4-4 Coverages

Use Nickle & Dime packages. But be mindful when doing so that some Spread teams are not vertical passing teams also your flirting with their running game if your constantly putting 6 in the box.

A 4-3 with Tampa 2 Coverage will do fine against most squads imho. Your Mike just has to be a stud!!

Green,

You say if you see 6 in the box you will run all day. Only way to get 7 in the box to defend the run is to go straight man Cover 0.

So if you see Cover 1 or 2 or even 3 you run the ball and when you see Cover 0 you throw the ball?

How many teams play straight man all the time?

4-2-5 Cover 1 Man/Free. Nick Saban says it is the most effective (& most USED) coverage in NFL AND College vs. Spread teams!

*

I believe Cover 1 is the best all around coverage in football. Nick Saban recently stated this in a S.I. article.

NICK SABAN: "The simplest and best defense in football is man-free coverage.
It covers everything, it stuffs the run, and it defends the middle of the field.
It’s the #1 coverage in pro ball ....basically because you can’t get away with playing Cover 3".

NOTE: The way we play Cover 1 - the Corners can be in "Off Man", OR, "Inside Mirror Jam".

A GREAT (& simple) change up vs. 2 back sets is to play Cover 1 with the OB & F/S comboing the TE - which then gives us "ROBBER" coverage with only 2 of 11 men deviating from basic Cover 1 (it is not a totally different coverage).

If this is not clear - phone me at 804-378-0119 tomorrow (between 10 AM & 9 PM/EASTERN).

Good thinking!

FS always reads the QB in Cover 1 at our place. He is Free.

Good write up (TODAY - Dec. 20) on Va Tech Secondary Coverage:

Safety first for Tech defense
By Darryl Slater
Published: December 20, 2009


BLACKSBURG Awhite dry-erase board, 10 feet long, hangs from the wall of a meeting room near the Virginia Tech football coaches' offices. Scribbled on nearly every inch of it, in blue marker, are the names of the 15 or so defensive coverages the Hokies play.

They are a combination of words and numbers -- hieroglyphics to an outsider, but a necessary second language to the men who use them on game day. Some are man-to-man coverages, some zone, some man and zone in the same coverage.

Further complicating matters, Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster said he uses "a lot of double-digit calls." When Foster does this, senior free safety Kam Chancellor is one of the Hokies' most important players, because he is the guy who can "check out" of a coverage and switch to another, to better match an offense's formation.

Some college football teams pressure the quarterback "on the front end," as Foster put it, with blitzes by defensive linemen. Foster and his defensive backs coach, Torrian Gray, use their many coverages -- and the pre-snap changes Chancellor makes in the secondary -- to confuse the quarterback just as much "on the back end."

"With our back-end adjustments," Gray said, "we're probably as complex as anybody in the country from a mental standpoint."

As if that isn't enough pressure on Chancellor, he spent the past two seasons essentially playing out of position at free safety, trying to make open-field tackles and cover wide receivers who lined up in the slot -- which sometimes proved problematic.

His physique, 6-4 and 230 pounds, is better suited for strong safety, where he can play closer to the line of scrimmage, have better tackling angles and fewer pass-coverage responsibilities. As a sophomore, he started at rover, Tech's version of strong safety. Gray expects him to flourish as a strong safety in the NFL.

"It'll probably make me feel like I'm right at home," Chancellor said.

But Foster needed a vocal player to start at free safety last season, when two-year starter D.J. Parker graduated. Chancellor fit the description and was, as Gray said, "just the best athlete that we had."

Chancellor's stint as a free safety almost certainly will end Dec. 31, when the Hokies play Tennessee in the Chick-fil-A Bowl in Atlanta.

Though it wasn't the ideal experience, especially in the eyes of outside observers, his coaches believe it will make him smarter in the NFL, where he hopes to use his earnings to help his family. The coaches also think it made the Hokies a better team, as Chancellor changed his mentality from that of a hard-hitting strong safety to a patient free safety.

Foster rejected claim that Chancellor hasn't perfomed up to expectations. "They don't know what we're asking the kid to do," Foster said as he sat in the meeting room, across from the dry-erase board filled with coverage names.

Chancellor finished strong last season. In Tech's Orange Bowl win over Cincinnati, he intercepted a pass and broke up two others. Still, he singled out two areas before this season that he wanted to improve: pass coverage and open-field tackling.

In pass coverage, he said, "I'm a 6-4 dude checking somebody that's 5-9. So they'll be quicker off the ball. If I don't get my hand on them early, then they'll probably have me by a step."

In the Hokies' season-opening 34-24 loss to Alabama, receiver Marquis Maze, who is 5-10, got a step on Chancellor, and a 48-yard catch as a result. The play underscored Chancellor's problems with side-to-side movement in one-on-one matchups with receivers.

The Hokies were using a coverage called Robber, in which the two cornerbacks played deep, while Chancellor served as the "robber," playing closer to the line of scrimmage and reading the play to determine whether he needed to stop a run or cover the slot receiver, Maze.

For passes, the coverage required Chancellor to shuffle to his right and stay in front of Maze, to prevent him from catching a ball over the middle. But after Maze cut toward the middle and baited Chancellor, he broke straight up the field, toward the end zone, wide open. Chancellor couldn't recover and catch up in time.

"That's probably one of my weaknesses, just coming out of that shuffle technique at full speed," Chancellor said.

After the game, Foster tweaked the coverage. Now, Chancellor said he doesn't shuffle in front of the receiver to cut off a pass over the middle. Instead, as Chancellor tracks the receiver, he stays between him and the end zone, preventing the deep ball and cutting down Chancellor's recovery angle.

"So if he breaks back up, I'm still right there," Chancellor said. "I can run with anybody like that."

Gray disagreed with Chancellor's criticizing his shuffling ability, but said that because Chancellor is so big, "If his technique isn't perfect, he got exposed at times this year. But 80 percent of the time, Kam has been covering his guy pretty good."

To improve his other issue, open-field tackling, Chancellor tried to bend his knees and waist during practice when doing drills that involved back-pedaling, even if it felt uncomfortable.

"The bigger you are, to tackle in space against a good athlete, that's gonna be tough because you've got to bend your body," Gray said. "You don't have a natural low center of gravity. You've got to really break down and come under control. And that's not advantageous for a bigger, taller guy."

Chancellor had to be patient and let plays develop, instead of just lining up and hammering a ball carrier head-on, as he could do at rover, a simpler position. "I know I could have stayed at rover and it would have been easy for me," he said. "But I'm a team player. The team needed me at free."

The mental benefits he gained from the sacrifice could pay off in the NFL. At Tech, he wows his teammates in practice by predicting a route pre-snap by noticing the formation, down and distance.

Gray, a Tech graduate, was a second-round NFL draft selection in 1997 and played three years with the Minnesota Vikings. He said Chancellor learning a pro system would be "a piece of cake for him" because of all the coverages he played at Tech.

Another former NFL safety, Mike Mayock, said Chancellor playing multiple positions in the secondary -- he was a backup cornerback as a freshman -- "will be viewed by the NFL as an advantage." Mayock, now a draft analyst for the NFL Network, also played corner and safety in college and said it helped him as a pro.

Mayock wonders, though, how an NFL team will utilize Chancellor. Some make their free and strong safeties interchangeable, performing the same duties. Others put the strong safety "in the box," near the line. Because Chancellor's size is similar to "a lot of NFL linebackers," Mayock said, "In my mind he's probably more of an in-the-box safety than he is an interchangeable part."

Wherever he plays or gets picked -- Mayock's early projection is third round -- Chancellor wants to use his money to buy a house for his mom, Karen Lambert. She currently rents one in the rough Norfolk neighborhood of Park Place, where Chancellor grew up. She works two jobs, driving a bus for Norfolk State and taking tickets at a mall parking garage. Friends are already sending Chancellor links to Web sites showing nice homes in the Virginia Beach suburbs.

Lambert even kids Chancellor that she'd like a car, maybe a convertible Chrysler PT Cruiser or a Nissan Murano SUV. "She'll be joking around, but I know she really wants it," Chancellor said. "So I keep it all in my head."

The chance to lavish his family almost led Chancellor to leave Tech after last season, when he said an NFL advisory committee projected him as a third-round pick. But he stayed, as Gray urged him to do, in part to get another year at free safety -- an experience that proved challenging but should yield a reward

In the NFL, "I think Kam will play 10-plus years, easy," Gray said. "To say a guy will play 10 years is a hell of a compliment."


Contact Darryl Slater at (804) 649-6026 or dslater@timesdispatch.com .