Explaining Cover 1- Man Free from 3-5-3 Defense and It’s Variations with Coach Schuman
10 min readExplaining Cover 1- Man Free from 3-5-3 Defense and It’s Variations with Coach Schuman
Coach Schuman breaks down how to play Man Free (cover 1) and how to handle things like Motion, Empty Set, and how each player on defense plays there coverage.
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Hello everyone coach Schumann here I Wish we were doing these on their on Their better terms but obviously with The coronavirus where we're doing some Of these these uh to really give you an Opportunity to learn as much you can While some of you aren't even able to be In school and stuff so today we're gonna Go into a coverage that we love to play Allows you to attack from a blitzing Standpoint allows you to get a lot of Hats to the ball it also allows you to To corral the quarterback and play a lot Of stunts on the defensive line it Allows you to bracket what I mean by Bracket is bring another person over in Coverage so you can you can bracket Somebody a little little bit easier and Then from from a coverage standpoint Allows you to be real aggressive Especially if you feel like you have Some excellent defensive backs and Excellent athletes coverages man free Now we use different terms for that we Use color terms to call it out from a Defensive standpoint you could signal it Whatever you want you can use colors you Could use words you could use movies you Can do anything that signifies that each Year we kind of change it so in the past We've used those those different types Of methodologies we like to sing over The sin this allows us to play a very Very simple coverage but at the same
Time it allows us to be very attacking And also we like to play a lot of times Out of our 335 base defense which Essentially in this can become a Three-four real easily to become a 4-3 Real easily we can blitz guys And-and-and combo coverage people so we Go over two basic responsibilities of Man free first basic responsibilities of This so we'll look here we count from The outside in we count from the outside In and we go and we have our number one Person and our number two person so we Count one two okay so we just [Music] So it's easy for everyone to really see Here it's so from accounting standpoint Okay it becomes when you're in man It becomes situation where you want to Be able to count the number of offensive Players to be outside in so you know you Got and that's where we have these lines Around them so the corner has the first Guy the widest guy our nickel back in The 30 defense is gonna have the number Two to the weak side to the strong side This is against an empty set I'm here so And we call it rip empty but it's an Empty set then the corner on the strong Side will have number one the strong Safety out number two The why the will linebacker will move From the box and have number three and Then the Mike in the Sam are what we
Call banjo with motion spy to spy to Double-team so banjo meaning banjo means That if any player comes in motion we Swap responsibilities and then that's How we would cover it okay so if a if a Team understands and there's a lot of Different ways you can play this but you Could have you could have your defensive Back run across so if he goes in motion You could have if you feel that this is The guy you want cover and you could you Could have him cover him so but you Could this is what banjo Inge is it Means that these guys right here are on A string or on a string with this number Three receiver or number two receiver Goes the other way so that's what we're Doing it from a banjo standpoint okay if He goes emotion from this side to make It into quads we can always bring him Across okay Or we can if he goes across emotion we Can go and banjo this And cover it from that standpoint Alright so that's the first thing the Second thing is spy so these guys are Spying spying the quarterback for any Run game or run option game so if we get Anything like this okay where people Like to run maybe a power read get the Quarterback either fake or give and and Go and run off of that or play-action Off of that we're in a spy situation When we're in spy we get motion and get
Motion across this mic we'll play to run This this Sam will work and play the Quarterback okay and that gives us an Easy situation and what basically Happens is from our standpoint ends up Going like this the mic okay plays the Back in case they go into route the Sam And a nickel now we'll go and play What's going on here okay Sam and a Nickel will now go and play the Quarterback okay so that's where they're Spying comes in it also if the Quarterback runs a draw don't delay draw We have people there for that as well And from a blitzing standpoint we're Running any games that allows us to run All the games we want to run from a Blitzing standpoint and get at least Four-man pressure which will have every Single time we could have five-man Pressure as well out of this okay gives Us a lot of flexibility this free safety Allows us to even walk up and go in zero And this would be a zero which would be Everybody's everybody's going to really Try to get a lot of attacking pressure Out there okay so the bad free gives you A lot of flexibility okay It also gives you flexibility to be able To to double-team any receiver you want So what we can do is we can spy we could Have this middle linebacker spy the Quarterback okay and then we could have The Sam linebacker in what we call
Double-team situation where he can go And bracket he could he got here and Bracket or double-team bracket or Double-team depending on how you want to Play and different we Brad can a Double-team is there is no difference It's just bracketing I like to say Leverage wise one has inside leverage When I was outside leverage but but we Could double-team this displayer bracket Them essentially and we can now Neutralize a better receiver okay By doing that all right now the free Safety which is a center field player as You can see the free safety has a lot of Space to cover so from an alignment Standpoint I like to be inside out Unless someone really really widens us But we really want to be inside we want To make them make the long throw over The top over and over again okay because That's more difficult we can't give an Easy in man-to-man and I'm gonna I Primarily office of coach I see a player Playing outside I know that's an easy Slant I mean that's to me that's just Stealing so we got to take away the Inside forced them to go over the top Force forced receiver to release outside Okay Before getting into their route which Makes it a much more difficult throw and That to me is across the board the other Thing you have to make sure you do
Because we'd love to see love to rub Okay I love to rub plum routes in this Kind of situation or you can get a Crossing route rub okay with a dig post Vert I mean you get all kinds of things Here where people can rub off so it's Important to play a different level so Levels is key so if your corner is gonna Play up then your safety your your Nickel should play back if you're Willing backers playing up then your Your strong safety should be at a Different level than your corner so Playing levels gives you an opportunity To be able to to not get picked off in Any kind of rubs Okay the free safety alignment wise you Can align him I would line them deeper Versus closer or somewhere between 12 to 15 yards they have to cover the whole Entire field and then run responsibility Wise their ally players and then if There's a run in here he's got to clean Up any messes so from that standpoint Really really difficult because these Guys are gonna be looking man the man And especially high school players your Eyes are gonna be on the receiver first And you're gonna have a hard time if Someone does run you off so these guys Have really got to be the main run Defenders you can if you have someone That's experienced cornerback that that You feel can play man and give Fouts up
And play loose you can do that all right It really depends on the type of players That you have you're not gonna be in This kind of defense unless you feel you Have players that can really do some Different things then you're looking to Get some different opportunities I'm a Blitz standpoint you could do some Exchanges we call exchange coverage okay So with a will linebacker as number Three we can blitz the will linebacker And exchange with the Mike so now Mike Has coverage yeah the free safety going Back to the free safety he reads the Quarterback size brackets the best Offensive receiver in what we call free Bracket so let's say the number one Receiver is the best receiver and we Know that that person's you know bigger Than us or faster than us we want to Make sure that the free safety can cheat In bracket if we need to and get a Second person in defense in coverage There so but we want to read the free Safety's eyes We always from a free safety standpoint We want to leverage and everyone has Different comfort levels I like reading The guards because I a lot of times There are uncovered especially in our 30 Defense some people like to read the Center or even the 40 defense that's Fine I think sometimes centers don't Move real well and and I think you're
Better off with guards as a read cause I'll pull them and you get a run pass Rate but the free safety Is gonna read get that run pass read and Then they really have the whole entire Deep part of the field and they are Center fielders just like in baseball They are tracking down balls as soon as They forget a bead on a route they are Tracking that ball wherever it is and They're making a play and they're trying To make plays on the ball at all times Okay so man free you got man coverage Man coverage on all available receivers Okay you have if there was a go back Here real quick if this back was in the Backfield and we just had this kind of a Situation so now what would change is All three would be on Brad would be on Will Mike it Sam no longer is the Mike And Sam on a banjo the the Sam and the Will will be on the banjo on less than Three the the yet third receiver Releases down the middle of the field so And then we could obviously all cover it Run game that's all we have to read we Just read this running back if he's in The backfield the quarterback then we Read that quarterback so if this receive If this receiver goes out over goes Emotion for example and then runs our Route over here now this Sam linebacker Would banjo there and he would have him Man the man he would be late to the
Party and now he could play pure run or On a blitz okay so that's what we talked About from banjo we're on a string with This guy's real if he did release up the Field we should all be attacking any way For run and we should be able to make a Play on the ball okay So that's that basically summarizes Cover cover 3 IV cover 3 man free You have one high here with the free Safety you have man on the number one Received number two receiver banjo on The number three if he removes himself It goes into empty that that look Located closest linebacker will go and Cover them in man the man if there is Any motion we banjo that motion we could Also check the zone if we want to as Well there's a lot of different checks That we could use we can do some kind of Combo checks here where we have half man Half zone and that's one of the things That we like to do is we get this kind Of action and we don't know exactly What's going on from a route standpoint We go you know we'll check to your Quarters coverage here and that allows Us to push get any coverage here that We're good we're still good in man and We would check to that so man free gives You a lot of flexibility especially if You got athletes it's it's it's a type Of defense that could really disrupt the Quarterback takes away his timing
Because you can blitz from basically Anywhere on it using any and one of your Players anyone your athletes that's man Free coverage one high or a lot of People call it cover one just cover one All right
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