Transcription
What's up guys, Justin here. And in today's video, we're going to take a deep dive into the basics of American football. Kind of a football 101. So if you're new to the sport and you want to get a head start on some of the basics, this video is the perfect starting point for you to learn the game.
Now, I also want to clarify. I'm not talking about learning the game as a fan. I'm talking specifically for players and coaches who need to be able to speak the lingo. And I want to establish a goal for this video. My promise is that by the end of this, you'll be able to sit in a meeting room with an experienced football coach and know what the heck they're talking about and actually be able to put it to use.
Now, if you take the average person, or honestly, even the average player, and have them sit in the same meeting, a lot of it's just gonna fly right over their head. And the reason that this is so critical is that football is more of a mental game than anything else. It's about mastering the strategy, recognition, and decision-making. This football 101 lesson that you're about to get into is the foundation for everything else. It may not be the sexiest topic, but I can promise you this: you're never going to meet a great football player or coach who doesn't know everything that we're going to cover in this video.
Now, they probably learned all of this purely from experience or years of playing and studying the game. But we're going to bypass all that stuff and just get into it right away. All right, so here is your itinerary for the day. And if you're totally new to this, throw this in two times speed, watch it all the way through, and then you can jump back in and look at the parts that you need reminders on. And also, keep in mind that there are chapters down below to help you navigate through the video the next time that you watch it.
Alrighty guys, so the first thing that we're looking at is going to be the absolute basics. And of course, these are going to get a lot more complex as we move forward. But I do want to introduce the absolute fundamentals. So, uh, talking about the football field, it's going to be 100 yards from goal line to goal line, okay? You have 10-yard end zones. Uh, sideline perspective, you have a team area. All the players have to be within this team area when you're standing on the sidelines. You can't go anywhere past the 25. So generally, there's some type of marker preventing you. And you also normally have get-back coaches that keep you in this team area because if you start creeping up close, and realistically, this is something that everybody does. I did it when I was a player. Every player does it. You'll see this in the NFL, college game, everybody does it. They kind of creep into this area that's just really for the coaches. This middle one. And then here is where the refs are going to be running. So coaches also get yelled at for being, you know, telling, uh, telling us to back up as well. So you're not the only ones at fault for that. But just keep that in in mind that you guys got to be staying in that.
Looking at different parts of the field, right? So if we say the ball is going to the right here, okay? Generally, once you get inside the 20-yard line, this is where everybody considers to be the red zone. So working the 20 and in is red zone, okay? Then from the 10 and in, now this one's not as standard, but a lot of times coaches will have 10 and in is going to be the score zone. And then probably about the three-yard line and going in is going to be this. I have terrible drawings here, but three-yard line going in is going to be the goal line, okay? So the reason this is important, right? When they say, hey, this is open field, you have essentially 20 to 20, okay? Anything in this range, this is all going to be open field. And what you have in here is basic offensive concepts, basic defensive concepts, right? When you get inside the red zone, this is where things get a little bit more critical. So defenses are going to have some fancier variations, same thing with offense because they have to make sure that they punch it in to the end zone. And of course, the defense wants to do the exact opposite.
Now, the same thing is going to apply for for the score zone as well. So it's just a different way to differentiate. So when you're, when you're a coach and you're studying, essentially what you need to have is you need to, you need to have an understanding of what are they doing in open field? What are they doing in the red zone? What are they doing in the score zone? And then smaller check, what are they doing on the goal line? So you have to have that information.
Now, the other part of this is going to be if the ball is going to the right, right? So offense is going to be over here and defense is going to be on this side. They wouldn't be that far apart. But if that's the, the direction the ball is going, then when you get here, inside your own 10, this is what most coaches also refer to as backed up, okay? So you're, it's just a little bit more of a dangerous area. So coaches will have different philosophies on how they want to do that. Either they want to take a deep shot, or they're going to try and, you know, maybe the ball is on the one-yard line here. If that's the case, then we're going to try and get away from, uh, this backed-up area so we have a little bit more safety, uh, if we have to punt, okay? Because generally, the punter is going to be about 15 yards behind the snapper. So if you think about that, the ball is here, there isn't 15 yards, right? There's only 11, okay? So you want to try to at least get to the five-yard line to make sure the punter has all the room possible if they have to punt.
All right, the next part that we want to talk about here is going to be these landmarks that we have on the field. So we've got, we've got numbers here, right? These are numbers, and then these are hashes, okay? We have two different hashes that work down the field here. A lot of times what you'll have is, is coaches will call plays specifically at from the left hash. If the ball is over here, we're going in this direction, we'll say ball's on the left hash. If we're going, uh, in this direction and the ball is here, right? Now we're on the right hash, okay? So if we're, we're calling any type of play, generally you have, let's say the ball is here, this wide side of the field, right? Because we're on the opposite hash versus this short side of the field. This is called the field, right? And then this is usually the boundary. Excuse my terrible handwriting here, but field and boundary. So this boundary is the short side, okay? Short side into the boundary. And then here is to the field when you have the wide side here, okay? So that's another way that you can, you can look at that.
All right, you also have, uh, generally some common terms here that you're going to need to know. You're going to need to know top of numbers and bottom of numbers. So this is really important for receiver alignment. So if we look at this, right? Think about you're, you're a fan, right? You're up here in the stands and you're looking down at the field. This is the top of the numbers, okay? Here, it's, it's over here, top of the numbers, okay? We also have bottom of numbers. So that in this case would be bottom of numbers, right? So, uh, these are going to be important because a lot of times you might have a coach that says, hey, line up on the top of the numbers, line up on the bottom of the numbers, right? Or if you're in a slot receiver, they say, hey, get two yards outside the hash, right? So they, we use a lot of these, a lot of these landmarks here as, you know, something that we use as a reference when we're talking about our pre-snap alignment.
And then there's something that is a little bit more subjective, but we say half hash, okay? So this is halfway between the numbers and the hash. That would be half hash, right? Let me spell that out: half hash, numbers, and hash. So we just make up this word, and it means somewhere in between these two positions. Now, it's, you know, it doesn't need to be an exact spot, right? But you just have to have an idea. If, so if your coach says, hey, you got to be half hash, okay, cool. I'm gonna quickly line up here and I'm good to go.
And then the last point that I want to make here is that these distances, right, of of where these numbers are to the sidelines, you know, this is not exactly the same on every single field. Not every single field has to be exactly 100 yards. This is something that you'll notice in the international community a ton. It's not as systematized as you'd expect. You could just have a conversation beforehand with the refs and find out how long the field is because a lot of times it'll say, hey, you know, we put the 50-yard line in the middle, but realistically, every 10 yards where we put the 40, it's actually only nine yards, right? So then you can either adjust the chains to match that, or you can keep the chains at 10 yards, but then you need to be aware if the ball is on the 40, right? And you're going in, you actually need to get to the 29 for a first down. So that's a critical thing you have to keep in mind, and that's always going to be a little bit different for for each game.
Alrighty, we are going to get into the next one. We're talking about offensive player positions. So what we have here, all right, we've got our Y, got our Z, H, and X, and T and Q. What all these mean, right? They're just positions. They're just positions. Q is a quarterback, mostly everybody knows that one. Q is a quarterback. T or or A or however you want to call it, doesn't really matter. A lot of times T, A, or R are the most common ones that I've seen. It's just a label, right? It's just a label, and they'll, whatever they pick, they'll just make it consistent throughout the playbook and they label that position as the running back.
Then if we look over here, we have some some tight end or a slot receiver. This is going to be the Y position, okay? I don't know exactly why these are like this, right? Why are these the main letters that are chosen? It just has always been like that, right? And some things don't necessarily need an explanation. You can, you can call this whatever you'd like. It doesn't really matter, but this is just what most people do. So this is what I'm going to teach. Right, Y is usually the tight end. Z is usually the the single or not single receiver, but the the strong side receiver to the play side, to the tight end side, right? If the formation was flipped and the Y was over here, a lot of times most teams will have the Z over here, they'll have the H over here, and they'll have the X over here, okay? We'll get into formations a little bit, but basically what you need to know is that what teams will do is they won't give any letters to to these guys. The only thing maybe they do is they'll say if the, you know, that they could be technically they have tackle, they have guard, center, guard, and tackle, all right? And they could have right tackle, left tackle, right guard, left guard, center. He's the only one who doesn't have a have a direction. Uh, but the other way to describe this is if the play is going in that direction, maybe you say play side tackle, and then in this case, this would be the backside tackle, right? This would be the play side guard, G, that would be the back side, backside guard, and then he still remains the center. So this is just one way of of kind of setting up the offensive line. But normally when you're drawing diagrams, you don't include stuff like that. You just count the offensive line. It's just one unit, and you just draw all five. And then these skill positions because you have to have numbers or letters for these because a lot of times the the play is going to be very specific to that person. So if it's something like this where he has a cross and he has a deeper cross, the H needs to know that he's the deeper cross, right? The Y needs to know that he's the under cross, okay? So that's just something that you kind of have to keep in mind.
So realistically, it's just a way of labeling, and every offense is going to have their their own version of how they label. So this is just one variation of how that can work. Now, this right here is a spread look, right? You're going to see this in, in, you know, most high school teams, college teams, NFL teams, everybody runs a version of just a basic 2x2 spread. Not everybody runs formations like this or personnel groups like this. This is a big body right here, a big body, another big body. Not everybody has three big athletic guys on the team that can can do a lot of things, okay? So generally, what you'll see more of is this type of thing: slot receiver, speedy person, right? Speedy person, smaller and fast, they can run and catch. This is, you can run and catch, and you can block. Run and catch and block. Run and catch and block. These are important skill sets, right? And these are kind of the jack of all trades. But most teams, again, like I said, don't really have that. So you don't see this as often.
Now, when you do see this, you need to have some form of labeling these people. So this would be the first tight end, and then a lot of times teams will use a U as the second tight end. Doesn't need to be, but it can be. Fullback, that could be an F, that could be a B, doesn't matter, right? It's just a fullback in that case. And then the receiver that remains the same.
All right, and now we got the next one. We're gonna look at personnel packages. And I got this diagram here from inside the49.com. This was a, I was thinking about creating my own version of of this diagram, but really, this is perfect, right? So there's no need for me to to edit anything. Uh, just wanted to make sure I point out is where I got it from. So really appreciate this, this diagram here, super helpful. Okay, great way to explain it.
All right, so what you have, okay, let's, let's go through this kind of visually here. The first number, first number is always going to be the number of running backs. This is the first number, okay? So, uh, this will be the second number, and that will be the third and imaginary number, okay? Notice that there's only two numbers here. There's always going to be a third imaginary number that we don't say, right? Because it's all, it's automatically implied in there. But this is just a really helpful way to kind of understand this. So let's take a look at this one, 21 personnel, okay? So let's work down here in this little, little thing here. So if we have two running backs, right? Two running backs, okay? That's right here. So there's our two. We have one, so that's going to be one tight end. That's supposed to be a T, okay? And then we have our imaginary number here. It has to equal whatever is in this empty imaginary number here. It has to equal five. Past equal five. So in this case, two plus one is three, so we must have two receivers, okay? Two receivers. All right, that's gonna always give us five.
If we do the same thing for 20 personnel, that's two running backs, zero tight ends, no tight ends, okay? That means that we need five, so we have to have three, okay? So three receivers. So 20 personnel is going to be two running backs, three receivers, okay? Let's go through another example here. Let's go through 11 personnel. All right, our imaginary number for this is gonna have to be three, okay? So we have one running back, right there. One tight end, right there. And then whatever's left is going to be filled in with receivers. All right? So again, we don't say the third number because it's just, it's just shorter to say 11. I, I think that's the logic. And for me, it makes so much more sense. I'd rather just say 11 personnel than to say, uh, a hundred and thirteen percent. I don't want to do that. It's just so much nicer to say 11, 11, right? And then we, then we go from there. So as long as you know, right, you just start to memorize this, it becomes very simple, right? Just, it has to equal five. That's the easiest thing. It's got to equal five. 21, it's got to be three receivers, right? 23, it's got to be zero receivers, okay? Then you get something like this where it's like, hey, uh, zero running backs, right? Zero tight ends, that means that we're going to be empty. It's gonna be five receivers on the field, okay? So that's the first part of this.
And now what I want to do is actually look at how you can apply this to some of these formations. All right, so now let's take a look at this formation here at the top. Now, this is what I have called Trey Right in the past, right? So we got our tight end here, got our running back here, here, and then we have the rest of these guys as being receivers. So, so what personnel is this going to be in, right? We have one running back, okay? So it's got to be somewhere in this range. One running back. We got one tight end, bam, right there. One running back, one tight end, and the rest of them are gonna be with receivers. So we have one, two, three receivers. That's right, right there. One, two, three receivers. So this is 11 personnel, okay? This is 11 personnel for this, for this top one here.
Now let's take a look at the the bottom one. Now here, in this case, you could do this in two different ways. Maybe this is actually a running back, but maybe this is a receiver. So let's assume that this is a receiver in this case. Okay? So, uh, we end up saying, hey, this is going to be our, our, uh, tight end. Actually, yeah, let's, let's make that one. That'll be a little bit fancy. So we got no running backs. We got one tight end, right? So zero running backs. We got one tight end, and the rest are going to be receivers. Okay? So in that case, we have one, two, three, four receivers. No running backs. That's our one tight end, right there, okay? And then we'd have four receivers. So in this case, that's the personnel we're working with. By the way, I've never seen this in, in my, in my life on the field. But you could have that. A lot of teams, what they'll do is they'll say, hey, this is going to be a tight end, this is a running back, and then again, we're back to 11 personnel. It's probably one of the most common personnel packages that you'll see. Or this will also be a receiver, and we'll treat this as a, as a running back. So in that case, we have, uh, one running back. We have no tight ends, right? And then our blank. So we're in a 10 personnel. That would be receiver, receiver, receiver, receiver, okay? So in that case, we are 10 personnel.
And last one here, we have at the bottom here, we're going to treat this as we got two running backs here. Let's say this is a tight end, and then we have two receivers, okay? So here are two receivers, all right? Two running backs, right? Two running backs, one tight end, boom, right there. Now we've got 21 personnel, okay? So 21 personnel, two receipt or two running backs, one tight end. There are two receivers, right here, one and two.
All right, so now let's go ahead and talk about how teams kind of label these formations, right? So we're going to go through each of these four examples and just talk about, uh, you know, what these would be called. What most teams will do is they'll say, hey, the tight end and the Y position, that is the position that is really going to be, uh, the one who sets the strength. So if we say spread, right? That's what this would be in this case. The Y ends up on this side, Z is going to go with the Y, okay? And then the X and the H go opposite. And then most teams will just say, hey, you either, you know, being on this side or this side, you line up to get the job done. If we call inside zone to the right, obviously you need to be over here. If we call inside zone to the left, then obviously you need to be here. You can solve that problem with pistol and putting the running back behind. That's a common thing. Teams will do this. This is referred to as pistol, but it doesn't need to be like that. So in this case, we have spread, spread right. Again, I'm sorry that I have terrible handwriting. I don't know why I never learned to to do this better. It is what it is.
All right, next one here on the bottom right here, okay? We've got a receiver out here. So instead of being out and, you know, in the box like we do in this case, we have them a little bit wider. So in this case, we're going to call this three receivers on one side. A lot of times this is generally referred to as trips, okay? Trips, and we'll say trips right, okay? Trips right in this case, uh, and and this could be again, you know, this could be a tight end, this could be a receiver, it doesn't really matter, okay? It's, it's just, uh, how your, how your offensive coordinator is going to set that up. And and you can really run trips right in both, uh, 10 personnel, right? You have one running back, right here, no tight ends, and four receivers. You can run that. These will be your four receivers, right here. You can run trips right and 10 personnel or 11 personnel, which would be one tight end, or sorry, one running back, one tight end, and then three receivers, right? You can also do that. But either way, the formation stays the same, okay? This is trips right, okay? Or you call it trio right, or whatever it is, okay? Your playbook's gonna be a little bit different than exactly what's in here.
Now let's get into a little bit of a fancier variation, right? So we talked about Trey Right in the in the last one. In this case, what we have is we have Trey Right and then we're going to have a formation tag. So Trey Right and then you can have a descriptive tag, right? So it could be something in this case we have tight, or we could have near, or we could have wide. It doesn't really matter. You just have a tag. This would be a formation tag, a formation tag, all right? In this case, it's just kind of describing a little bit how we're altering this formation here. So everybody lines up. This is Trey Right tight. Everybody lines up a little bit tighter. The Z, a little bit tighter, right? Same thing, H. Everybody's kind of scooting in for this. So that's another way that you can kind of see, uh, teams alter how they're aligning.
And now what we have down here is going to be a tag which affects only one person. Now up here, this affected everybody, right? We called tight, the Z, the H, and the X, everybody was affected by this. But now if we said something like Ace Left, okay? Ace Left, a lot of times spread and Ace, the only difference between spread and Ace is the position of this Y. So this would be spread, that would be Ace. Spread, Ace. Okay? One, he's attached to the line, and the other one, he's playing out in the slot. So in this case, we have Ace, okay? Ace Left, and then we're going to take and add a tag for the Z. So normally he'd be here, we add a tag, and now they go and line up opposite. So Ace Left Twins Right. So as you can see, this gives right a completely different look, completely different look than than what the team, uh, was showing before, just from one simple tag. Ace Left Twins. Now instead, we get a three by one formation, uh, three receivers on on one side, one receiver on the other, uh, or in this case, a tight end. But it's just athletes. Three by one is three athletes, one athlete. So in this case, we have a three by one. But now our number two receiver is going to be our Z. So the Z is going to have to learn how to play that role as well. So that's a way that you can get really complicated with with what you're doing.
Alrighty, and now let's get into some defensive player positions, okay? So this is the, this is the fun part here, looking at the defensive side of the ball. Uh, now everybody's gonna have their own version, their own terminology for this. Sometimes you could see this as a rover, sometimes you could see this as a, as a strong safety. Sometimes this could be a Sam or a dollar sign. It doesn't matter, right? As long as, as long as you're on the same page with your coaches, just learn their talk, their terminology, that's it. It's just a really simple way to do it. But in this case, right here, I'm going to give you two different versions of this. By the way, so right here we have a field corner, we have a boundary corner, right? We talked about this before. Ball's on the left hash, we're going in that direction. Short side of the field is the boundary, wide side is the field, right? So field and boundary. So you could have B, I promise you, it's supposed to say boundary, boundary corner, and field corner, right? And then you have weak side safety and free safety. Right? You could, this could also be boundary safety and field safety. It really, uh, it doesn't matter. It's just, you can kind of create however you'd like to do this, just whatever your coaching staff uses, just learn it.
And then here, what we have is we have defensive ends, okay? On both sides. You have a nose tackle, which is normally the the bigger athlete playing a one-tech here, and then a three-tech, okay? So a nose is a one-tech, and we'll talk about techniques later on, but we have a nose and we have a tackle. And then what you have is you have a nickel, which is another DB. So in this case, we've got one, two, three, four, five DBs. We have four defensive linemen and we have two linebackers. So you'll hear this term a four-two-five. This would be an example of a four-two-five defense: four down linemen, two backers, five DBs, okay? Four-two-five. And then a lot of times, you, you know, everybody calls this either the Mike or the Mac, however, is the middle linebacker, very easy. And then the Will, the weak side linebacker, is going to be this position right here.
Now, if you're playing against a three-man front, right? Then, then a lot of time, a lot of times it's going to change how they do it. So in this case, you know, we've got our, our corners, those stay the same. I just gave you another example. This is actually how I'm used to tagging things: Rover and Free. I feel like it's just a little bit easier to do. I also normally don't tag FC and BC. I normally just tag corner and corner because some teams will have corners that flip that play field boundary, and other times they'll just be right corner and left corner. So you can kind of, you'll have to see that on film of how, how that works. But keep things simple. You could also just write corner.
And then here you have three down linemen, right? And nose. So we eliminate the tackle, right? And nose, end, okay? And then we have Sam, Mike, Will, and Jack, okay? Or when I was in college, we called it Sam, Mike, we had Bob and Will, right? Again, it doesn't matter, right? Just, just get used to the terminology that your coach uses, and whatever it is that's what you're using.
So now let's get back into the offensive side of the ball, and we're talking about basic route trees. Whether you're playing offense or defense, doesn't really matter, you got to know this stuff. So this one is pretty standard across the board, right? I'm talking like at every level, every team. I've played in six, six countries, I've played a ton of different, uh, you know, leagues around the world, a lot of different coaching staffs, different offensive systems. Everybody has the same stuff with this, right? So odds always break out, evens always break in. And I know, I know that zero is not an even number, but it just makes sense for this diagram. So enjoy that. All right, you can make fun of me if you'd like. Uh, so what we have, we have zero is a hitch, okay? That's a hitch. We have one as an out route. Two is going to be the slant. Three steps, normally this is a three-step slant. Could be a one-step slant, either way, you could classify this as a two, two route, slant route, all right? You've got a three, which is going to be a six-step, generally a speed out, or it could even be a, you know, in this case, this is probably a two-step. You could also have a four-step that gets you around seven, eight yards at that point when you kind of catch the ball at this point. This right here is going to be the three. This is going to be a six-step route. Uh, this puts us at 11 to 12 yards when we catch it. Four is going to be, that's difficult to see here. Four is going to be our curl, okay? Five is going to be our deep comeback, right here, all right? That's normally, I mean, coaches will have that different ways, but it could be 12 back to 10, it could be 14 to 12. It's always going to be a deeper number back to a shorter number. At the elite levels, when you get, when you have guys like Tyreek Hill, you might push that to 22 back to 18, right? Something like that, where it's real far down the field because they run a 4-3 speed, right? They can get that far. But if you're not that fast, you're probably going to be cutting your routes shorter. That's a decision for the coach to make, not for you necessarily to make. But there are also coaches who say, hey, you know, just run your comeback whenever his hips open, then you break it down. And there's no specific distance for a route. These could be based on steps, they could be based on yards, right? There's, there's no one specific way to do it. Uh, different coaches have different philosophies on how they like to operate. But, uh, okay, so we went comeback. Now the next would be six, that would be our dig route, all right? Seven would be our deep corner, eight would be our, our post, okay? Nine would be our go route. So this is something that I mean, you could just kind of print that out, screen grab it or something like that, and print it out. Uh, it's, you know, it's pretty standard across the board. Everybody does it. So as long as you know a basic route tree, you should be able to walk onto any practice field in the world and say, hey, I'm running a slant, right? And most people will know, you know, it's, or you could say I'm running a two, or I'm running a three, or whatever. Most people who play football should know these numbers, right? Normally they communicate in in just the, you know, the routes. So normally say, hey, I'm running a comeback, hey, I'm running fake, hey, I'm running a hitch. Um, you don't normally say that, say the numbers, but I guess you could.
All right, now we're getting back over to the defensive side of the ball, and we're going to talk about techniques and gaps, okay? So techniques and gaps. One thing that you have to understand is that defenses will always be gap sound. Now, what gap sound means is that everybody will be responsible for a gap. And in this case, we always have, we have A, we have B, C, D. If you have another player here, which you'll probably only ever see in the NFL, then you have an E gap, right? And if you have more, then it just keeps adding letters. I've never seen anything more than E gap, but, uh, in the majority of what you see is going to be A through D, uh, with this. And then when it comes to techniques, now this is something that coaches kind of disagree on, and this isn't really super standard across the board. But if you look at at how this is, and a lot of coaches are kind of moving towards this, and that's why I'm teaching it as well, because it's just common sense to have the the head up number, okay? So in this case, we have, we have a handful here, all right? It's going to be two, four, six, and zero. And again, I'm not going to say zero's even, but yeah, okay, even numbers are are head up, right? Uh, and then, and that doesn't matter if you're on the right side, if you're, if you're over here and you're on the guard, it's still going to be a four-tech. You know, whether it's right or left side, this is still going to be a six-tech, uh, still going to be a two-tech, as as straight head up of these defenders, right? And then we have I, which is going to be an inside shade, right? So inside shade, inside shade, inside shade on that defender. Then I got the, the three. Let me erase these things. Now we have three, five, seven, that's going to be outside shade, okay? And then what we have here is the nine technique, which is just super wide, okay? So the thing that coaches, uh, are are kind of just not in agreement on. You can look up different techniques for how they label this, but normally this isn't necessarily, this isn't 7-6-6i, that's not the way that I was always taught growing up, but to me, this is the most logical thing. So that's what I want to teach, that's what I teach to my players as well. So that's, we'll go with with this one here.
Now let's take a look at the at the gap responsibilities as well, uh, down here on this image. So what we end up having here is we have, I put the techniques in here, but realistically, this could be, you know, this could be the nose, that could be the tackle, that could be the defensive end, that could be the defensive end, right? But in this case, we have the nose going to be the one-tech is going to be responsible for A gap, okay? Let's, let's eliminate the other stuff. That'll be A gap. He's going to be responsible for C gap. He's going to be responsible for B gap. He's going to be responsible for C gap. And then what we have is we have the B gap from the linebacker. In this case, would be the A gap, okay? So, uh, in, in this, in this case, right here, if we're saying that we're, we're running the ball to the right, um, then all of these to the left, they're just going to have a minus in there, right? So if we get any pressure, this is just one way that offensive coordinators like to label things, right? Maybe we end up having this guy creep down right before the snap and he shoots this gap, then as a, as a, the way of describing the pressure, we would say that that guy blitzed through the backside A gap, okay? The backside A gap. If we had, uh, this, this defensive end slant inside and the Mike jump out here, we'd say that we had a C gap pressure, okay? It would actually just be a C. So we'd say like Mike C, or in the last case, we'd say Will minus A, he's blitzing through the backside A gap, okay? And Mike C gap here. So this is just one way that you kind of describe. You have to know the gaps in order to to understand that part of it, um, but, but it's kind of self-explanatory once you understand that that base structure, and everybody has a gap responsibility, right? So in this case, everybody's handled. So we have, we have minus A, we have minus B, we have minus, uh, whoops, that's supposed to be a C, right? Okay, and then we have A, B, C, and then if we have another defender, let's say this Y was a little bit tighter here, then in this case, this safety would be responsible for the D gap. Now, it doesn't need to be like that. Maybe it's going to be this player who's responsible for the D gap. That's based on the, the defensive coordinator and how they want to handle gap responsibilities. But either way, gap sound, you'll hear that phrase. Gap sound means that for every gap that is there based on the offense's alignment, there will be somebody responsible for that gap. It's a very important concept to to understand. Yeah.
All right, and now we're going to get into my favorite type of stuff, which is going to be the schematics, right? And, and, uh, this is the, this is a little bit more advanced stuff. So we're not going to get too in depth with it because I don't want to, uh, I don't want to completely like overwhelm the the complete beginners. And, and realistically, everything we talked about right now, so far has been pretty simple when it comes to football, right? And this is, this is stuff that they study at a high level, and there's a lot of details. I can get into it, and I'm going to do this quickly, but realistically, this by itself could be multiple hours of a presentation of talking about each individual coverage, right? I'm going to cover all the different coverages in a very short period of time. So I just want to kind of plant the seed, uh, get you kind of excited about learning this more, and then if that's the case, then you can dive into it in the future.
Okay, so what we have here is we've got middle field open and middle field closed coverages here. Now, in this case, what we're going to do, I'll actually show you what that really looks like with middle field closed. I don't have a diagram for it, but I'll show you how we can get to that. So when we say middle field open, that means that there is, uh, no one in the middle of the field, okay? There's no, there's no safety there, right? If the middle, that's that's middle field open, middle of field open, M.F.O., okay? If we had middle of field closed, then what we could do is we could have this guy work in and line up here, him work down and line up right there, and then he works over and lines up right in the middle, okay? And now if the quarterback, right here, he scans and he looks, and somebody in the middle of the field, yes, middle field closed, okay? So when we, when we have that, that basic, uh, that basic piece of information there, we can, we can derive some information from that.
Now, either they're disguising and they're going to change, you know, before the snap, or even post-snap, they can do that. But if they're not going to do that, then they're kind of limited to a few options from a, from a defensive side of things. So what you can do is, is you can run Cover 2, Cover 4, or Cover 6. And there's also match variations, which I will not touch on at all in this video, uh, but they do exist here, and they're, they're kind of, you know, if you understand the zone concepts, uh, then that's a good start, right? And then you can get into the the pattern match stuff, uh, later on. But Cover 2, let's talk about that. Essentially, what you're going to have is you're going to have guys in the flats, right? This, this part of the field is called the, the flats. Then you have deep halves, okay? So he's going to be responsible for this entire, if you split the field, he's had, he has that half of the field, he has that half of the field, right? Obviously, they're not going to be able to do that, but they're going to do their best to make sure they guard those areas. So flats, flats, in this case, we're going to have middle, and we're going to have hook and hook. So in this, you know, Cover 2, right? We're looking at Cover 2, right now. We have deep halves, right? We have deep halves, okay? And then here, we're going to have flats on both sides, okay? Again, excuse my handwriting, we're going to have middle, I can't draw that inside of that, and then we're going to have hook, okay? These are hooks, okay? You can also, you'll hear the term hook to curl, right? That's, that's how I would describe, uh, these, these areas. So hook to curl, or you just say hook curl, right? Hook curl, um, and this is middle, or it could also be referred to as a low hole. Uh, and then if you want to run, you know, if you want to do like a Tampa 2, if you've heard that term before, Tampa 2, that's essentially this Mike dropping back, uh, and, and it's a Cover 2 like this, but he drops back, and then cool thing about the, the Tampa 2 is that it actually becomes a middle field closed, becomes middle field closed, because this guy is the one who's in the middle of the field. Now, pre-snap, it doesn't look like it, and that's why I've thrown multiple interceptions in that exact coverage, try to force down down the middle of field, but, you know, don't do that, you know, lesson learned, okay? But that's going to be our Cover 2, right? And, and you're gonna have flats on both sides of the field.
If we run Cover 4, it's essentially everybody is taking quarters, right? Corners, then you're gonna have a curl flat, right? Curl flat on both sides. So these guys are responsible for jamming up the number two receiver and then buzzing to the flats, okay? So they're going to be in that area. All right, and, and here's going to be how the, the full thing looks here, right? So you're gonna have, again, same thing, that's that's the middle, right? Middle, uh, or it's going to be the, the low hole, and then he's going to be curl flat, curl flat. So you'll see that you'll take more things away deep, but you open up holes underneath that we can, that we can really target, uh, in here, especially when these guys run verticals and they run into them, and then we can easily throw this stuff here. If he runs vertical, uh, he bumps into him, then we can easily throw this into the flats, okay? So different, uh, different coverages have different things that they can attack.
And now it doesn't need to be as simple as that, right? Which you can also do is run a Cover 4 to the field, right? Cover 4 to the field. He's running his hook, and then you can run this Cover 2 into the boundary, right? So notice you have these would be everybody's running, they're taking their deep quarter, right? One fourth, one fourth, and then he's taking one half, okay? Now he's playing the flats over here. This would be a, this would be a hook, okay? Curl, God, I really gotta work on my handwriting, and then this would be a curl flat, okay? So, and this is again, the same, same thing. That's the middle, right? That's our middle. So, screenshot this, then then ask a two-year-old to read it back to you, they'll probably be able to get it right. But this is, this is how you can combine coverages. So you'll hear split field coverages, that's a term that you'll use, or you'll hear in football, split field.
Coverages. So in this case, we have Cover Four on one side, Cover Two to the other. All right, that's a that's an easy way to to get there, right? If we run Middle Field Close coverages, and essentially it's going to be Cover Three. And all Cover Three is, you're always going to have three deep. All right, then you're gonna have four underneath, right? So let's talk about how we can get to that, right? So in this case, what we can do and have this guy buzzed down, bam, he's right there. He's gonna work back, he's gonna take this, he's gonna take this. He's over here, he's over here, and he's over here. Or you could switch the responsibilities, make this guy work to the flats, make the safety jump down in here. But either way, you're gonna have three deep, right? One-third, one-third, one-third, right? And you're gonna have four underneath. So in this case, these would be our flats, these need to be our hooks, okay? So if we have those, then then everything is good to go.
Now, keep in mind that you're also, while they have all of these pass coverages, they also have to handle their gap responsibility as well. So this is why RPOs, run pass options, are really, really effective. Uh, because teams have to play, you know, both their pass zone and also their their run zone as well. So that's where the the match variations come into play. Uh, these these things here. And again, we're not going to get into it, but essentially, if you know the base, if you know the base version of of the spot drop coverages, and and that's really what, you know, it's two terms that you'll hear, right? If you want, if you want to dive more into it. And kind of this right here, this this whole lesson is kind of dipping the toe in and getting getting the basics of football down. And then from there, you can get into a lot of details. So there's there's main two main things here. You have spot drop, spot drop coverages, which is what we're talking about in this right here, okay? Which is basically everybody drops to a spot. He's going to drop to a spot, and that's it. All right, he's taking the flats, he that's a spot. Or you have pattern match, okay? Where he's not dropping to a spot, he's gonna match a receiver. He's gonna match a receiver who's running a route. The way to describe that is is zone principles of man techniques, right? That's the that's the way to to kind of uh explain pattern match uh as a general rule. So uh that's that's one version here.
And now I want to get into how defense will handle it in a three by one. Uh, and again, now this is again getting it until a little bit more of the complex stuff as well, but that's okay. Uh, you can always skip this if you want. But what most teams will do here, and I'm going to just talk about Cover Four, Cover Four, Cover Six stuff here. What most teams will do is is they'll say, okay, we're going to run our Cover Four, right? We're going to run our Cover Four over here, and we're gonna have this guy be responsible for three verticals because if he were lined up over here and he ran vertical, he would take him, you know, he'd be responsible for that. So uh, one way that you can solve that problem is by having the weak side safety take three verticals if they take it, okay? So these guys are are playing their their quarters, quarters, quarters. He's going to man up on the back side, right? And that'll solve a lot of problems. And then from there, you can run your basic your your basic Cover Four. So he's going to be middle to hook over here. This will can be middle to hook over here. And then we have our flat, and then we have our deep quarter, deep quarter, and then deep quarter. But realistically also looking for number three vertical. So that is a uh kind of a base way actually that teams will play Cover Four versus a three by one. If they want to play Cover Four versus three by one, that's the way that they can do it. And then they have to have somebody who can who can play this uh and win one-on-one. If they can't do that, then what they do is they'll play a Cover Four, right? They'll play Cover Four here, okay? And then this mic is going to have to play number three vertical, okay? Because he's gonna play deep half on this side, he's gonna play in the flats. So if you have a stud receiver over here, all right, and he's so good that you can send him vertical and it's backside safety has to occupy with it, then you can really take advantage of this three vertical down the field, okay? So everything else will stay the same here. Uh, he'll be playing he'll be playing his his uh his hook. He'll be playing this hook, but he's also going to be taking three verticals. He's also got to play a stick by number three. So if we run that route, could be an easy easy throw, right in there. So uh, these are just two like main ways that that teams will handle a three by one formation there.
All righty, so you have officially made it through the lesson. Good job sticking that out. I know that this is not the sexiest topic, as I said before, but we know that it is important. And hopefully, I've delivered on my promise and the next time that you enter a meeting with an experienced coach, you actually know what the heck is going on. A lot of the times when you start a learning journey, you get really excited about learning as much as possible, and then you actually begin to dive deeper and deeper into the topic, and then you actually realize there is an ocean of information that you need to learn, and you have no idea where to start or how to organize your studying. Football is no different. And I've already been through this process myself over a decade ago now. I unfortunately didn't have a great single resource for everything. And I spent over a decade playing professionally and coaching full-time and essentially dedicating all my time to studying and attempting to master the craft of being an offensive coordinator, even while I was still playing. Now, while I'm still on my journey and will continue to be so for another few decades, shades, I do have a pretty solid understanding of the game. And last year, I decided to organize all that knowledge and put that into a course that I offer offensive coordinators. It's a 21-day intensive program that walks you through the process of setting up your offensive systems. Any coach can win a game, right? But the coaches who can win consistently have great systems in place for developing players, game planning, play calling, even your own coaching development. Basically, every major factor involved in winning can be systematized. And that's what this course does for you. If you like my teaching style and you don't totally hate my voice, then you'll love the course. The coaches who have actually gone through the program already have gone on to win championships in their leagues, they've completely turned around programs and set a ton of offensive records. So I know that it'll also work for you. So if you're looking for the fastest way to develop and maximize your potential as an offensive coordinator, check out the link in the video and get signed up today. Thanks for watching and I'll see you guys in the next one.