Attacking Cover 2

Last week I began to touch up on how to read coverages and understanding how to read and adjust routes to beat them. This week I'll go into more detail on Cover 2.

Again, to review last week, our 1st tell to determine cover 2 is the 2 high safeties (easy to remember right...) The next thing we should read is our CBs.

• If they're sitting deeper than 6-7 we can assume that we're seeing one of 2 coverages:

1. Cover 4 where each man is responsible for deep quarters or...
2. They're disguising Cover 3 and the Safeties will rotate down. For the style of offense we play I would guess we will NOT see Cover 4 since it fails to give adequate run support.

• If they're sitting at 5 or tighter we know we are seeing Cover 2 or 2 man- the angle the CBs are playing should help determine that (eyes inside=zone)

Great 5 step and sprint out combos to attack the cover two would be:

• Curl/Out with the curl coming back sharply and not inside the void like in cover 3. The out should be run at 5 to draw the corner to the flat
• Smash/ Corner or some variation- again we would like to force the CB to make a choice and attack the void behind him and away from the safety
• A Drive Concept where we attack the middle with a Seam/ Drag(or drive) combo or Dig/Drive combo
• Our 3 step game can be effective with slants and fades attacking this coverages weakness as well.

As you can see in the post above, this front does leave some vulnerability to the run off tackle which is why we love to see this front when we are in our double wing formation. We can attack the bubble over the tackle and the lack the extra S for run support that a Cover 3 brings.