Defending Trips with Cover-4: Treggs' OT TD

I like to think of playbooks like tool boxes (creative, right?). Some coaches have a million plays, because they want to have the perfect play for every scenario and defensive look that they could possibly see. A guy like Tedford doesn't just have a tool box, he has an entire Home Depot. Our coaches make do with decidedly less, and they're happy to let you know it. From the sounds of things, you'd think that they're just really, really good at using a hammer and screw driver. Like, they've just sat down and hammered a bunch of things, so they're really really efficient at hammering. On this model, playcalling starts to sound really easy.

This is the trap, though. The party line is that we can complete whatever we want no matter what the defense does, because we've just practiced it more than they have. In reality, our coaches (and the Air Raid guys in general) have re-imagined the things that are possible with a few basic plays. They can take a hammer and screwdriver and produce a space shuttle. They can take any defensive look and come up with novel ways to apply our very few offensive plays to beat it. Treggs' overtime TD is a good example of exactly how much strategy goes into our playcalling.

Defending Trips

Because I'm incapable of giving a basic play breakdown without including the broader theoretical framework behind it, we first have to talk about defending trips formations with Cover-4. The relevance will be clear in a minute, I promise. Cover-4 is built to easily handle up to two receivers on each side of the formation:

This coverage gives the defense a 3-on-2 advantage against any side of the formation with two WR's. The CB can take the first route outside in the flat, the OLB can take the first route inside, and the FS can take the first route deep. Furthermore, if both WR's go deep, Cover-4 gives an easy answer: the CB and safety will just cover those two WR's. For every route combination that can be run by two receivers, this basic Cover-4 look has a straightforward answer. We can see how this looks against the 4-vertical route concept that it's especially good at stopping:

When you're facing a 2x2 formation and all four receivers run deep, Cover-4 has an easy answer: All four DB's just take the guy across from them man-to-man.

Things get tougher when you try to defend three receivers on one side of the formation:

What do you do with the #3 receiver (Y) if he goes vertical? Cover-4 doesn't have an immediate answer for that. There are a variety of tags that can take care of this, however. The first is a tag called “Solo”:

On this variant the safety away from the trips side (SS) will cross-key to the #3 receiver on the trips side (Y). Once he reads pass, the SS comes over the top and covers #3 deep. On a more theoretical note, this variant basically pretends that this isn't a trips formation at all. For all intents and purposes, it covers this concept much as if Y were lined up on the other side of the formation in a 2x2 alignment. So, the CB, FS, and SLB play 3-on-2 over X and H, and the SS, CB, and a LB play 3-on-2 over Y and Z. It takes the 3x1 formation and treats it as a 2x2. This is the common thread behind all the variants we'll see in this post.

The downside of “Solo” is that you leave the single WR (Z) all alone against a CB. Lots of teams will go to trips and purposefully make their best WR the guy away from the trips receivers. They know that teams will want to rotate to the trips side to account for the extra receiving threats, and in doing so will leave the lone WR in single coverage, so offenses will do this to try and get a good match-up. What if you don't want to let them do this? Another option is a variant called “Solid”:

This coverage pretends that this is a 2x2 formation where the CB, FS, and SLB play 3-on-2 over X and H, just as if this were normal Cover-4. On the other side of the formation, the SS, CB, and WLB are playing 3-on-2 over Z and the RB, just as if this were normal Cover-4 against a 2x2 formation. Because the RB hardly ever runs vertical, this means that the SS will almost always be free to play over the top of Z, giving you double coverage. The problem is that you aren't accounting for Y on this adjustment. Your MLB has to cover Y if he goes deep, which will probably be a bad match-up. This brings us to “Special”:

This will be especially good if you're in nickel personnel. To the single receiver side, Special will have the exact same advantages that Solid did. To the trips side, your CB will play X man-on-man, and your NB, MLB, and FS will play 3-on-2 over H and Y just as if it were normal Cover-4 against a 2x2 formation. So, against 4-verts, the NB takes H vertical and the FS takes Y vertical.

Treggs' TD

In the first OT of our game against CU, our offense was sputtering. We were in 3^rd and 10, probably thinking we'd have to kick a FG and hope for our defense to get a stop. Fortunately, our coaching staff knew that Colorado's trips adjustment was “Special”:

Remember that in special, to the trips side the CB will play X man-to-man, so Harper releases down the sideline and takes the CB with him. To the single receiver side in Special, the SS will be doubling Z with the CB. The key is the coverage on Treggs (H) and Anderson (Y). The NB, FS, and MLB are playing 3-on-2 over them, as they would in normal Cover-4. This means that when Anderson goes vertical, the FS has to run with him, leaving the NB to cover Treggs. The NB is playing shallow and with outside leverage. Treggs releases inside and blows past him, Anderson pulls the safety across the field, and Goff throws an easy, easy TD pass:

So yes, 4-verticals is one of few plays that we run. If we'd run this play out of a 2x2 formation, however, it wouldn't have worked, or at least it wouldn't have been this easy. Out of a normal 2x2 formation the CB's would've taken Harper (X) and Harris (Z) and the safeties would've taken Treggs (H) and Anderson (Y). By going to trips, we put them into their trips adjustment (Special), meaning that one safety was doubling Harris, forcing the other safety to take Anderson and opening up a huge hole for Treggs to beat the NB inside. 4-verticals might be only one tool, but if you're creative then there are a lot of different ways to apply it.

Discussion thread: http://bearinsider.com/forums/showthread.php?86715-Treggs-OT-TD&p=842368958#post842368958