Football Tips and Tricks Peyton Manning drops back into the pocket and looks over the field. It’s the superbowl, the grandest stage of them all. He senses pressure and steps up in the pocket. The defense is in man coverage and he knows Wes Welker is going to be open on a crossing route. He plants his feet and fires but little does he know the Seahawks are in a disguised cover three roll coverage. The safety jumps the route and intercepts the pass and returns it for a touchdown. Peyton read the coverage wrong and payed the price and this can happen to any quarterback if you don’t know how to read a coverage.
There are four main coverages they are man to man,zone,zone blitz ,and man blitz. Every quarterback from pop warner to the NFL have to know how to identify and exploit the weaknesses in each of them. If the quarterback is not able to they could do anything from throw an incomplete pass or throw an interception in the superbowl that loses a football team a game.
The man to man coverages are cover one, one safety in deep coverage the rest of the defensive backs are man to man with a linebacker patrolling the middle of the field. Two man under, which means that there are two safeties splitting the field in half each taking one half and the rest of the defensive backs in man to man. And cover zero which is the two safeties double teaming the outside receivers and the rest of the defensive backs man to man across the field. To identify if the defense is in man to man the quarterback can generally key on the corners and safeties. If the corners are up and on an inside shade of the receivers while the safeties are back or lined up on a receiver you can generally assume that the defense are in a man to man coverage. The way you can exploit this type of defense is by using crossing routes,speed routes, and rub routes. The reason these work is because every defensive player is only worried about their assignment meaning