Wednesday, August 25, 2010  Nick Saban: Cover 3 Adaptation
(Rip/Liz) To The Spread  After providing an overview of playing
Cover 3 with pattern-matching principles, we'll now take a look
at the adaptations utilized to strengthen this basic concept.  A
mantra comically repeated within the circles of "Air Raid"
offenses is, "everything works against Cover 3", meaning
whatever the concept, you can pass at will against most cover 3
defenses. With natural voids in the defense in the flats and in
the seams, the four underneath defenders are typically the lynch
pin of how successful a cover 3 defense will be.  The easiest
threat to victimize cover 3 is the #2 receiver in the seam. The
defense must be able to account for this threat or it will spend
much of the game seeing the free safety 'wrong' on a 4 vertical
threat.  and so the chess match, begins To accommodate for this
deficiency, Saban's defenses have evolved through the last
decade with a "Rip/Liz" match based on where the safety drops
into the box (Rita / Li