy Football, the intent and specific jobs in Diaz’s fire zones are laid out. The basic idea of a fire zone is to bring 5 man pressure, confuse the assignments for the offensive line, and keep the offense in front of the defense with 3 deep coverage. In a lot of ways it’s a conservative call because it forces the offense’s hand early and to underneath routes: making it a natural 3rd and long call.
We spent a lot of the first quarter of the Spring Game practicing different versions of the fire zones from 4-3, 3-4, and 3-3 looks. To gain a better understanding of Diaz’s different flavors of fire zone, I highly recommend this gem from Coach Hoover’s site (another great spot for football). One of the little perks of bringing in great coaching talent is that it also cultivates interest from great football minds.
As the article explains, Diaz defines his Fire Zone Scrape looks by which direction the Scrape goes: to the Field (the wide side) or to the Bench (the short side). Note that a “scrape
Posted by LonghornScott on July 26th, 2011 under Football
As you know we’ve been talking a lot of offense this summer. And while there is still a lot of discussion worth having on the offensive side of the ball, it’s time we turned our attention to what Manny Diaz is building on the defensive end. If we’re going to do this right it’s going to be lengthy but let’s start with the core concepts that Diaz is putting into our defense and then build from there. Philosophically, our defense breaks into two basic trees: middle of the field safety and split safeties with middle of the field being our bread and butter and split coverage being our change up. Let’s investigate each tree with some examples from the Spring Game.
Middle of the Field Safety Coverages
Manny Diaz’s base defense is a pattern match Cover 3 that is derived from the Saban school of thought. If you are interested in a more technical approach Brophy Football has some beautiful posts on the pattern match Cover 3. Spend some time there, you won’t be disappointed. Essentially, I’m repackaging his insights and attempting to relate them to what we saw in the Spring Game, but I highly recommend reading what he has to offer if you have the time and interest. The pattern match Cover 3 is the heart of Diaz’s defense because the understanding of position maintenance that his players develop in this defense feeds into their technique in every other part of this coverage tree. Here’s the basic concept of a Cover 3 zone:
As you can see it’s a 3-deep 4-under coverage. But it’s important to understand that the Texas defense will not be a traditional zone defense with the defenders dropping to landmarks and simply reading the quarterback. This is a much more sophisticated approach that is adaptive to alignment threats and timing from the offense. In a pattern matching the defenders are taught how to dynamically identify the offensive threats and their coverage works to deny the routes available to the offensive players rather than to defend a portion of the field. It’s a philosophy that teaches players to understand the field from their opponent’s point of view and then deny that opponent the leverage and spacing they want.
The offense’s passing game operates differently on 3-step and 5-7 step passing so Diaz’s defense will as well. The 3-step (Quick) passing game is designed to give the offense high percentage plays and spread the defense thin with shallow timing routes. To take away the quick game, the defense has to be able to defend the flats which is precisely where traditional Cover 3 zone is weakest. The 5-7 step game is designed to threaten the defense deep and unless your defense is better athlete for athlete across the board, you need help on the vertical threats presented on a longer play. At that point, you would lean toward a Cover 2 Man Under(sometimes called Cover 5). But with the proliferation of the running game out of spread sets and the challenges posed by the extra threat of running Quarterbacks, the defense needs to be able to bring a safety down to keep the offense from having a consistent numbers advantage in the running game and that means you are down to playing a lot of Cover 1. If you have the athletes to play Cover 1 man consistently, great. But against top shelf competition there are going to be a number of 1-on-1 match ups that are not in your favor and building your defense on a principle that isn’t going to deliver in crunch time seems like a recipe for mediocrity.
Pattern Match Cover 3
Saban’s (and Diaz’s) answer to this conundrum? The pattern match Cover 3. it offers a response to the quick game, it gives the defense the benefit of 3 deep zone coverage, and it allows him to get 8 in the box against the run if they want to. In order to accomplish this, the defense has to approach the play just like the offense does: in timing phases.
Alignment
There are far too many iterations of alignment to go through all of them. But let’s just touch on the basic ideas about spacing and leverage. Each defender is responsible for the threats to his portion of the field. Consider the corner in the Cover 3 and the 1/3 of the field he is responsible for. If you divide this portion of the field in half and think of the line that runs through the middle of it, this is the key to spacing and leverage that the corner must use to position himself correctly in response to the receiver. If the receiver aligns outside this line, the corner is being threatened by inside breaking routes. If the receiver aligns inside this line then the corner is threatened by routes that break to the outside. This fundamental will be the key to the corner’s decision making about his positioning throughout the play as he stays over the top of the receiver. Brophy has a great series of posts that go into more detail: here and here.
Against the Quick Game
Here’s an initial alignment from a Cover 3 defense (notice that it presents as a split safety coverage, more on this later).
The offense is presenting 4 receiving threats to the wide side and 1 threat to the short side. After checking run/pass with an initial read off the offensive line, the corners are going to begin getting depth while they read the quarterback’s drop.
Notice (above) how the defenders have all positioned themselves in this initial phase in relation to the offensive players. Since the back is still in the protection, the #3 threat is being bracketed by the linebacker and the strong safety. As the quarterback sets his feet and the receivers stem their routes the defense is alerted to the quick throw and begins to break reading the quarterback’s aiming point.
By the time the ball is completed on the quick out, the defense is in great position. You probably remember what this play looked like at full speed:
Against the 5-Step Drop
Same thing here. The defense gains initial depth and reads the drop of the QB.
This time it’s not a 3-step so the defense now adjusts to the stemming routes from the receivers. One general thing to note about this initial phase is the positioning of the strong safety (above). One of the crucial elements to the success of the Cover 3 is that the underneath defenders don’t allow both seams to be exploited at the same time as this puts the Free Safety in conflict deep. Since the strong seam is the furthest from him, the strong safety is going to try to attack and reroute any route from the #2 receiver on his side (#2 route in from the sideline) first, and then he is going to adjust to the pattern distribution on the strong side (usually by defending any threats to the flat). Notice the dilemma for the Quarterback: his outside receivers have their vertical routes capped by the corners, the slot’s route is outleveraged by the Sam under and the Mike over, the backside flat route is being broken on by the Will. Just about the only route with a shot is the flat release to the running back but the strong safety is en route. Let’s see if anything opens up:
Everything is well covered and the pocket has broken down. Great job of recognition and pattern matching from the defense.
Against Vertical Seams
In a 4 wide look the offense can quickly threaten the seams with the slot receivers.
We revisit the play again as the receivers stem (above). At this point the threat to both seams has emerged. A few things need to happen for the defense, first the weakside corner should use his depth to squeeze the seam and gain leverage on the slot receivers route. Second, the strong safety needs to come through here and reroute the strong side seam threat to buy time for the free safety. Third, the free safety needs to continue to backpedal and then read the QB and break on the ball. Let’s see how things play out:
None of the 3 things developed as they should have: the strong safety didn’t reroute effectively, the free safety overcommitted and had to 180, and the corner didn’t use his positioning to clamp down on the seam route. Learning to defend the seams effectively will be an important theme for this defense. Saban has some built in calls in his Cover 3 that help him deal with the challenges posed by 4 verticals in 4-Wide 2×2 and Floods in 4-Wide Trips called Rip/Liz and Mable, respectively. Both calls essentially allow the defense to play man rules if 2 vertical threats present on the same side of the field and cover 3 rules otherwise. I believe that Diaz has the same build ins as they provide an essential bridge between the Cover 3 pattern match and the Cover 1.
Incorporating Cover 1
The positioning lessons that the Cover 3 teaches will help the defense understand man coverage positioning much better because they will understand how each receiver’s positioning relates to the route possibilities. The main difference between the two coverages is the vertical space. In Cover 3 the defenders are trying to keep the receiver in front of them and break on the play, in Cover 1 they want to pressure the route and then trail it, denying the pass and relying on the deep safety for help over the top. Both coverages offer the defense a number of pressure options, but the Cover 1 offers the benefit of really clamping down on the Hot Routes for the QB. Perhaps most importantly the Cover 1 allows the corners to play really tight coverage and this takes away the quick screen game. Let’s take a look at some man defense in the Spring Game:
Cover 1 defense is something that Texas fans should be pretty familiar with. Out of all of the iterations of the Texas defense in the last 13 years one constant has been Akina’s ability to develop great footwork and mechanics in man defenders. I originally had concerns about the Diaz/Akina mix primarily because I didn’t know if Akina would flourish in a defense that was focused on zone coverage. Having spent more time getting to know what Diaz is trying to accomplish, I think the new scheme is going to play right into Akina’s strengths because the pattern matching concepts are only going to enhance our ability in man coverage and Akina’s physical work is going to help our secondary get more out of their athleticism in this scheme. Corner had been the position I was most concerned about on this side of the ball but now I think it will become a source of strength very quickly in this defense. The nagging concern is that we don’t seem to have a true center fielder that the cover 1 needs to be a staple.
Split Safety Coverage
As I said in the intro, Diaz will base out of middle of the field concepts and change up with split safety concepts. The reason is simple, the split safeties coverages are strong where the MOF safety coverages are weak.
So sometimes we will align in Cover 2 and stay in Cover 2:
But very often Diaz will disguise his coverages. One of the advantages of having speed at the corner position is that is allows you to get close alignment pre-snap but still bail deep for the deep zone on Cover 2:
We also showed quite a bit of Cover 2 Man and Cover 4 (Quarters) in the Spring Game which are variations on the split safeties coverage. In this case the progression probably starts with the defense learning to pattern match effectively in Quarters and then going down through Cover 2 pattern match and into Cover 2 man. The pattern matching principles will be different for these coverages compared to Cover 3 because the deep support structure is different, but the learning arc is the same… the better the defense gets at decision making the tighter they can play their coverage effectively. Split safeties are strong against the seams and shallow flats but are susceptible to deep outside routes and deep middle routes. And this is exactly why Diaz wants to create confusion between the two branches each is strong where the other is weak, so the offense has a hard time targeting his defense with coverage calls.
Fire Zones
You may have already heard a lot about Manny Diaz and Fire Zones. Here I’m going to build on some great articles that are already out there. In this article, again from Brophy Football, the intent and specific jobs in Diaz’s fire zones are laid out. The basic idea of a fire zone is to bring 5 man pressure, confuse the assignments for the offensive line, and keep the offense in front of the defense with 3 deep coverage. In a lot of ways it’s a conservative call because it forces the offense’s hand early and to underneath routes: making it a natural 3rd and long call.
We spent a lot of the first quarter of the Spring Game practicing different versions of the fire zones from 4-3, 3-4, and 3-3 looks. To gain a better understanding of Diaz’s different flavors of fire zone, I highly recommend this gem from Coach Hoover’s site (another great spot for football). One of the little perks of bringing in great coaching talent is that it also cultivates interest from great football minds.
As the article explains, Diaz defines his Fire Zone Scrape looks by which direction the Scrape goes: to the Field (the wide side) or to the Bench (the short side). Note that a “scrape
- 1,110
- 10
Good article breaking down Manny Diaz's defense.
Link has videos. http://barkingcarnival.fa...g-the-new-texas-defense/
Link has videos. http://barkingcarnival.fa...g-the-new-texas-defense/
Spoiler [+]
[h1]Manny Diaz: Building the New Texas Defense [/h1]
Posted by LonghornScott on July 26th, 2011 under Football
As you know we’ve been talking a lot of offense this summer. And while there is still a lot of discussion worth having on the offensive side of the ball, it’s time we turned our attention to what Manny Diaz is building on the defensive end. If we’re going to do this right it’s going to be lengthy but let’s start with the core concepts that Diaz is putting into our defense and then build from there. Philosophically, our defense breaks into two basic trees: middle of the field safety and split safeties with middle of the field being our bread and butter and split coverage being our change up. Let’s investigate each tree with some examples from the Spring Game.
Middle of the Field Safety Coverages
Manny Diaz’s base defense is a pattern match Cover 3 that is derived from the Saban school of thought. If you are interested in a more technical approach Brophy Football has some beautiful posts on the pattern match Cover 3. Spend some time there, you won’t be disappointed. Essentially, I’m repackaging his insights and attempting to relate them to what we saw in the Spring Game, but I highly recommend reading what he has to offer if you have the time and interest. The pattern match Cover 3 is the heart of Diaz’s defense because the understanding of position maintenance that his players develop in this defense feeds into their technique in every other part of this coverage tree. Here’s the basic concept of a Cover 3 zone:
As you can see it’s a 3-deep 4-under coverage. But it’s important to understand that the Texas defense will not be a traditional zone defense with the defenders dropping to landmarks and simply reading the quarterback. This is a much more sophisticated approach that is adaptive to alignment threats and timing from the offense. In a pattern matching the defenders are taught how to dynamically identify the offensive threats and their coverage works to deny the routes available to the offensive players rather than to defend a portion of the field. It’s a philosophy that teaches players to understand the field from their opponent’s point of view and then deny that opponent the leverage and spacing they want.
The offense’s passing game operates differently on 3-step and 5-7 step passing so Diaz’s defense will as well. The 3-step (Quick) passing game is designed to give the offense high percentage plays and spread the defense thin with shallow timing routes. To take away the quick game, the defense has to be able to defend the flats which is precisely where traditional Cover 3 zone is weakest. The 5-7 step game is designed to threaten the defense deep and unless your defense is better athlete for athlete across the board, you need help on the vertical threats presented on a longer play. At that point, you would lean toward a Cover 2 Man Under(sometimes called Cover 5). But with the proliferation of the running game out of spread sets and the challenges posed by the extra threat of running Quarterbacks, the defense needs to be able to bring a safety down to keep the offense from having a consistent numbers advantage in the running game and that means you are down to playing a lot of Cover 1. If you have the athletes to play Cover 1 man consistently, great. But against top shelf competition there are going to be a number of 1-on-1 match ups that are not in your favor and building your defense on a principle that isn’t going to deliver in crunch time seems like a recipe for mediocrity.
Pattern Match Cover 3
Saban’s (and Diaz’s) answer to this conundrum? The pattern match Cover 3. it offers a response to the quick game, it gives the defense the benefit of 3 deep zone coverage, and it allows him to get 8 in the box against the run if they want to. In order to accomplish this, the defense has to approach the play just like the offense does: in timing phases.
Alignment
There are far too many iterations of alignment to go through all of them. But let’s just touch on the basic ideas about spacing and leverage. Each defender is responsible for the threats to his portion of the field. Consider the corner in the Cover 3 and the 1/3 of the field he is responsible for. If you divide this portion of the field in half and think of the line that runs through the middle of it, this is the key to spacing and leverage that the corner must use to position himself correctly in response to the receiver. If the receiver aligns outside this line, the corner is being threatened by inside breaking routes. If the receiver aligns inside this line then the corner is threatened by routes that break to the outside. This fundamental will be the key to the corner’s decision making about his positioning throughout the play as he stays over the top of the receiver. Brophy has a great series of posts that go into more detail: here and here.
Against the Quick Game
Here’s an initial alignment from a Cover 3 defense (notice that it presents as a split safety coverage, more on this later).
The offense is presenting 4 receiving threats to the wide side and 1 threat to the short side. After checking run/pass with an initial read off the offensive line, the corners are going to begin getting depth while they read the quarterback’s drop.
Notice (above) how the defenders have all positioned themselves in this initial phase in relation to the offensive players. Since the back is still in the protection, the #3 threat is being bracketed by the linebacker and the strong safety. As the quarterback sets his feet and the receivers stem their routes the defense is alerted to the quick throw and begins to break reading the quarterback’s aiming point.
By the time the ball is completed on the quick out, the defense is in great position. You probably remember what this play looked like at full speed:
Against the 5-Step Drop
Same thing here. The defense gains initial depth and reads the drop of the QB.
This time it’s not a 3-step so the defense now adjusts to the stemming routes from the receivers. One general thing to note about this initial phase is the positioning of the strong safety (above). One of the crucial elements to the success of the Cover 3 is that the underneath defenders don’t allow both seams to be exploited at the same time as this puts the Free Safety in conflict deep. Since the strong seam is the furthest from him, the strong safety is going to try to attack and reroute any route from the #2 receiver on his side (#2 route in from the sideline) first, and then he is going to adjust to the pattern distribution on the strong side (usually by defending any threats to the flat). Notice the dilemma for the Quarterback: his outside receivers have their vertical routes capped by the corners, the slot’s route is outleveraged by the Sam under and the Mike over, the backside flat route is being broken on by the Will. Just about the only route with a shot is the flat release to the running back but the strong safety is en route. Let’s see if anything opens up:
Everything is well covered and the pocket has broken down. Great job of recognition and pattern matching from the defense.
Against Vertical Seams
In a 4 wide look the offense can quickly threaten the seams with the slot receivers.
We revisit the play again as the receivers stem (above). At this point the threat to both seams has emerged. A few things need to happen for the defense, first the weakside corner should use his depth to squeeze the seam and gain leverage on the slot receivers route. Second, the strong safety needs to come through here and reroute the strong side seam threat to buy time for the free safety. Third, the free safety needs to continue to backpedal and then read the QB and break on the ball. Let’s see how things play out:
None of the 3 things developed as they should have: the strong safety didn’t reroute effectively, the free safety overcommitted and had to 180, and the corner didn’t use his positioning to clamp down on the seam route. Learning to defend the seams effectively will be an important theme for this defense. Saban has some built in calls in his Cover 3 that help him deal with the challenges posed by 4 verticals in 4-Wide 2×2 and Floods in 4-Wide Trips called Rip/Liz and Mable, respectively. Both calls essentially allow the defense to play man rules if 2 vertical threats present on the same side of the field and cover 3 rules otherwise. I believe that Diaz has the same build ins as they provide an essential bridge between the Cover 3 pattern match and the Cover 1.
Incorporating Cover 1
The positioning lessons that the Cover 3 teaches will help the defense understand man coverage positioning much better because they will understand how each receiver’s positioning relates to the route possibilities. The main difference between the two coverages is the vertical space. In Cover 3 the defenders are trying to keep the receiver in front of them and break on the play, in Cover 1 they want to pressure the route and then trail it, denying the pass and relying on the deep safety for help over the top. Both coverages offer the defense a number of pressure options, but the Cover 1 offers the benefit of really clamping down on the Hot Routes for the QB. Perhaps most importantly the Cover 1 allows the corners to play really tight coverage and this takes away the quick screen game. Let’s take a look at some man defense in the Spring Game:
Cover 1 defense is something that Texas fans should be pretty familiar with. Out of all of the iterations of the Texas defense in the last 13 years one constant has been Akina’s ability to develop great footwork and mechanics in man defenders. I originally had concerns about the Diaz/Akina mix primarily because I didn’t know if Akina would flourish in a defense that was focused on zone coverage. Having spent more time getting to know what Diaz is trying to accomplish, I think the new scheme is going to play right into Akina’s strengths because the pattern matching concepts are only going to enhance our ability in man coverage and Akina’s physical work is going to help our secondary get more out of their athleticism in this scheme. Corner had been the position I was most concerned about on this side of the ball but now I think it will become a source of strength very quickly in this defense. The nagging concern is that we don’t seem to have a true center fielder that the cover 1 needs to be a staple.
Split Safety Coverage
As I said in the intro, Diaz will base out of middle of the field concepts and change up with split safety concepts. The reason is simple, the split safeties coverages are strong where the MOF safety coverages are weak.
So sometimes we will align in Cover 2 and stay in Cover 2:
But very often Diaz will disguise his coverages. One of the advantages of having speed at the corner position is that is allows you to get close alignment pre-snap but still bail deep for the deep zone on Cover 2:
We also showed quite a bit of Cover 2 Man and Cover 4 (Quarters) in the Spring Game which are variations on the split safeties coverage. In this case the progression probably starts with the defense learning to pattern match effectively in Quarters and then going down through Cover 2 pattern match and into Cover 2 man. The pattern matching principles will be different for these coverages compared to Cover 3 because the deep support structure is different, but the learning arc is the same… the better the defense gets at decision making the tighter they can play their coverage effectively. Split safeties are strong against the seams and shallow flats but are susceptible to deep outside routes and deep middle routes. And this is exactly why Diaz wants to create confusion between the two branches each is strong where the other is weak, so the offense has a hard time targeting his defense with coverage calls.
Fire Zones
You may have already heard a lot about Manny Diaz and Fire Zones. Here I’m going to build on some great articles that are already out there. In this article, again from Brophy Football, the intent and specific jobs in Diaz’s fire zones are laid out. The basic idea of a fire zone is to bring 5 man pressure, confuse the assignments for the offensive line, and keep the offense in front of the defense with 3 deep coverage. In a lot of ways it’s a conservative call because it forces the offense’s hand early and to underneath routes: making it a natural 3rd and long call.
We spent a lot of the first quarter of the Spring Game practicing different versions of the fire zones from 4-3, 3-4, and 3-3 looks. To gain a better understanding of Diaz’s different flavors of fire zone, I highly recommend this gem from Coach Hoover’s site (another great spot for football). One of the little perks of bringing in great coaching talent is that it also cultivates interest from great football minds.
As the article explains, Diaz defines his Fire Zone Scrape looks by which direction the Scrape goes: to the Field (the wide side) or to the Bench (the short side). Note that a “scrape
Posted by LonghornScott on July 26th, 2011 under Football
As you know we’ve been talking a lot of offense this summer. And while there is still a lot of discussion worth having on the offensive side of the ball, it’s time we turned our attention to what Manny Diaz is building on the defensive end. If we’re going to do this right it’s going to be lengthy but let’s start with the core concepts that Diaz is putting into our defense and then build from there. Philosophically, our defense breaks into two basic trees: middle of the field safety and split safeties with middle of the field being our bread and butter and split coverage being our change up. Let’s investigate each tree with some examples from the Spring Game.
Middle of the Field Safety Coverages
Manny Diaz’s base defense is a pattern match Cover 3 that is derived from the Saban school of thought. If you are interested in a more technical approach Brophy Football has some beautiful posts on the pattern match Cover 3. Spend some time there, you won’t be disappointed. Essentially, I’m repackaging his insights and attempting to relate them to what we saw in the Spring Game, but I highly recommend reading what he has to offer if you have the time and interest. The pattern match Cover 3 is the heart of Diaz’s defense because the understanding of position maintenance that his players develop in this defense feeds into their technique in every other part of this coverage tree. Here’s the basic concept of a Cover 3 zone:
As you can see it’s a 3-deep 4-under coverage. But it’s important to understand that the Texas defense will not be a traditional zone defense with the defenders dropping to landmarks and simply reading the quarterback. This is a much more sophisticated approach that is adaptive to alignment threats and timing from the offense. In a pattern matching the defenders are taught how to dynamically identify the offensive threats and their coverage works to deny the routes available to the offensive players rather than to defend a portion of the field. It’s a philosophy that teaches players to understand the field from their opponent’s point of view and then deny that opponent the leverage and spacing they want.
The offense’s passing game operates differently on 3-step and 5-7 step passing so Diaz’s defense will as well. The 3-step (Quick) passing game is designed to give the offense high percentage plays and spread the defense thin with shallow timing routes. To take away the quick game, the defense has to be able to defend the flats which is precisely where traditional Cover 3 zone is weakest. The 5-7 step game is designed to threaten the defense deep and unless your defense is better athlete for athlete across the board, you need help on the vertical threats presented on a longer play. At that point, you would lean toward a Cover 2 Man Under(sometimes called Cover 5). But with the proliferation of the running game out of spread sets and the challenges posed by the extra threat of running Quarterbacks, the defense needs to be able to bring a safety down to keep the offense from having a consistent numbers advantage in the running game and that means you are down to playing a lot of Cover 1. If you have the athletes to play Cover 1 man consistently, great. But against top shelf competition there are going to be a number of 1-on-1 match ups that are not in your favor and building your defense on a principle that isn’t going to deliver in crunch time seems like a recipe for mediocrity.
Pattern Match Cover 3
Saban’s (and Diaz’s) answer to this conundrum? The pattern match Cover 3. it offers a response to the quick game, it gives the defense the benefit of 3 deep zone coverage, and it allows him to get 8 in the box against the run if they want to. In order to accomplish this, the defense has to approach the play just like the offense does: in timing phases.
Alignment
There are far too many iterations of alignment to go through all of them. But let’s just touch on the basic ideas about spacing and leverage. Each defender is responsible for the threats to his portion of the field. Consider the corner in the Cover 3 and the 1/3 of the field he is responsible for. If you divide this portion of the field in half and think of the line that runs through the middle of it, this is the key to spacing and leverage that the corner must use to position himself correctly in response to the receiver. If the receiver aligns outside this line, the corner is being threatened by inside breaking routes. If the receiver aligns inside this line then the corner is threatened by routes that break to the outside. This fundamental will be the key to the corner’s decision making about his positioning throughout the play as he stays over the top of the receiver. Brophy has a great series of posts that go into more detail: here and here.
Against the Quick Game
Here’s an initial alignment from a Cover 3 defense (notice that it presents as a split safety coverage, more on this later).
The offense is presenting 4 receiving threats to the wide side and 1 threat to the short side. After checking run/pass with an initial read off the offensive line, the corners are going to begin getting depth while they read the quarterback’s drop.
Notice (above) how the defenders have all positioned themselves in this initial phase in relation to the offensive players. Since the back is still in the protection, the #3 threat is being bracketed by the linebacker and the strong safety. As the quarterback sets his feet and the receivers stem their routes the defense is alerted to the quick throw and begins to break reading the quarterback’s aiming point.
By the time the ball is completed on the quick out, the defense is in great position. You probably remember what this play looked like at full speed:
Against the 5-Step Drop
Same thing here. The defense gains initial depth and reads the drop of the QB.
This time it’s not a 3-step so the defense now adjusts to the stemming routes from the receivers. One general thing to note about this initial phase is the positioning of the strong safety (above). One of the crucial elements to the success of the Cover 3 is that the underneath defenders don’t allow both seams to be exploited at the same time as this puts the Free Safety in conflict deep. Since the strong seam is the furthest from him, the strong safety is going to try to attack and reroute any route from the #2 receiver on his side (#2 route in from the sideline) first, and then he is going to adjust to the pattern distribution on the strong side (usually by defending any threats to the flat). Notice the dilemma for the Quarterback: his outside receivers have their vertical routes capped by the corners, the slot’s route is outleveraged by the Sam under and the Mike over, the backside flat route is being broken on by the Will. Just about the only route with a shot is the flat release to the running back but the strong safety is en route. Let’s see if anything opens up:
Everything is well covered and the pocket has broken down. Great job of recognition and pattern matching from the defense.
Against Vertical Seams
In a 4 wide look the offense can quickly threaten the seams with the slot receivers.
We revisit the play again as the receivers stem (above). At this point the threat to both seams has emerged. A few things need to happen for the defense, first the weakside corner should use his depth to squeeze the seam and gain leverage on the slot receivers route. Second, the strong safety needs to come through here and reroute the strong side seam threat to buy time for the free safety. Third, the free safety needs to continue to backpedal and then read the QB and break on the ball. Let’s see how things play out:
None of the 3 things developed as they should have: the strong safety didn’t reroute effectively, the free safety overcommitted and had to 180, and the corner didn’t use his positioning to clamp down on the seam route. Learning to defend the seams effectively will be an important theme for this defense. Saban has some built in calls in his Cover 3 that help him deal with the challenges posed by 4 verticals in 4-Wide 2×2 and Floods in 4-Wide Trips called Rip/Liz and Mable, respectively. Both calls essentially allow the defense to play man rules if 2 vertical threats present on the same side of the field and cover 3 rules otherwise. I believe that Diaz has the same build ins as they provide an essential bridge between the Cover 3 pattern match and the Cover 1.
Incorporating Cover 1
The positioning lessons that the Cover 3 teaches will help the defense understand man coverage positioning much better because they will understand how each receiver’s positioning relates to the route possibilities. The main difference between the two coverages is the vertical space. In Cover 3 the defenders are trying to keep the receiver in front of them and break on the play, in Cover 1 they want to pressure the route and then trail it, denying the pass and relying on the deep safety for help over the top. Both coverages offer the defense a number of pressure options, but the Cover 1 offers the benefit of really clamping down on the Hot Routes for the QB. Perhaps most importantly the Cover 1 allows the corners to play really tight coverage and this takes away the quick screen game. Let’s take a look at some man defense in the Spring Game:
Cover 1 defense is something that Texas fans should be pretty familiar with. Out of all of the iterations of the Texas defense in the last 13 years one constant has been Akina’s ability to develop great footwork and mechanics in man defenders. I originally had concerns about the Diaz/Akina mix primarily because I didn’t know if Akina would flourish in a defense that was focused on zone coverage. Having spent more time getting to know what Diaz is trying to accomplish, I think the new scheme is going to play right into Akina’s strengths because the pattern matching concepts are only going to enhance our ability in man coverage and Akina’s physical work is going to help our secondary get more out of their athleticism in this scheme. Corner had been the position I was most concerned about on this side of the ball but now I think it will become a source of strength very quickly in this defense. The nagging concern is that we don’t seem to have a true center fielder that the cover 1 needs to be a staple.
Split Safety Coverage
As I said in the intro, Diaz will base out of middle of the field concepts and change up with split safety concepts. The reason is simple, the split safeties coverages are strong where the MOF safety coverages are weak.
So sometimes we will align in Cover 2 and stay in Cover 2:
But very often Diaz will disguise his coverages. One of the advantages of having speed at the corner position is that is allows you to get close alignment pre-snap but still bail deep for the deep zone on Cover 2:
We also showed quite a bit of Cover 2 Man and Cover 4 (Quarters) in the Spring Game which are variations on the split safeties coverage. In this case the progression probably starts with the defense learning to pattern match effectively in Quarters and then going down through Cover 2 pattern match and into Cover 2 man. The pattern matching principles will be different for these coverages compared to Cover 3 because the deep support structure is different, but the learning arc is the same… the better the defense gets at decision making the tighter they can play their coverage effectively. Split safeties are strong against the seams and shallow flats but are susceptible to deep outside routes and deep middle routes. And this is exactly why Diaz wants to create confusion between the two branches each is strong where the other is weak, so the offense has a hard time targeting his defense with coverage calls.
Fire Zones
You may have already heard a lot about Manny Diaz and Fire Zones. Here I’m going to build on some great articles that are already out there. In this article, again from Brophy Football, the intent and specific jobs in Diaz’s fire zones are laid out. The basic idea of a fire zone is to bring 5 man pressure, confuse the assignments for the offensive line, and keep the offense in front of the defense with 3 deep coverage. In a lot of ways it’s a conservative call because it forces the offense’s hand early and to underneath routes: making it a natural 3rd and long call.
We spent a lot of the first quarter of the Spring Game practicing different versions of the fire zones from 4-3, 3-4, and 3-3 looks. To gain a better understanding of Diaz’s different flavors of fire zone, I highly recommend this gem from Coach Hoover’s site (another great spot for football). One of the little perks of bringing in great coaching talent is that it also cultivates interest from great football minds.
As the article explains, Diaz defines his Fire Zone Scrape looks by which direction the Scrape goes: to the Field (the wide side) or to the Bench (the short side). Note that a “scrape
- 43,659
- 8,662
- 43,659
- 8,662
- 2,836
- 10
Dead @ Florida posters.
- 2,836
- 10
Dead @ Florida posters.
- 1,873
- 85
dreClark--
Posts: 32593
wow.... whatcha think about dem noles this year dre??
which receiver will step up ?
@ the UF material
Posts: 32593
wow.... whatcha think about dem noles this year dre??
which receiver will step up ?
- 1,873
- 85
dreClark--
Posts: 32593
wow.... whatcha think about dem noles this year dre??
which receiver will step up ?
@ the UF material
Posts: 32593
wow.... whatcha think about dem noles this year dre??
which receiver will step up ?
- 30,498
- 5,958
Originally Posted by 10508 Cardo Jr Ln
You are watching a master at work
Dude needs to be anointed Team Captain.�
- 30,498
- 5,958
Originally Posted by 10508 Cardo Jr Ln
You are watching a master at work
Dude needs to be anointed Team Captain.�
furrell
Banned
- 3,104
- 10
[h1][/h1]
[h1]Syracuse coach Doug Marrone deals with questions about Prince-Tyson Gulley and Marcus Sales[/h1][h5]Published: Tuesday, August 02, 2011, 7:50 PM Updated: Tuesday, August 02, 2011, 8:07 PM[/h5]
By Nolan Weidner / The Post-Standard
Stew Milne / APSyracuse head football coach Doug Marrone speaks to the media during Big East football media day Tuesday in Newport, R.I.
Newport, R.I. — The questions, predictably, came all day long for Syracuse University head football coach Doug Marrone and the Orange players who accompanied him to Big East media day.
What’s going on with senior wide receiver Marcus Sales, who faces felony drug charges after his arrest on Friday, and how’s Prince-Tyson Gulley, who was stabbed overnight Thursday during a brawl at a party on campus?
There wasn’t much new from the head coach, who was out of town when separate incidents jeopardized the seasons of both players a week before the start of camp.
Marrone, who is back in Syracuse Wednesday, said he wouldn’t take any action before doing some fact-finding and talking to police.
Police said Gulley was stabbed multiple times around 1:30 a.m. Friday during a fight that broke out at a party in the 300 block of Slocum Avenue.
Gulley, 19, apparently was stabbed during a fight that erupted after 20 to 30 non-students showed up at a party. He suffered stab wounds to the back and arms.
“I know that he’s home right now, in Wisconsin. He’s from (Akron) Ohio but his dad moved to Wisconsin. He was healthy enough to be released and healthy enough to take that trip home,
furrell
Banned
- 3,104
- 10
[h1][/h1]
[h1]Syracuse coach Doug Marrone deals with questions about Prince-Tyson Gulley and Marcus Sales[/h1][h5]Published: Tuesday, August 02, 2011, 7:50 PM Updated: Tuesday, August 02, 2011, 8:07 PM[/h5]
By Nolan Weidner / The Post-Standard
Stew Milne / APSyracuse head football coach Doug Marrone speaks to the media during Big East football media day Tuesday in Newport, R.I.
Newport, R.I. — The questions, predictably, came all day long for Syracuse University head football coach Doug Marrone and the Orange players who accompanied him to Big East media day.
What’s going on with senior wide receiver Marcus Sales, who faces felony drug charges after his arrest on Friday, and how’s Prince-Tyson Gulley, who was stabbed overnight Thursday during a brawl at a party on campus?
There wasn’t much new from the head coach, who was out of town when separate incidents jeopardized the seasons of both players a week before the start of camp.
Marrone, who is back in Syracuse Wednesday, said he wouldn’t take any action before doing some fact-finding and talking to police.
Police said Gulley was stabbed multiple times around 1:30 a.m. Friday during a fight that broke out at a party in the 300 block of Slocum Avenue.
Gulley, 19, apparently was stabbed during a fight that erupted after 20 to 30 non-students showed up at a party. He suffered stab wounds to the back and arms.
“I know that he’s home right now, in Wisconsin. He’s from (Akron) Ohio but his dad moved to Wisconsin. He was healthy enough to be released and healthy enough to take that trip home,
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Michael Floyd fully reinstated today.
no surprise.
no surprise.
- 12,102
- 1,410
Michael Floyd fully reinstated today.
no surprise.
no surprise.
- 43,659
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Jameis Winston
- 43,659
- 8,662
Jameis Winston
- 1,126
- 1,188
Y'all pulling some great players from the state of Alabama.
- 1,126
- 1,188
Y'all pulling some great players from the state of Alabama.
- 1,866
- 132
Winston to FSU congrats Dre.
Haven't seen a lot of his film, who is a good comparison for him?
What are the odds he gets MLB $?
Hopefully DJ Humphries will be a Gator soon.
Haven't seen a lot of his film, who is a good comparison for him?
What are the odds he gets MLB $?
Hopefully DJ Humphries will be a Gator soon.
- 1,866
- 132
Winston to FSU congrats Dre.
Haven't seen a lot of his film, who is a good comparison for him?
What are the odds he gets MLB $?
Hopefully DJ Humphries will be a Gator soon.
Haven't seen a lot of his film, who is a good comparison for him?
What are the odds he gets MLB $?
Hopefully DJ Humphries will be a Gator soon.
