Question about Zone Coverage
Yesterday my friend and I noticed that the CBs and the SS-type players were playing a few yards behind the only player in their zone. This often resulted in an easy completion followed by an immediate tackle. Is this often how zone coverage works?
It seems to me that if they were to play closer to the receiver, they could easily pick off or bat the pass or at least hit the guy as he's catching the ball to jar it loose. At the very least I would think it would prevent a QB from attempting to make difficult passes on a rollout.
For those more knowledgeable than me: Am I right in my assessment? Should our guys be playing closer? Is this how zone coverage is usually run or are we trying to protect our young secondary?
September 19th, 2010 at 2:10 PM ^
The zone is definitely being used to protect a young secondary. At times we are actually running a cover 3. This is too avoid any man to man matchups and we are waiting for the offense to make a mistake rather than to force them to make a mistake.
September 19th, 2010 at 2:13 PM ^
I would assume playing tight would open them up to double moves that gets the WR open deep. You can always adjust to things in front of you, things behind you become a race with the WR able to gain the first step.
I know we also ran some man yesterday. One of the late bootleg touchdowns was Michigan in man coverage. Both the UMASS WRs were able to get separation coming back to the sideline. Well, I assume it was man because no one was covering the corner and both our backs were chasing their WRs.
So best guess I have is that if our players were solid veterans, they would play closer, but we're trying to keep everything in front of us.
September 19th, 2010 at 2:20 PM ^
Unfortunately, "gritty" is one of the last adjectives coaches seek for a secondary. Until Michigan has more speed and athleticism prepared to play, we are in for a lot of soft zone coverage, which does create the holes. Good teams will keep hitting the holes until the defense adjusts. Hopefully as the freshmen get more comfortable throughout the year, they can step in and maybe the coaches will at least tighten the zone up a little.
September 19th, 2010 at 2:22 PM ^
Ideally, the zone allows the guys in coverage to read the QB's eyes and adjust to where he's going with the ball as the pressure flushes him in one direction or another. It also is supposed to prevent any one DB from getting too isolated, as Cissoko was in last year's ND game, and is thus supposed to prevent big plays.
My main criticisms are 1) that we're really not disguising our zones at the snap, allowing for easy reads and 2) that we're dropping our zone deeper than necessary, leaving too much vacated space underneath. Given that our LBs are iffy in coverage, I don't like doing this. And UMass never demonstrated the ability to complete the deep ball, so I don't know why we couldn't have forced the issue a little more. Also, when we're not getting much pressure on the QB, the big advantage of the zone (having guys around to read the QB's eyes) is negated.
September 19th, 2010 at 4:33 PM ^
Banks and RVB to get turnovers in this system.
September 19th, 2010 at 6:13 PM ^
We played pretty good the first two games besides the big plays against norte dame.We held micheal floyd in check a first round pick.We just didn't show up yesterday.But yeah you are right about zone defense it is design to cover up the field.We should have played closer,did we play off because i didn't get to watch the game.Why would we play off just doesn't make sense,in a game like this.