Tampa 2 and Cover 2 links: a survey.

I haven’t done many Xs and Os articles recently, and this one isn’t going to be explanatory in and of itself. Instead, its going to be a set of links pointing to Tampa 2 and Cover 2 resources. I’d like this to be a living document, at least over the short term, which means I reserve the right to rewrite, amend, and add to this list. If you are a coach or interested amateur, feel free to let me know more sources and resources that I can add.

What you’ll see here in order is a link, perhaps a short summary of the scope of the link, and perhaps a short quote from the link. I might borrow a diagram or two from the link, if I think it will help the reader.

Obviously this is driven by the hire of Monte Kiffen and Rod Marinelli by the Dallas Cowboys. Rob Ryan was fired recently. The reasons are part of still heated discussions, but given subsequent hires, it’s easy enough to suggest that the powers that be among the Cowboys want better execution all round. That the Cowboys offense was more prone to penalties and miscues than the defense is a position many Cowboys fans take, and that faction treats the firing of Ron Ryan as a kind of scapegoating.

Whether true or false, we’re just trying to gather under one roof, resources on this defense, notes useful to fans and coaches alike.

Before beginning, we’ll mention some things that should be any any defense aficionado’s bag of tricks: the multipart articles on defense by Jene Bramel, a copy of the Jaworksi, Cosell and Plaut book, and of course, Tim Layden’s quality introduction to modern football concepts. If you have never seen the Smart Football blog, you should, and if you’re looking for information on stunts and modern zone blitzes, the Blitzology blog seldom disappoints.

A variety of other Xs and Os links are on the sidebar.

Football Times on the Tampa 2

Scope: introductory. Diagrams may not be accurate, as they display an even front.

From Football Times article. Yellow regions are holes in the zone of a stock cover 2. Tampa 2 lets MLB drop deeper, covering middle yellow, and allowing safeties to move zone coverage closer to end lines, helping close intermediate gaps.

Inside the Playbook on the Tampa 2

Scope: Introductory. Matt Bowen was a NFL defensive back, and knows coverages well.

Matt’s diagram of a Tampa 2 coverage, 4-3 over, with a stunt on the strong side.

Wikipedia on the Tampa 2

Scope: introductory. Article is self contradictory on the history of the defense.

The personnel used in the Tampa 2 are specific in position and required abilities. All positions in this defense place a premium on speed, and often the result is that they are all undersized by league standards. The defensive linemen in this scheme have to be quick and agile enough to create pressure on the quarterback without the aid of a blitz from either the linebackers or the secondary, with
the defensive tackle in the nose position having above-average tackling skills to help stop runs.

The Fifth Down Blog on the Cover 2 and Tampa 2

Scope: Introductory. Jene Bramel’s coverage of the Monte Kiffin system.

Daily Norsemen on Minnesota’s Tampa 2

Scope: nicely done introductory level discussion of the back 7 responsibilities in the Tampa 2

While they will generally all be tailored to one gap attacking from the 4-3 front … the back seven will have to display a wide variety of skills in order to execute the full defense.

This is distinct from some 3-4 systems (and other 4-3s), where the varied looks and confusing schemes imply a high degree of
flexibility from all players, but in fact does not require as much individual diversity at key positions.

ESPN News Article: fewer and fewer Cover 2 teams

Scope: news article, reporting teams moving away from Cover 2 because safeties can’t hit as hard anymore.

The Core Positions in the Tampa 2

Scope: Introductory, newspaper blog. Bears-centric. Reporter repeating what a coach has told him.

Stampede Blue on the NT position in the Tampa 2

Scope: Introductory, with emphasis on the Colts and their history with 1 technique DTs in the Tampa 2.

Bryan Broaddus on the Tampa 2

Scope: Introduction. Some discussion of where current Cowboys fit into a Tampa 2 style scheme. Historically accurate.

In terms of the Tampa Bay personnel compared to this current Cowboys squad, think of DeMarcus Ware as Simeon Rice, Bruce Carter
as Derrick Brooks, Sean Lee as Shelton Quarles and Barry Church as John Lynch, with Jay Ratliff as Warren Sapp. I don’t believe
the coverage part will be a problem for Carr and Claiborne, but how physical they can be trying to do those things I spoke of
in funneling runs inside or playing the run when he gets to the outside will be important.

How to coach the MLB drop in Tampa 2

Scope: coaching thread on message board.

That middle position isn’t manned by the true MLB type that the Miami 4-3 was predicated on. Like these guys have said, he’s 6 yards back and has different responsibilities too.

Pass Coverage in the Tampa 2

Scope: Coaching blog, and article. MLB, CB, and S responsibilities.

General coaching thread on the Tampa 2.

It is not a viable every-down coverage, due to the fact that you basically are giving up the entire 0-10 yd zone from hash-to-hash without resistance, so if a team just hits the TE & RB’s over the middle, they can kill you with 8 yd gains every snap.

Tampa 2 versus the spread

I was surprised when I found out that The Tampa 2 wasn’t the same thing as the 4-3 Over Cover 2. Went to a COY clinic in Orlando a few years ago and Monte Kiffen was the speaker. It looked more like a version of the WT-6(*) than a version of the 4-3 Over. I’m still not real sure about that thing.

Not Tampa 2 specific, but interesting in contrast

On Pete Carroll’s Seahawks 4-3

Scope: Introductory to intermediate.

Shakin’ the Southland on the Miami 4-3 and descendents.

Scope: Intermediate.

Offensive Football, busting the Cover 2

Shakin’ The Southland  (Clemson football blog) on the Cover 2.

Scope: intermediate, with plenty of video.

Almost any article by Chris Brown of Smart Football has football coaches as its primary audience. Advanced fans can glean some insight as well.

Chris Brown on Peyton Manning’s favorite play: Levels

Delayed Slant from the  Smash

Beating Cover 2 from Trips.

~~~
* presumably, wide tackle 6.

We got the Split-60 from Coach “Erk Russell” in 1984. It was the WT-6 on the Strongside and the Split-4 on the Weakside. They called it the “Junk Yard Dog” defense. Coach Russell said that it took the best of the WT-6 and the Split-4.

We got it, squeezed down the Strongside into a 50 that we were more used to and I’ve used it every since as a Gap 5-2. Wish I’d put it in print, but I was just a coaching pup then and just thought it wasn’t anything special.

Now they call it the 4-3 Under and say that Monte Kiffen is credited with it. Same defense that Coach Russell ran at Georgia with a few little wrinkles. I guess some things never change.

 

The 43 Flex, from Tom Landry to Rob Ryan

The Dallas Morning News has a cute article, about how the first defensive call by Rob Ryan on the first defensive play of the first preseason game of Dallas in 2011 was the 43 Flex. I recall watching that play and thinking “psycho front”. And yes, Ryan has 4 players along the line of scrimmage and 3 players at linebacker depth, but what we’re going to do in this article is talk about about Tom Landry’s first two defenses, the 43 inside and 43 outside, and how they then morphed into the flex, to better use the talents of their All-Pro defensive tackle, Bob Lilly.

Dallas-Miami, SB VI, 4-3 inside line setup.

43 inside/outside. Inside, DTs rush "A" gap. Outside, "B" gap.

If you have the set “Vince Lombardi on Football“, then you have perhaps the best resource I can locate on the 4-3 inside and the 4-3 outside. Pages 174 through 185 cover these two defenses. The physical setup of the defensive line is the same in both cases. In the 4-3 inside, the defensive tackles rush into the “A” gaps and the middle linebacker is responsible for both “B” gaps. In the 4-3 outside, the defensive tackles rush into the “B” gaps and the middle linebacker is responsible for both “A” gaps. The front, from the offenses left to right, is a “5-2-2-5″ alignment, with the tackles head up on the offensive guards, and the ends on the outside shoulders of the tackles. The middle linebacker is 1.5 yards deep, the strong side linebacker is nose onto the tight end if the tight end is separated, suggesting strong side sweep.

Vince Lombardi on the 4-3 inside

Vince Lombardi on the 4-3 outside

The ideas for the Flex came about after Bob Lilly’s move from left defensive end to right tackle. Dick Nolan describes it as one half of  the line playing a 43 inside, one half playing a 43 outside. To note, the  tackles in the inside/outside are flexed. In Tom Landry’s Flex, however, it depended on which side of the offense was “strong”, or likely to be  the side players would run to. Bob, in Peter Golenbock’s book, describes it as follows:

If I were on the weak side, I’d be head-up with the guard, right on the line of scrimmage, whereas the tackle on the other side would be three feet back. George Andrie would be right over the tackle and instead of being on his outside shoulder, he’d be head-up, three feet back. He would be keying my guard. I also keyed my guard.

Dallas flexed. DLT on the LOS because offense is strong left.

43 flex. Left to right, front is "4-2-2-5".

As Dick Nolan explains

Let’s say the other team tries the old Lombardi sweep. When that guard pulls and that center tries to choke back to get Lilly, he can’t get to him quick enough because Lilly can just go around him, and the center will fall down on his nose trying to block him. Lilly will be running right behind their guard, and Paul Hornung will be running the ball, and Paul Horning can’t come back, because  if he does, he’ll be running right back into Lilly…

To guard against the counter, the off side defensive end now plays a 4 technique as opposed to a 5. That end is responsible for the weak side gap that the off side defensive tackle has left behind.

When introduced, it caused a lot of confusion,  because Dallas soon came to  be able to play the  43 inside/outside from the Flex set. That was the upside, as no one knew what they were actually playing. The downside is the weak side defensive end’s pass rush was effectively stuffed whenever the Flex was played. By the late 1970s early 1980s, it became almost automatic for teams to pass when they saw the Flex. Consequently,  as Charlie Waters explains in Golenbock’s book, the Flex was played less and less.

In the 1990s, Dallas switched to the Miami 43, versions of which are still played today. A derivative of the Miami 43 is Ron Vanderlinden’s Stack defense, discussed briefly here.

And now we have Rob Ryan’s 43 Flex. No, it doesn’t look a bit like the Tom Landry defense, but does resemble, somewhat, the double eagle flex defenses that were popularized by Dick Tomey and Rich Ellerson. A screen shot and a diagram of Rob’s defense follows.

Rob's 43 flex, first play of preseason. Denver appears to have an 8 man line.

Rob Ryan's 43 Flex

Notes: updated due to typos, and a very nice article on Blogging the Boys that identified each player along this front. Further, the blog Compete in All Things has some Xs and Os on the modern 43 Flex.

 

“Football’s Eagle and Stack Defenses”, by Ron Vanderlinden, a review

Ron Vanderlinden is a defensive coach, who was with the Colorado Buffaloes national championship team, then spent time at Northwestern University, coaching for their 1995 Big 10 Champion, before moving on to coach linebackers for Joe Paterno’s Penn State Nittany Lions. In this book he describes the Eagle and Stack defenses, the Eagle being the 4-3 defensive scheme he learned and developed while at Colorado, the Stack being Ron’s term for a defensive scheme derived from Jimmy Johnson’s Miami 4-3. The defense he describes is thus a melding of  two schemes, one better suited for strong running teams (the Eagle) and another better suited for spread formation passing teams (the Stack). In this, there is an analogy between Tom Landry’s 4-3 inside and 4-3 outside formations, the melding of which led to the 4-3 flex.

In depth detail on a 4-3 defensive scheme, this book is highly recommended.

This book describes in depth a very successful college program and defense, and as befits a book that describes a whole coaching system, it begins with a certain set of drills, pursuit drills in the very first chapter. After describing drills it them proceeds to the player profiles required for the various positions in the Eagle. Once complete he then gets into the Eagle Defense (4 chapters), the Stack (4 chapters), fusions of the two (2 chapters), 3 chapters on positional technique, and then 3 chapters on special situations, such as goal line defense. As such, in the wealth of practical detail, the book resembles a college textbook, and has a level of difficulty akin to a sophomore organic chemistry text, or a junior level biochemistry text.

This is a good coaches book, and for the casual fan, it should be skimmed and used as a reference. There are discussions of schemes I’ve not seen before, such as Cover 7, or Cover 5:

2 safeties close to LOS aid in run defense. 2 deep strong side DBs cover 1/4 of field, while weak side DB covers 1/2. FS has TE (light blue) and post responsibilities.

The Stack defense, though generally an umbrella defense, more easily allowing 4 deep coverage, can easily be converted into a 4-4.

To note, Ron  has his own unique nomenclature for offensive gaps (1 for “A”, 3 for “B” and so on), one that makes the gap assignment align with the defensive technique. His use of 6, 7 and 9 technique I found confusing, but that’s because the standard technique assignments aren’t consistent once you get to tight ends (I would have thought them to be 6, 6i and 7 respectively, but consistency is just a hobgoblin of small minds)..

 

The essential Cowboys bookshelf – “Cowboys Have Always Been My Heroes”, by Peter Golenbock, and more

If you own exactly one book on the Dallas Cowboys, I’d strongly suggest this one be your book.

The essential oral narrative of the Dallas Cowboys.

Peter’s book is an oral narrative, composed of dozen of interviews of the “critical players”, and thus similar to, say, Studs Terkel’s “The Good War“. The book is organized in chronological order, from the foundation of the franchise to the middle 1990s. It’s not really a tell all book, though it interviews people who were very pro franchise and others who didn’t care much for their treatment (the linebacker Rodrigo Barnes, for example). It is rich in detail, exhaustive, but an easier read than its 838 pages would suggest. For the historian, comments about the way Tom Landry was blocking when the franchise began would be useful to those tracing the origins of the zone blocking scheme. We’ve talked about the specific quotes involved in our review of Pat Kirwan’s book.

Along with Pete’s book, I would also recommend this set of DVDs

along with this set of 10 Cowboys games.

These videos, along with the book, would aid any fan in tracing the nature and character of the franchise over the years. The one place where the book appears to be lacking is in any coverage of the Miami 4-3. While a ton of interviews touch on Tom Landry’s contribution to the 4-3 defense, such as the flex defense, coverage of Jimmy Johnson’s Miami 4-3 just isn’t there at all. That, I’d suggest, is the largest open hole in the Golenbock book.

 

Fifth Down Blog’s “A Guide to NFL Defenses” : an appraisal

It’s a seven part guide to defenses in the NFL, and unfortunately, the articles aren’t tied together in sequence. You can get to all of them through the link provided for the author,  Jene Bramel, but there is no other one stop source for links 1 through 7. So we will provide one here.

• Introduction: Part 1
• Evolution of the 4-3 Front
• The 4-3 Front Continued
• The 3-4 Front
• The Zone Blitz
• The 46 Defense
• Nickel Subpackages

Overall, it’s a really fine collection of articles, and as of early 2011, pretty much a must read. I do have minor complaints in two areas.

When discussing Tom Landry’s flex defense, the shift isn’t the usual one for a strong side offense. In this discussion, we’re assuming a mid 1960s offense, where teams tended to run to the strong side of the formation. In that case, the weak side guard pulls and the defensive tackle versus the guard who pulls should be up on the line of scrimmage. That defensive lineman, Bob Lilly in the middle 1960s, would simply follow the guard to the running back.

Now, it’s a perfectly fine shift if the MLB has read his keys correctly and expects a running play to the weak side of the formation, where the strong side guard pulls and the offensive  team runs to its left.

In discussing the 46, Jene leads with a garbled mishmash of information that’s simply incorrect.

The 46 is a variation of the 4-3, with eight in the box and six men on the line.

While a 46 is an 8 man front with a 6 man line, the 46 is no more a 4-3 than is the prevent defense. What’s confusing, of course, is that Buddy Ryan used the same personnel in multiple defensive formations and multiple fronts. So yes, the Chicago Bears would shift from any number of fronts: 3 man fronts, 4 man fronts, 6 man fronts of various kinds, including the 46. Same players, different roles.  That doesn’t mean they’re in the same defense.

Particularly for  the novice, the first article is the best. It discusses the naming conventions for defensive line play, and therefore takes the mystery out of stuff such as the “3 technique” and the “5 technique”. It gives the student the language to handle modern defensive jargon. It traces the development of defenses, and to a clever eye, shows honestly, in some ways, how the past can come back and bite you. Compare, for example, Alfred Earle Neale’s “Eagle” defense with the 3-4 shown in part 4, or for that matter, with Bud Wilkinson’s Oklahoma defense (see here, or here). In large part it isn’t where people line up, but what those players in those positions are capable of doing.

The last article is one that discusses the latest defensive wrinkle, what I’ve  been calling a “Cloud” defense and what Jene calls the “Creep”, or “Prowl”, or “Psycho”.  It’s where there are 1 or 2 down lineman and then 5 or 6 other players simply mill about. Anywhere from 3 to 8 will end up rushing from this formation, depending. It’s the latest in confusing blocking assignments, and was featured often enough in the 2010 Cleveland Browns and New York Jets repetoire. I suspect Rob Ryan will be taking the “Creep” with him to Dallas in the upcoming 2011 season.