Gameplan

Welcome back to The Call Sheet!

It’s a special day for the college football community; EA Sports College Football 25 releases at 4pm ET for those who pre-ordered the game. To honor this moment, we’ll dive into coverage shells, a foundation of defense that’s finally made its way to our gaming consoles. I’ll keep things short and sweet today. TLDR:

• Cover 1

  • Foundations of Football: Coverage Shells

• Quick Game

Cover 1

Foundations of Football: Coverage Shells

In just a handful of hours, college football enthusiasts around the country will fire up their gaming consoles and play a new college football video game for the first time in over a decade. EA Sports’ latest installment will bring many new and exciting features, but one in particular caught my eye in recent weeks. We’ll have the ability to disguise coverages more strategically. Let’s dive into coverage shells and their importance for defenses.

Starting with the basics, all defensive coverages fall into two buckets: middle-field open or middle-field closed.

Your typical middle-field open coverages are 2/2-Man, 4, and 6. The presence of two high safeties characterizes all of them; in many instances, they may be referred to as two-high coverages. The middle of the field is left open, with no player taking up that space.

Middle-field closed coverages, on the other hand, are characterized by one of the safeties lining up deep in the middle of the field, thus closing it off. The two most common one-high coverages are 1 and 3. Their coverage shells are usually identical.

Many blitzes utilize man-to-man coverage and are often referred to as 0 pressures. The shells may vary but are easily identifiable because they lack deep defenders.

The clear and obvious rationale for disguising coverage is to confuse the offense, specifically the quarterback. As we know, offenses hold most of the advantages in football. However, this is one small way defenses can gain a slight edge. Quarterbacks are far too intelligent to fool with a disguised look, but delaying their timing in decision-making can be the difference between a 1-yard play and giving up a touchdown. Furthermore, many passing attacks rely on receivers reading the defense after the snap to determine their route, and a well-disguised coverage can force receivers into making mistakes, leaving them unable to get open.

Examples

The most common disguises you’ll see defenses employ are lining up in a one-high or two-high look and moving after the snap to the other, befitting what they called on a given play.

One of my favorite ways to disguise coverage is to line up to show pressure and then bail out into zone coverage. Not only do quarterbacks speed themselves up with the assumed pressure, but they might also throw the ball to a spot where they’re not expecting a zone defender to pop up.

Disguises and shells can also be used for pressures. The best defenses in the country increase the success rate of their blitz packages by showing pressure from one side and bringing it from the other. This rationale ties into how the quarterback and center set the pass protection. Using the example above, the pass protection may be set so everyone besides the tackle on the defense’s left slides toward the Nickel, who appears to be a pre-snap threat to blitz. However, such a change to the protection leaves the boundary corner free to blitz off the defensive end’s backside.

Quick Game

Check Wild

Check Wild was one of my favorite checks from my time on the defensive side of the ball. It was gameplan and situation-specific for our 3rd down, Nickel package. While we were essentially in Cover 0, we sold all-out pressure, but three players would drop if the tackle or center attempted to block them.

Situation: 3rd & 5+, offense comes out in empty
Personnel: Nickel, Okie, Dime
DL/LB: Align on shoulders of the tackles and the center. If T/C slides away, rush; If slide to you, hard sell rush then drop to curl looking for inside breaking routes.
DB: Man-to-man with inside leverage. Stagger levels and alert 10 (in/out exchange) based on receiver alignment.

If you’re new, you can catch up on previous posts here. Thank you all for spending a little bit of your day with me. See you next week!