4 Across Secondary

Coach,

Running 4 across can disguise coverages and help in reading also for the safeties. We run a multiple 40 front based out of the 4-3 and have run different alignments with the secondary and different coverages. You just need to make sure your safeties know there responsibilities and don't cross up coverages. Good luck.

Coach,

This 4-across secondary concept is a key component to our base defense. From it, you can get 9 defenders dedicated to the run depending on your reads and alignments, while at the same time disguising so many different coverages:

Cover 2 Cloud
Cover 2 Sky
Cover 3
Cover 4
1/4, 1/4, 1/2 Coverage

It's a great defense at the highschool level.

Lou Cella,

Would love to see more info on this if you have any.

Thanks!

Coach Cella,

We do exactly the same thing. Against most 2 RB / 1 TE teams, Wing-T teams, or (obviously) double wing or straight T teams, we go 4-across and put both safeties in invert / overhang alignments at about 5-5 1/2 yards. We've never had a problem. We may get beat in the middle 1/3 once or twice a season if we did not rotate properly, but that's a small price to pay for shutting down the run.

Coach, How do you play vs formations? In other words, do you roll to cover 3 or stay 1/4's most of the time. many of the teams in our league play a slant 50 and roll the coveage opposite with good results. Just wondering what you played vs 1 , 2 and no back. Thanks

Coach Cella,

Just curious: Why not run the cover 3 out of the 4-across look? The only reason I ask is because that is what we base our coverage on. We rotate to QB action in our base cover 3, which we run 80% of the time. We never run man-to-man. We also run quarters and 1/4, 1/4, 1/2, as well as some cover 2 variants.

Just curious as to why you've chosen to do what you do.

Understood, coach.

We've not really had the types of athletes who are good at covering in man situations, but we have had some very football saavy secondary athletes, so it's always worked for us. Our primary adjusters in our defense are our secondary people.

Like you said...whatever works for the kids best. In the future if we start getting different types of athletes in the secondary, we'll probably have to go something similar to what you are using!

Thanks!

pbonw,

Check out


multiple7manfront.com/


Go to 4 spoke secondary. I have not implemented this scheme yet, but I am very interested. I do not like the twins defense, but besides that, I like it.

Lochness and pbonw,
What we do to help our DB's is we only read the QB not the man, this has giving us great success with it, we will run it more this year.

QB's in high school 90% won't look off that man or the direction they are going in, but even still reading the QB actually helps with the zone placement.

I do a drill call 8-11-17. WE line up 8 yards off, because the first 2 to 3 steps should be reading run or pass it should put them at around 11 yards and they have 6 more yards to back peddle before they need to turn there hips and run.

It helps to give the DB's a feel for when to turn there hips and works in the game. Once the ball is in the air, we tell them to lean back on the WR, use the sideline as your friend.

We play some 4-2-5 last year and it hurt us in the pass and we went back to the 52 slant, which works perfect for us.

lockness,

Is your cover 2 sky where you bring the safety up for run support and the corner plays deep half? If so, what coaching points do you have for the deep half corner?

Thanks

pbonw,
We run basically a Cover 3 Cloud and Sky and I would like to throw another type of cover 3 look in there or run a cover 2 robber and yes our weak end drops to flats.

I am a big fan of the the double robber coverage as I think it really involves your safeties. Do you guys run this coverage out of a slanting front? If so, do you send an OLBer, than who has the flats? That is my big concern in running this coverage as I am not sure how to cover flats and get more than a 3 man pressure out of our 3-4 scheme.