Defending the Bear Raid with Cover-3 Variants

You wouldn't know it from my earlier posts, but defense is my favorite side of the ball. I've focused on offense so far in part because that's what our coach is supposed to be known for, but mostly because I don't hate myself enough to break down last year's defense. Now that I've written some posts on our offensive positions, formations, and the way that our plays are supposed to work, I'm going to start incorporating some more info on defense by looking at interesting things that opposing defenses did to stop us. The goal of these posts is both to teach defense from the ground up, and to show the most interesting strategies that were used against us. This post will look at some basics of a few zone coverages before moving on to a particular Cover-3 variant used by Northwestern.

The Bear Raid Quick Passing Game

The most characteristic element of our offense is the quick passing game. The quick game doesn't refer to every pass that's thrown short, however. On almost all of our pass plays there are short routes built in, so it's useful to define the quick game as contrasted with other passing plays. One key feature is that it usually uses 5-man protection (protection involving only the OL) while the QB takes a 1-step drop from the shot-gun.  In the most common versions of these plays, the RB is an essential part of the passing concept and so we can't use 6-man protections here. Another feature is that in the quick game the “concept” that's being worked happens less than 10 yards from the line of scrimmage. This contrasts with our down-field passing game, where we'll use more 6-or even 7-man protections, the QB will take deeper drops, and the concept that's being worked is meant to read defenders farther downfield. So, we might throw short routes such as outs, slants, or flat routes on any number of passing plays, but the quick game only refers to a subset of them.