How to Teach Elite Defensive Coverage | The 6-Word System for Quarters (Cover 4) & Cover 2

Hi, I'm Cody Alexander and Match Quarters. Welcome to another episode of The Art of X show. Today, we're going to start a multi-part series where we're teaching coverages. We're going through the basics of coverages. I'm going to intertwine how other people are doing it, other philosophies, in this whole series so that it's not just me talking about what I believe, but also other ways of doing things. I think that's important for people to understand as you go through, especially on defense. There's so many different ways of doing things and teaching things. This is just my experience, and it's, you know, taking other pieces from it. You know, I'm anchored in the Jimmy Johnson quarter system that I learned from Phil Bennett when we were at Baylor. So I'm anchored in, really, in the kind of that explosion of the Baylor system, how we defined it every day. That's where I'm kind of anchored in.

So I'm kind of a little different in the way that I run my quarters coverage. I call it Sky. A lot of people, when you hear Sky, you're thinking of like Sky, like an inverted system or a Cover 3, so safety down. Uh, no, that's not how I call it. Call it Court. You know, quarter to me is Sky. Cloud is Cover 2. So how we do that, what we call, some people run Palms, some people call it Two Reads, some people call Sky Four Reads. So I'm gonna try and kind of go through the basics of what I, what I believe and how I have taught these things, but then also give context to some other situations and some other people and what they're, what they're doing. So it's just kind of an over-encompassing thing.

Something that I think is important that we all should, um, every off-season try and prove the way that you teach things. Wrong. What ends up sticking usually is best practice, especially for you. We all have different players. Some of us have Division I football players. Some of us are just hoping that we can get enough kids out to play to play on defense. So I've been in both those situations. Um, I've coached Division I athletes. I've coached athletes that I'm just like, I can't believe that I'm playing a JV player on a Friday night against a state championship team. But that's life, and that's what makes coaching so much fun is that you, no matter what, you don't give up on the kids. You do what's right for the kids. You try to make things as simple as possible, not simplistic, but as simple as possible so that you can teach any kids. You try to develop a program and a system, and over 10 years of coaching and a diverse background of kids, that's kind of where I'm at, especially with the quarters.

The other part of this is you have to be expensive somewhere, right? If I'm expensive in quarters, I can't be expensive in Cover 3 as well. And those are kind of the basics of coverage, right? Is that when you're going to teach something, you can't just be like, well, we want to run these 10 different coverages. Well, if you're a jack of all trades, then you might as well just spot drop everything because you just need to get to areas, right? Because you can't teach the nuances at that point. We want to be this kind of a team. We want to be, hey, we want to run, we want to run non-traditional Tampas, but then we also want to run Cover 3 over here. But then I, you know, are we running Cover 3? Are we running Match 3? But then we also want to have a made quarters in here, but I also want to be able to have a zone quarters. So you can get into this point where you start looking at had everything and you're like, wow, I've got a lot of this stuff. How can I teach it?

So I always try and tell people, you have to be expensive somewhere. I'm expensive in quarters. That's because that's where I anchor in. That's my philosophy. I like quarters. I think quarters is the best coverage in ball, right? Outside of Cover 1. Um, so when you, because obviously if you can play Cover 1, that's what you should be playing because it's just cat coverage, right? So to me, I think it's important to understand where are you expensive, where are you inexpensive? And so hopefully, as we go through this, you can kind of pull some things. Hey, I'm expensive in quarters. I need to get better or nuanced on this part, or hey, we need to have an inexpensive way to run quarters. I like the way that this is tied. I like the way that coach said this. Maybe we can add that into what we're doing because there's a lot of guys, especially that Cover 3 universe, if you are a weak rotation Cover 3, you're running along with a lot of these quarters coverage rules. So in your, you have these quarters tools in your toolbox already. You're just not running quarter, you're not calling it quarters. It's the same thing.

When I always ask people, people like, why don't you run Cover 3? Well, I can get to that through safety spokes, and we'll go those. Who safety spokes all kind of talk through that whole deal, my philosophy behind them, what each term means. But when you run split field coverages, you can do a whole bunch of different things. You can close a post just by the way you teach. So, you know, it, there's not one way or the other because if there was one universal way that everybody should be doing it, we would all be doing it. Football would be boring, and then, then I wouldn't, I wouldn't have anything to talk about.

So let's go over coverage basics. We're going to start with quarters today. That's what we're talking about in this episode. So geometry is important. You have to understand the foundation of what you're building, right? So in Sky or quarters, we are running a box. So if you actually look like Georgia, Alabama, saving like he's the king of coverages, right? When they hand a manual out to their freshman, one of the first things that they're going to learn when they learn split field coverages is box. It's the first thing because if you can understand box and you can understand all the different variations that come off of them. And box is usually termed that because quarters to a three-push is going to create a box. You see them linebacker is going to push to the flag, your mic is going to become the hook player of the wall 2 defender, your corner and your safety are going to build caps over the verticals of one and two. It creates a natural box. Whereas in Cover 2, you're creating a triangle. So cloud is my two-read Palms, however you want to define that. We're building a cloud. We have a corner in the flat, we have a linebacker as the wall 2 defender, and then we have a cap safety on top. We've created a triangle.

Now, outside of that, when I try and go teach this, I'm trying to use six very distinctive words. And I think it's important as a coach, you have to be intentional about the words that you use, and you can't change them up once you decide on them. You got to stick with them at least until the next season rolls around. So I always like to say up, out, and in, in the direction of the receiver. So when we're talking about the direction of the receiver, the receiver can only go three ways. He can go up, he can go out, and he can go in. Now, eventually, I added a couple years ago, I added back to the same. Take these and that's a very safety-specific word that doesn't really, I'm not talking about back with the, with the Will linebacker or the corner. I'm talking about these deep crosses, these deep benders, not digs, not shallow crosses, not those in-between Cover 3 crosses you see right above the linebacker, right below the middle safety. I'm talking about these deep crossing routes, trying to get back to the other hash, kind of these, uh, kind of these dirty double posts for the, these kind of elongated Mills routes where it's not these hard cuts, these defined cuts. So we started talking about back. If meaning that if he goes over the overhang and starts working back, I've got to nail down on that. And in our basic coverages, so up, out, and in is a very specific and easy way to teach these coverages because at the high school level, you have to teach these not only to your varsity athletes, but your sub-varsity, your freshmen, and then hopefully you have a direct tie-in to your junior highs and you're talking to your junior high coaches who then have to go and teach the basics of this coverage.

So when I, I would talk to my junior high coaches, I would just say, look, they need to know when they come in as freshmen, they need to know up, out, in, and then, you know, match, carry, and deliver. And then we can define these for them. They need to understand that Sky's box and that Cloud is a triangle. And that's why I created this coverage matrix. So let's start with the same linebacker. He's going to carry any vertical or two. Okay? Once he carries, he's going to carry any vertical to the only time he's coming off because he gets pushed off. Okay? The corner is going to buy all of one. I call him Mod coverage, man outside and deep. Okay? I have all the number one unless he goes underneath. Right now, most of the time, especially field corner, he's not going underneath all the time. Uh, so we, we at work, he'll have a reduction. We'll know, oh, he's in reduced alignment, he's motioning, something's happening, he's going in underneath. Right now, then he needs to turn and what I say is ride the hash, pick up trash. So if one does go underneath, he's really going to rail it. He's going to ride the numbers, not the hash, and he's going to ride the numbers and he's going to try and pick up trash on the other side or help assist with any kind of corner route or anything else coming from outside in.

So the same linebacker again is going to match anything out. This is where quarters is different as well. How are you aggressive with your overhang towards the out of two? If the safety's taking it, you're running more of a nine-man spacing, a four-lock, right? That's what Meg quarters. That's what you're running there. I call that Megs because we're mixing it up. In the box, I'm taking the same and I'm putting them in, I'm putting them in directly into the fit. We're trying to run nine-man spacing with this. In my Sky coverage, the nickel or the seam is going to match to out. He's going to tag the hip. I don't want him, I want him as much as possible completely removed from the box. He's a coverage-first defender. So if you are one of those teams that, hey, we're a bracket first, our nickel is like a third corner, we're speaking the same language. My guy's just a little bit more of a linebacker than he is, than he is a corner. So he's kind of in that in-between area. Um, we're delivering anything back unless I get a push. If I get a push call, then I just let, I know that the mic's hinging at 45 and he's going to collect anything inside. So I don't necessarily have to deliver anything back. Delivering it back means if the, if the running back stays in the down, he's in the box, he worked vertically, it's play action, something like that. I'm going to deliver that back, making sure that the mic sees it. The Mike linebacker really is in charge of number three. So if you can count to three, then you can play quarters. That's what, and really, the offense can only give you five guys out. So if you count to three, you always have a midpoint of coverage. And rather it's three by one, two by one, um, two by two, it doesn't matter. There's a third guy somewhere. Once we can define where that guy is, is he in the box? Is he out of the box? Uh, is he on the line of scrimmage? Is he off the line of scrimmage? We can then, we can then formulate what coverage we need to run.

So from here, this is what we get. So we've got our Sam playing essentially carry vertical of two. Two pushes out. I'm matching it. I'm delivering anything back inside. The corner is going to have all a number one, right? So he's going to take all a number one unless he goes underneath. Right now, and so we kind of think of like a no-cover zone of five yards. If he goes underneath, have five yards, then we're gonna let him go. I always get that question, what about slant, slanter, vertical, stemming route? Most of the time, even on a three-step slant, he's gonna work past that five-yard mark. We want to nail down on slants. It's basically man coverage, off-man coverage for that corner. That's how I teach it. Um, yeah, you're playing man unless until you're not, right? The free safety again, any kind of two-up work happening to out. Post control. And what post control is, I'm gonna take a look at number one. If one is inside the numbers, I know most likely it's going to be a curl or a post, and I want to sink underneath of that. Okay? But I'm going to ride that hash. I'm going to let it come to me. Now, if it, if he ends up curling up at 12, then I want to make sure that I'm working out that. But I want to look and see those the intention of number one. If number one is on an outside release, corners buying all of that. That's what that guy signed up for. I tell my corners all the time, you're in this line because you just want to defend fade outs, right? That's the sexy route. You all want, hey, let's get into a track meet, let's go run verticals. I'm gonna push you to the sideline and give you, you know, the whole incomplete in the air. I want to go up for the pick. That's what I want, right? So you signed up for that. The Sam, the safety, then is going to come back to the hash, get his eyes to the quarterback, and sway on that hash. We call it a sway technique. I want him to sway on that. Um, if we get two in, we want to stair-step that, and then it, he is taking us to the middle of the field. That's why we call it a stair-step. I want a stepper, place, stepper, place, stepper, place at a 45-degree angle. That's why we're building a step. And then if he continues underneath, mesh route, shallow route, then the offense has already brought me into post control. He's brought me into the post. So they've already delivered me to where I need to be.

This goes back to why don't I teach Cover 3 or why don't we run a ton of Cover 3? Because if you teach it correctly and you interact with the offense, the offense is bringing you to the post. They're bringing you to close the post. You know, offensive guys, I think they're really smart. They think that, oh, look at these route combinations we got. I'm bringing you here. Oh, two goes under. I know you're gonna snap your eyes to one, you're gonna go. I'm gonna get two guys in quarters coverage over on that fade route. No, I ain't having that. You're trying to get me to go do that. So I'm gonna work back into the post route. That's the most important thing that I think safety play is understanding where I progressions go. A lot of guys give black and white indicators. Okay, two goes in, snap your eyes to one, work to one. Okay, two goes out, snap your eyes to one, work to one. Right? No one ever is like, well, if it goes underneath, make sure you cap that, then work back to the post. Like I want to know where the shadow of the receiver is. Number one, if two goes out, I'm getting a couple of things. If two goes out, I'm getting a curl flat, I'm getting a post out, where I'm getting a fade out. You know, that's what I'm gonna get. So because of that, I'm gonna match two of those. So two out of three of those combinations, I'm gonna match. If he's, if his shadow was outside the numbers, his shadow was at, is towards the sideline, then I'm now going to work back because they're trying to pull me back. One of the everybody runs Y cross now, right? Everybody runs Y cross. Y cross, I mean, there's whole offenses that are just based on Y cross. I, um, I heard, I saw an offensive clinic one time, the guy was bragging about how they ran Y cross 15 times and that defense never figured it out because they just window dress it with formations and different tags on it to make the other side look, just to manipulate coverage.

So if I get a shallow, whether it's to the boundary or to the field, if I get a shallow route, I know I'm either getting a dig or I'm getting some sort of an over. If I get an out, I'm getting something over. They're trying to get you off the hash, especially in split field coverage. In split field coverage, they are trying to attack the middle of the field, right? They want to get you off the hash. You have to teach your safeties to not get off the hash. And the way you do that is teaching them, if it's a vertical stem, I want to cap that. If it's out, I want post control. I want to snap my eyes to one. If one's outside the numbers, it's a fade out. Speed release is a fade route. Snap my eyes back to the quarterback, let him take me to the ball. If two's out and one is inside, I know I'm getting a post and I know I'm getting, or I'm getting a curl, right? I have yet to find a receiver coach or an offensive coordinator who's like, you know what, I want you to speed release outside and then break inside on a post. I want you to run away from my quarterback and then break back to my quarterback so I can throw you the ball. It very rarely, never happens, especially an off-man. They want to dig you out. They give an inside stem. They're trying to wall you off from the quarterback and either curl up or beat you to the post. That's what they want. They're trying to run over the top of the safety and underneath that corner and try and make it a track meet. That safety needs to understand that once I get two out, snap my eyes. If it's a quick out, I'm probably getting a curl. If it's a square out, speed out, there's a likelihood I'm probably going to post because they're gonna run fade out, fade out, fade out, and then they're gonna hit you with post out. Okay? And so that's, that's where we get Mike, match, carry, deliver, right? So really, he doesn't have a match, uh, because he's not necessarily pushing. He's on the push side. So if he gets three up, let's say, and and coach, how, how is it, how does he get a three up when the back's in the backfield? Well, if three is up, right? We get double smash, a pipe. He's got to carry that vertical. If he goes out, we want to push it. And then now we are going to carry our new number three. So if we get a push and two's going vertical, I'm not going to carry my new number three. Okay? If three goes back, we want to deliver it back to the Will, because the Will's blind. We have to assume the Will is blind. And I'll talk about split flow, load flow here, here in a second.

So this is our box. Okay? Cloud technique. We have a corner who is going to assume any out of two. So notice how the Will linebacker doesn't have an out route. He's not going to work out. He's going to work cash control. His job now is if two goes out, it's almost like the safety in Sky. If two goes out, snap my eyes to one. If one's working underneath, I will deliver it back. If one is vertical, I now need to snap my eyes back to the quarterback, assuming that I'm getting something attacking this. So this is again, we had a great player when I was at Baylor. His name was Eddie Lackey. He was an All-Big 12 linebacker who found him at Riverside Community College. He was going to go to Hawaii. I still bought tails like, coach, we got a science kid. He's the best linebacker in the country. And we signed him, and he was phenomenal. He was so good at this read because a lot of times you get, you run Cloud into the boundary because you get two tight receivers. So he would see two out. They would try and run Y cross behind him. He would see two out. He would snap his eyes back to the quarterback and climb the hash and literally get interceptions on white cross. He had several of them. I think I had, he had one against Oklahoma State, I know in 2013, and then another one against Tech, I know for sure. So I know two instances where that linebacker, two out, okay, one's vertical, I know that that's being handled by the corner, that's being handled by the safety. I need to pop my eyes back and climb. And then that's where you get the pick. So again, the way that you teach eye progression, the way that you teach match, carry, deliver is an easy way of creating interceptions, right? Creating cutoffs because that quarterback is not assuming that that Will linebacker is going to make it right. He's thinking, oh, well, he'll just kind of ride the hash and then eventually slough off instead of getting his eyes back, seeing that the quarterback's shoulders are pointed and they'll feel start working back, seeing this overwrap. So that's an easy manipulation. When he runs so much Cloud into the boundary, which a lot of quarters teams do, they know that they can run a fade out and they can clear out this hash. You got to teach that Will linebacker gain depth, get that vertical, that vertical hook, get depth, get depth. And I've heard Dave Aranda talk about this too. One of the most important aspects in quarters coverage is that Will linebacker away from it, understanding I've got to find the vertical hash, I've got to give vertical, I got to get depth. I can't just stand there and let them throw that Y cross at 12 yards right behind me, making it easy because now my boundary safety is gone. There's nobody there, and it's a track meet between your, your field safety and the Y cross.

So again, we've got, we've got our, our carry and our deliver. Don't need a match because our corner is there. Two is out. We're trapping it. Made coverage. He's mine. I'm buying it. Nailing down. That's camp rules, right? We have other ways of, of doing things with Cover 2. So if two is out, corner is going to nail down on it. May coverage. Camp rules. We always want to just nail down on it. Any kind of bubble, any kind of arrow, any kind of out, I want to nail down on it. Early on, teach him aggressive, and then teach the nuance later. If two is vertical or two is in, it is a collision and carry. It is a catch tech mentality. It is a catch mentality, right? If two is vertical, two goes in, I'm catching one, right? It's hard. It's, we gotta see in the word, right? Collision, carry, cloud. That's what we want. We want to be hard through number one. Now, the one thing, and if you're a linebacker coach or your D-line coach and you're a coordinator and you're yelling and screaming at your corners coaches, why can't we get a piece of number one? Why can't we get a piece of number one? It's not always that easy. You can overcoat going hard through number one. I always would tell my corners, if you can get a piece of number one, get them. Otherwise, go defend your route. The safety will have to get to number one. If we can't, then he, we should be playing Cloud anyway. We should be playing Sky. So if you're one of those that it's over aggressive, now I'm over aggressive here. Well, if he gets a quick out, it's an option route. Now he can catch it and he can go, or you're now knocked off balance. You can't then go get that guy, or I'm running right into the block. If I can dip and rip and get vertical to that bubble, or I can dip and rip and go collect that out route, I would rather do that than necessarily make contact with number one, especially if it's into the boundary. So that's, that's right there. We have out trap. Meg, right? Two in. Meg number one. All collision. I want collision. Catch mentality. Safety, if number two is up, we're gonna cap it. And this is where it's different. If you are playing man-match Cover 2, that out, that overhang has to carry the verdict and he has to just carry it all the way, right? Trail technique. Safety's working to the midpoint. I don't want to play it like that. I want the safety defending a receiver. I don't want a cut-a-non-coverage defender covering a vertical. I think you get into trouble that way. So what I want is him to be a cap on number two. If two is out, take number one. That's my guy. Now I'm buying all of them. If two goes out, I've got all a number one. Okay? Again, if you taught in Sky, to read the shadow, he should understand if I get an inside release of one and I snap my eyes, he's inside the numbers, I'm probably getting a post route. I don't have to be so aggressive. He's going to come to me. If he's speed releases, I need to get over there. He's running, he's running a fade route. I need to go right now. So again, teaching that shadow of the number will help in teaching post control will help your safeties in in Sky to close the post. And then in Cloud, under understanding leverage on number one, because I've seen it too where two out and those guys, you've over-coached the 45-degree angle, you got to get over number one, you got to get over number one, and then that guy undercuts him, right? On a post route. So we don't want to teach that. We want to, we want to protect that as much as possible. I need to start moving that way, but I want to get a quick read on where he is, and I like giving a visual cue and a visual landmark so that they can quickly accelerate that process. I can quickly see, is he inside the numbers or outside the numbers? And then understand where I go. And again, this all needs to be wrapped. And that's part of the problem. Speaking of reps, when guys talk about why they don't want to run quarters, is because what we got to do, all the receiver matches, you got to do this, you got to do that. And that's okay. But again, like I go back to it, are you expensive in it? Are you inexpensive in it? If you're inexpensive in it, then you just need to play the basics. Don't overthink it. Just play the basics, right? But if you're going to be expensive and you can get nuanced, and that's what we're talking about here.

So if two's in, I want to stair-step it. Post control, just like I would in in that, but probably not as aggressive, understanding that I need to be, I need to kind of hold that cap open because that corner is going to be collisioning number one. So if we get an underneath route, right, that's underneath, I want a stair-step. If we get an overwrap, I want to stair-step, understanding that that thing could turn into a post route, something like that, and I need to stay high in the fit. So that is our geometry of, of quarters. That's how we teach coverage. Up, out, in, match, carry, deliver. Are you a box or are you a triangle?

Let's talk about terms to know before we go any further, because it would be rude of me to think that y'all know the exact language I'm talking about. So whether you've been with me since 2016 or this is the first time that you are listening to me or watching me on YouTube, I want to make sure that you understand my language and my philosophy. So we always want to have a passive and an aggressive technique. So our passive technique is going to be our base technique. It's going to be our off technique. Mod coverage, man outside and deep. That's our corner technique. He's going to be off man. Mess is a soft press. That's passive, right? And then we want a hard right. We want a man. So that would be Meg. So we have Mod, we have Mess, man except shallow, man except short, right? So if he goes underneath, right now, I'm releasing him. Ride the hash, pick up trash, right? Okay. Meg, hard. I got him everywhere he goes. Man everywhere he goes. That's what I mean. So we want to have a Mod, off, Mess, and Meg, press. But we have a passive press and a hard press. Okay? So we want to have a passive and an aggressive way of playing everything. Cloud is our passive way of playing it. We're at five yards, feathering off. Yes, it's collision, but I'm off, right? Squat is very passive. So we've kind of flipped it in Cloud because Cloud isn't already aggressive. It's a trap coverage. We're aggressive already. So we kind of flip it. We're going to start with semi-aggressive, right? Then we're going to go to passive, which is our squat. I'm not taking anything underneath at five yards. I'm letting the ball bring me down. I'm carrying number one vertical. So I don't undress the safety. And then press, that's our hard right. So again, we're going to go aggressive, passive, hard. On Cloud, bracket, cone, and cap. Those are all of our techniques for bracket coverages, okay? Which is just a, we're just flipping the responsibility of the nickel and the safety. So the safety is going to now nail down on anything by number, by number two, okay? And then our nickel or Sam is going to have all of number two out and up. Okay? Cone and cap are played into the boundary or the single receiver. So cone is a single receiver. It's a bracket on number one, right? Cap is going to be something, and I will explain it when we get to bracket coverages. Thumbs is an inverted Sky, right? So this would be the true Sky that a lot of people know of. Sky, safety down. We're playing quarters, but the safety's underneath already. Travel just means we're going to follow the tight end. Slice and trap. Those are trap coverages by, by the corner. So before we get in any further, just going over terms to know. These are the basic terms that I have for coverages.

Let's talk about underneath coverages, okay? And underneath coverage, you have to understand what a push alert is. So anytime I have three receivers to the side, okay, remember split field coverage, draw a line through the center. Anytime I do that and I have a number three receiver, that is a push alert. If he pushes to the flat, the overhang will take him. Okay? Our no-cover zone is five yards. We don't want to nail down down on that. Okay? I think one of the best ways of explaining this, Dave Aranda and his Wisconsin Playbook has a bait, intermediate, and alert. Anything under five yards is bait. They want you to nail down on it so that they can throw to the intermediate. Anything over 15 yards is a shot, okay? That's an alert. Like if you look at the old West Coast, uh, offensive playbook, right? Those, those alerts, those are, hey, if it's wide open, throw it. Okay? Air Raid said, let's just throw those no matter what, and then we'll work to the intermediate. Whereas West Coast is more like, let's throw the intermediate and then we'll work there if it's wide open or we check it or I tag it. So for me, when I teach this, the mic has to understand, I'm going to deliver that or match that out, right? But then I'm going to roll over and back and deliver the over route back. Typically, where you see this is in Y cross. This is what I've drawn up here. Three pushes out. Nickel pushes with it. He's gonna, he's gonna cough curl over flat, stay on top of it before he nails down. The mic is going to roll over and back, robot technique, and assist with the safety. And look, I tell the safeties, is he naked or clothed? If two's naked and Mike doesn't show up, let's say play action or Mike pushes with the way too out, he's naked. Nail down. If the mic does a good job, stay vertical a little bit because he might be able to back door that post or, uh, we might, he might, that might, might force that guy to climb a little bit, okay? Off of the push. What happens on the other side? You have a take back. So here I've shown this. If we get a push and we get a vertical by two, the mic becomes the wall two defender or wall three, right? So the Will has to take back anything away from the push alert. If I'm to the push alert, right, and I'm the overhang, I don't have any take back. I need to deliver things back to the mic, but I don't have table. I don't have to take the thing all the way across. Now, some people will, will say, well, if we get a vertical of three, I want you to take two underneath. So you have to define how you want to, how you want to do it, especially in trips. But take back just means if I get a push of three, okay, the mic's blind. I can't just assume he's gonna nail down on it. I can give him an under call, but I can't just assume that he's going to show up. So I want to carry that back. So that's push alert and take back. One of the most under-coached coverage aspects, especially in split field quarters coverage by linebackers coaches, everything, especially at the lower levels. Hey, we got to fit around fifth, around fifth, around. We completely forget how to cover. Uh, we chase guys, uh, or we have no, we just kind of spot dropped to areas and we end up covering grass. Again, if you're, if you're covering grass, a man is going to catch the ball because we want to cover guys. We don't want to cover grass.

Dividing verticals. This is a question I get all the time. Coach, how do you define a vertical? How do you define a vertical? I stay away from hard caps. If you give a definite five-yard, seven-yard, ten-yard, that is where your kids will then break off, okay? Once offense has figured that out, then they will manipulate that. So what I tell the kid is OVO, like Drake says, over the overhang. Okay? And I show them this right here. Our no-cover zone is at five yards. Here is our overhang. The magic area for, for break in high school level is between seven to 10. At the college level, it's between 10 to 15, 10 to 12. And then at the NFL level, obviously, you know, you've got aliens playing quarterback, they can just throw the ball like 60 yards. So you can have breaks at like 15 to 20. So the magic area goes back a little bit. But we say over the overhang. So sail route over the overhang. I would like the corner to show up on a sail route. We work it. That was something I always worked because I didn't want coaches feeling like they could run a sail route on us. Now, not a lot of high school quarterbacks can throw a sail route to the, to the sideline from hash to boundary. So you kind of have an idea. But to the boundary, they can. So I want that corner to show up. If we get the kind of the deep bender, dig, or the usong, right? Under Sam, over Mike. We want, that's a vertical route. It went over the Sam, but it went over the Mike. OVO, went over the new overhang. So I want to make sure to nail down on that. So that's where how we define a vertical and that's where we get that from. So I always show the Drake logo, OVO, right? OVO, anything underneath the overhang, overhang's gonna buy. Anything under the overhang, overhang's gonna buy. Or the next linebacker is going to buy anything over the overhang. OBO, where you have to nail down on it, that becomes ours. And really, talking to the safety is the corner and covered in Cover 2 Cloud. That's when you got to worry about that.

Smash routes. Another thing. If you are a bracket team, it's hard to defend a smash route or get a smash call. So we, we play both, right? I've played bracket and then I've played coverage. How are you mixing those in between? How do you do that? Any inside alignment by the overhang, smash rules are on. Any outside alignment, smash rules are off because he's blind to it. I don't want him turning his back and then getting a smash rule and then saying, oh crap, I got to turn all the way around. I like that mechanic. Any kind of mess, any kind of press, we're not doing it because I've tried to do it, right? But it corners have to be really, really on to it to be able to play underneath it. Now, I've had some guys that were good enough that even in a mess situation that they could read out and they can kind of peek at two and go, I'm look, it's one of those things that I'm not going to get mad at you for making a play, but don't expect to make a smash call. So this is how we define, this is how we define it. Any kind of sit down by number one, quick underneath my number one, that is defined as a smash route. The corner assumes the corner, the safety is going to sway on the hash. I don't want them getting beat by a cop route, which is a curl post, I mean, a corner post. I don't want that guy hitting the corner in the post because if you are always kneeling down with that safety, what are they going to run? They're going to run the cop route, and then you have nobody in the middle of the field. So we wanted to do that. The other thing that I saw, especially when I was at Horn, if they would get in two by two, we at the 6A level, inner city, a lot of guys have speedy backs. What do they want to do? They want to run the whole seven on seven, double smash, a pipe. This, we got actually several picks off of this because our safety trusted the corner to take the corner and then would peel back on top of that, that running back working down a pipe. Quarterback again, doesn't even assume that the safety is going to be there, and he just throws it. Safety's able to come back down and pick it. So smash rules, inside side smash rules are on. Outside smash rolls are off. Any kind of press, we're not playing smash rolls.

So how does this fit into a base defense? Remember, coverage determines the fit. So quarters coverage, not made quarters, you can play it as nine-man spacing. Understand that if you are going to play it like the way that I've described it, Sky, Cloud, the safeties are kind of a little bit more passive. They're not actively in there. The nickel is more of a path defender than a run defender. That is where you're going to get the seven-man spacing. And so you need to make sure that you're doing something up with the front. Typically, I have a four down. We would play a G front. And so this is kind of how we get our run fits. It's seven-man spacing. Our safeties are not necessarily taking all of two up and out. We have rules built into that. The, the overhang away, whether it's the boundary safety or the nickel, the Sam, depending on where the back is, are you in the fit or out of the fit? You know, a lot of times when you play these RPO heavy teams, you don't want the nickel in the fit at all. So how are you, how are you manipulating that? You know, I've talked to coaches about this before. You know, the, the episode prior to this, I talked about, uh, spacing. And spacing is easy when you draw 21 personnel because it's really easy to see, oh, hey, there's everybody in the box. That's great. But when you start getting receivers out of the box, it becomes a little bit more confusing. And the way that I've described it is seven-man spacing is essentially, I'm trying to fit the box with six defenders. I'm gonna get a seventh defender depending on where the back is or depending on direction. And so that's how I'm able to then kind of manipulate that. How are we manipulating the front to fit it with six? Okay? That's why I prefer a box fit. I don't want to spill overlap. I don't want to spill and kill everything, spill everybody's spills. Because again, if you're asking that, say, let's say you're a two-read or Cover 2, and I've had this argument with coaches before, you can't play nine minutes. And I hate, hate saying can't. It's very difficult. I'll say that. It's very difficult, almost impossible to play two-read or Cover 2 and play nine-man spacing. Your safety can't be a secondary support defender, but then also be a direct primary defender against a run. And I've had this argument with with coordinators before. If you are going to play nine minutes facing, then play quarters and just play Meg Court. Play four lock. Don't expect a Cover 2 safety to show up. You're telling him to bail, but then the moment you see something, you have to go fit the alley right now. That's not his job. That's the job of you to create seven-man spacing so that way that Cover 2 safety doesn't have to try and be a primary fit support player. So again, how you determine your coverages, that should then determine your fit.

So if you're on YouTube, I'm showing you G adjust. Okay? The nose is reading the center. Okay? We're putting the three technique. I've got a typical NCAA offense. Right? We've got two back, Y, and the C. They're slanted. So the running back's to the buy one side. I've got two receivers. My nickel corner and field safety are out of it. I don't want them in to fit at all. Even with the running back away, he's gonna be late. The nickel is going to be late. He is the D-gap defender, no matter what. Five technique goes to the tight end. He's got the C-gap. Three technique is to the tight end. He's got the big guy. The nose is in a G. He's in a 2i. If the center's away, I close the opposite A. I want to close both A-gaps by taking the center. Okay? That mic is stepping to his gap and then working to the next A-gap. Hopefully, we get the guard to go, and he can even slough all the way to the C-gap. The five technique is playing heavy. If there could be a splatter fist slug, I've heard several different terms, but if I get to tackle the flash hands to me, I'm ripping into the B-gap. The wheel steps the B-gap, snaps down to line of scrimmage in the C-gap. If we get a down block, which again, I'm showing you a, a slant formation, we're getting split zones. So we're getting zone to the two-receiver side. I'm getting it down block. That DN is going to close the B-gap. If he gets it tight end, he is going to spill it. Right? The Will's gonna fit in the C-gap. And then our safety, who is a Sky safety and is tracking that Titanic cross, would then be the D-gap. So again, I'm trying to fit the box with six defenders, and that seventh defender will show up depending on the direction of the play.

So let's go to alignment basics. Where do these defenders need to align? Safeties, their divider is the hash. They are hash players, right? If this slot is far outside, we want to be inside. If he's on the hash to outside, anywhere outside, we want to be inside. If he starts creeping inside towards the box, then we want to align outside. But the nickel is always going to stay attached to him on that's in that sense. So the nickel is the one that can react to it. He needs to be inside eye to apex, depending on where the running back is. I say it a plus or minus system.

Bass, I want him inside. I tip to tip, maybe even shoulder tip to shoulder tip. If the running back is away from me and I'm in the fit, right, technically I'm in the fit, or what I call a late fit, then I can step to the box, maybe take a step, step and a half to the box.

If the running back is to me, I need a full cover down and I want to be inside. I tip to tip with that guy because I, I am now a pass-first defender. I am not worried about fitting the run at all. That's for the backer, safety. So, running back two, full cover down. Running back away, minus to the box, no more than apex. We don't want to move any further than apex.

And I tell the safeties, like, you're like a dog on a leash, right? You got that four-yard leash. Uh, if you're not as athletic, a three-yard leash. Because what you don't want, and is when you're into the boundary, you don't want that safety walking all the way out there on an over split, and then they just run little glance routes with the slot to no one. Because you got, you, you're playing split-field coverage. There's nobody in the field. You have to protect the post, right? So how you teach quarters is what determines how you, how effective you are going to be in closing the post.

So for my safeties, I want them tip to tip with the tackle, their shoulder pad, shoulder pad with the tackle, no more than three yards off the tackle. So when the ball is directly on the hash, you don't want the guy lining up on the hash. He's dead center in the ball. Now, anything out, he can't, you know, cloud coverage is going to be difficult. All of that stuff comes into play. It's the same. You're basically playing in the same spot as using the field. We move the hash to the tackle, he's now our new landmark, and you cannot be more than three yards from him. Uh, normally, if you are at the high school level, or you have your offense uses a red line, which is the fade line, the receivers are not supposed to get out that. If we get an over split again, we don't want to exceed three yards.

So, running back to me, I want to be apex. Running back away, I want to be hit because now I'm in the fit. I want to be closer to the ball, especially if it's two receivers. If let's say it's ten percent, no, two by two, I want to be, I want to be hip. Um, if it's, if again, if it is a fib, um, I want to be in an apex alignment as much as I possibly can. Hip. If it's 10 personnel and the running back is away, I can be a little bit closer.

Let's talk about safety spokes first. This is how you can get to different things in quarters, and spokes are important because in split-field coverage, you can use your safeties in different ways, right? Let's say I, I'm having problems with the number one receiver. I want to get a double on the number one receiver. We would call switch. So the safety, you're telling a safety, switch responsibility. You don't have the up number two, you now have the up number one. So you can play a bracket on one, okay? And what that does is your nickel now has all and number two up. He has not all a number two out. The safety is now working to number one rail. It is just what, uh, my term for zone quarters. We're just railing it. Stay on your landmark, don't move, just rail it like a train. A train can't come off the tracks, okay? So we're not coming off our track. Our track, you know, the hashes look like train tracks. So it's, you know, it's a nice visual for those guys. Let's just, hey, hash looks like train tracks, you're a train, don't come off it. We're, we're railing it. Corners are going to rail it on the numbers. The numbers are their track. Swap safety is outside. This is your old-school robber coverage. Safety's buzzing the flat. Right now, I want to cut to the flat. So if I want to run robber coverage, I call swap. Buzz just means I'm gonna buzz inside. So this would be now I'm playing kind of a different way of playing robber coverage. The nickel now is going to cut one. The safety is going to buzz down, and now the corner is going to play the overlap. So again, we're playing different variations of cloud. I'm just putting people in different spots. Stair-step. Talked about any kind, any kind of underneath route, I want to stair-step on top of that. Close the post. Uh, boundary safety. So those are all field safety spokes, boundary safety spokes.

We talked about rail. Scale. Okay, I want to scale to the number one receiver. I want to, I want to go to the number one receiver. That would be scale. We're climbing the mountain. I want to do that. That allows number one to kind of be the, the corner to play heavy on number one, or, and it's another way of getting into kind of these two-man situations, but telling that safety, hey, I don't necessarily want to cone it. I want the true double. I want you to get to the top of number one and let the corner kind of beat them up. I don't want to play cone, I want to play scale. Swipe is a, again, it's like swap. I'm buzzing to number one. I'm cutting in number one. Sync is is similar to buzz. I'm sinking down and outside. So I'm down and outside. Stab means I'm working to the B gap. Steel means I'm stealing the middle hole. These are all coverages that you can use.

And I really like it. Safety spokes with the field safety is great, but your boundary safety is where you can really unlock your defense. If you have a boundary corner, you can now unlock your entire secondary. You can do so many different things. When I was at Midlothian, I had one of the best corners I've ever, I've ever coached. And I wish he wasn't five six, because if he wasn't five six, he would be a division one football player, one of the best football players I've been around. But he just, he didn't have the height, but he could shut down any receiver we faced. And because of that, I could do so many different things with boundary safety. We could put them anywhere we wanted. If we were getting, if we wanted to double, uh, I wanted to send him to the post, I could just send him to the post. If I wanted to double these, we were getting a lot of Y cross, I could just double the Y cross and let that front side safety stay up. That would be our steel technique. If I wanted an extra guy in the box, we could sink or stab it. So there were way many things that we could do. And then obviously, this is where we can play a ton of Hatfield Zone on five-man pressures because I don't care. And we used a lot of it to the boundary because we could just man up the boundary corner, and I could put that boundary safety either on the back, on a tight end, I could do whatever I wanted with them. And so that is where we get these safety spokes.

So that's going to be the end of this. We've set everything up. When we come back, the next episode, we're going to talk about the foundations of sky and cloud, really digging into each coverage. But today, we went through safety spokes, what are the divider rules, where do your safeties need to be in split-field coverage, so alignment basics, run fits, within G adjust, what are your smash rules, what is a vertical, how do we determine underneath coverages, what are terms to know going forward, and then finally, the geometry of coverages where we started. Remember, up, out, in, match, carry, deliver.

Thanks for joining me on The Art of X Show. Make sure to hit subscribe on the YouTube channel. If you are subscribed on the podcast channel of your choice, make sure you subscribe to it. Again, go to match quarters sub stack, subscribe to it, get the best in defense weekly in your inbox. Thank you for joining me. I'll have all links to everything underneath. Have a great day.