zone blitz

Ever since Mike Macdonald arrived, and continuing into Jesse Minter, I've been throwing around the term "Amoeba Defense" in reference to Michigan's disguised fronts and coverages. I probably should get into what that means, and how they're using it. The concept is actually a suite of ideas that are old and ubiquitous at all levels of football:

1. Hybrid defenders.
2. Zone blitzes.
3. Pre-snap motion.

This is not original. It's the thing Jerry Sandusky was most known for before the other thing. It's what Dick LeBeau made his Hall of Fame career on. It's what Michigan ran as its base defense the last time we imported a Ravens defensive assistant in 2011-'12. Bob Davie is credited with coming up with it when trying to counter the Run 'n Shoot. Even without the talent disparity, the Amoeba's origins made it particularly well-suited to combat an Air Raid run by Hal Mumme's son in Game 1, let alone a Run 'n Shoot coached by a June Jones quarterback (who until last year was coaching under Hal Mumme's son) in Game 2.

It has been my assertion that Michigan dipped its toes in Amoeba world last year, then shelved it for two reasons:

1. David Ojabo emerged as an elite old-school pass-rusher, which is still the best way to get pressure if you can find it.
2. Vincent Gray and Brad Hawkins were savvy zone defenders with speed limitations.

It's too early in 2022 to say Minter's going to run this stuff all year, but it's at least being deployed more often that Macdonald used it last year pre-Ojabo breakout. Why now? What do they need to keep using it when the talent curve turns? Let's investigate.

Michigan added a couple of defensive assistants last week to replace rising stars Chris Partridge and Anthony Campanile. Both losses grate for different reasons—Partridge was due to move up but chose easily the least respectable program in the Power 5, Campanile took a lateral move into the NFL after Michigan fought off other suitors, possibly botching their own chances to retain him in the process. On the recruiting front, neither is replaceable, especially Partridge, who was the first assistant at Michigan since Cam Cameron to have sustained success recruiting the Deep South.

Some of that ground will be made up for with Brian Jean-Mary, a scion of Apopka who's been recruiting the Confederacy since the first time I swiped my M-Card at the Union—for example I noted while doing his hello post that 9 of Louisville's top 10 recruits in 2013 were Floridians. I suspect, however, that there was another goal in mind with Harbaugh's recent hires. I can't say Harbaugh hired Bob Shoop and Brian Jean-Mary because those were the two most experienced former defensive coordinators on the market in the kind of defense Michigan was running a lot last year. But if the goal was to find guys who know more about zone blitzing than anybody not in a job, Shoop and Jean-Mary were #1 and #2. And given the types of players they've been recruiting, and the types of weaknesses on the depth chart, I think it's fair bet that Harbaugh and Don Brown are at least a little zone blitz curious.

As are we.

The Path of Shoop/The Don Brown Connection

Though best known as James Franklin's DC at Vanderbilt and Penn State, most of Shoop's coaching career has been either as a secondary coach or defensive coordinator in the same New England coaching circle as Don Brown. The 53-year-old Northeasterner played for Yale in the late 1980s, was the head coach of Columbia for three years, and spent a year coaching defensive backs under Don Brown at UMass in 2006.

From there Shoop moved on to the defensive coordinator job at William & Mary, where he won the FCS version of the Broyles Award, whence Franklin hired him as the new Vanderbilt DC and safeties coach. In 2016 Bob surprisingly left Penn State to join Butch Jones at Tennessee, which means yes, Shoop had Brady Hoke as his defensive line coach and was then Hoke's defensive coordinator for half a season after Jones was fired. Shoop was also key in recruiting Joe Moorhead to join Penn State's staff in 2016; Bob was most recently Moorhead's defensive coordinator at Mississippi State. I posted the path in full on the message board this week.

Shoop left Penn State after two seasons, and not on good terms—the university sued him for for just under $1 million for breach of contract for departing for Tennessee in January 2016. Shoop was countersuing under the claim that Franklin had already all but fired him at that point (their linebackers coach and current PSU DC Brent Pry had already been elevated to "co-coordinator"). The countersuit also claims Shoop was subjected to a "hostile, negative work environment" at Penn State. The suits were ultimately settled in February 2018.

Shoop was also the guy who got Gattis on James Franklin's staff. Bob's younger brother John met Gattis when the latter was finishing his pro career with the Bears, shortly before the former took the offensive coordinator job at North Carolina. John Shoop gave Gattis his introduction to coaching offense at UNC, then lobbied his brother to snag the up-and-coming assistant when Franklin had an opening for receivers coach at Vanderbilt.

[After THE JUMP: Examining the defenses Shoop and Jean-Mary came from]

Next time you see this you'll know what's going on

In previous layman's discussions on how fancy newfangled anti-spread defenses function I've talked about how Quarters works, and how MSU used aggressive alignments with it to dominate the run game at the cost of greater risk of getting beat over the top. Each time I alluded to the fact that Saban's defense is similar in concept except where Quarters is a Cover 2/Cover 4 hybrid, Saban's is a Cover 3/Cover 1 hybrid.

We will see it this year. Every defense uses some Cover 3 and Cover 1 as a changeup, but Saban's base system, now all over the SEC, has spread into various Michigan opponents. Penn State kept it around while transitioning to Bob Shoop's version of Quarters. Maryland had it last year; not sure if their 4-3 transition includes a coverage shift. I think BYU (which is going back to 3-3-5 with Bronco Mendenhall overseeing it personally) is expected to as well. Michigan State has played with it, since it's similar to what they do normally. Anyway I thought it'd be fun to get into it now, so we'll have it to reference later.

Resources/hat tips:

1. Rufio of Cleveland Browns SBNation blog Dawgs by Nature.
2. Matthew Brophy's incomparable series on Alabama's D: part i, part ii, part iii, and his "Rip/Liz" video.
3. Eleven Warriors' Kyle Jones's film study
4. Ricky Muncie of Crimson Tide SBNation blog Roll Bama Roll
5. Chris Brown, of course. Of course.
6. Pre-emptive thanks to actual football coaches who post in the comments and point out where I got something wrong or over-simplified.

I'm Not a Coach Disclaimer

I'm not a football coach. I'm a guy on the internet who read a lot about football.

Basics of One-High Defenses

Cover 3 is probably the most basic defense in existence. It is the defense you learn on Day 1 as a high school freshman, if not before. At that level it is a "go to this spot and then find work" scheme, past that there are techniques coaches teach to cover the gaps. Here are the two basic versions that Saban uses against standard 2x2 formations:

If you picked up on the fact that "Liz" and "Rip" begin with the same letters as "left" and "right" (or you know your port and starboard colors) you have my permission to eat a cookie.

Joe Paterno used variations of this (Rip is very close to his base defense*) since the Chatelperronian, and like Neanderthal toolkits it only looks crude until you see it in the hands of a master.**

Some things to know that we'll use later:

• The receiver numbering system is the same as in Quarters: start from the sideline and work your way in until you're at the center. It's where they are at the snap, not before, in case motion messed with that.
• The path you take to your zone matters a great deal. Note how guys running toward their zones are actually going through weak points in the coverage. This is for "routing" purposes: if you're there a receiver can't be.

The latter is true for all zone defenses, but it's a stress point for Cover 3 because the holes in the zone are places the offense can attack either quickly (7-9 yards downfield in the seam) or easily (deep downfield once the free safety has committed). Cover 3 coaches teach defenders to be in the way so receivers have to re-route to covered places.

The tradeoff is natural coverage strength to the middle of the field, to the detriment of the flats—if you've ever watched an NFL defense that seems to constantly be tackling fullbacks squirting out of the backfield, that's why.

The problem with Cover 3 is the same problem with Cover 2: those frikkity vertical routes:

The problem remains with pretty much any set of routes that stem from a vertical release.

The old-fashioned answer to this is play more man defense, and certainly Cover 1 (example diagram) is a complementary coverage to any Cover 3 team. In Cov1, aka "Man Free" defense, corners stay on the receivers, the erstwhile "curl/flat" guys stay on the #2's, and the middle linebacker over the RB takes the RB.

But if you're playing man-to-man defense, you'd better have men who can win their battles 97%+ of the time against theirs. If you need to activate that free safety to double up a dangerman, now you're giving up "front"—how many defenders are participating in your run fits, and once it's not an 8-man front anymore you're weak against the run. Offenses will also use rub routes, or exploit matchups, e.g. have a quick slot receiver sprint across the formation until he loses the linebacker trying to keep up.

These were problems for Saban to a much greater degree when he was dealing with the kind of talent the Cleveland Browns drafted during his DC days. By the time he got to MSU he already had his Rip and Liz and his Cov1 amalgamated into a hybrid scheme he called "pattern matching."

[After the jump]

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* The Paterno-era "Hero", and "Sam" in the linked diagram were early examples of hybrid space players, and the zone-blitzing 8-man front it spawned was the basis of Rocky Long's 3-3-5 defense.

** …who discovered children were being sexually abused in his locker room and didn't tell the police because football reasons.

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