Cover 3 positioning help

Coaches,

In my opinion, Cover 3 is really almost a prevent type coverage. If you're main objective is not to get beat deep, and you don't have athletes with superior speed at the corners, and I mean superior, you must have a defensive scheme that puts the responsibility for run on the eight man front. The short passing game must also be covered by the LBs and SS. Why would you expect players whose responsibility is not to give up the "home run" pass to have a different one on a running play. These guys need to stay back and make open field tackles on plays that break out of the eight man box and prevent the "home run" run. You can't have it both ways or you'll potentially get burned by play action.

What you can do to confuse an offense is use Cloud/Sky rotations which assign either the corner (cloud) or strong safety (sky) as the flat and run support player. This can sometimes cause confusion for the blocking schemes and QB pass reads. You can also disguise your Cover 3 from this with a Cover 2 shell. There is no additional teaching besides a formation or alignment as the base responsibilities are the same, just from a different look. Also, if you are having problems with the slant route, I love the sky rotation out of the cover 2 shell where the corner bails while the safety robs the weakside slant route. Receivers start to get those alligator arms once they start worrying about being whacked by that guy and the QBs rarely look for him.