The Tampa-2 is a lie.

this is cover three or at least a version of it I know that it doesn't look exactly like how you picture a classic Cover 3 in your mind but believe me it is just ask Nick Saban one of the greatest defensive coaches of all time who calls this three buzz Mabel for reference now what if I told you that another group of all-time great defensive coaches also consider this to be cover three or once again at least a version of it and no your eyes do not fool you what I have drawn on the board here is a textbook example of a coverage known as the Tampa 2. when they do Play Zone they play What's called Tampa two defense Tampa two defense Tampa two known as the Tampa tour that you play zone coverage you have a lot of fast guys you have maximum effort and energy you don't do a lot of things you get a lot of people to the ball all of those precepts that's the essence of Tampa too the Tampa 2 is one of the most famous coverages of all time really and for obvious reasons and believe it or not there are some really Heavy Hitters among NFL coaches that don't actually believe the Tampa 2 is even part of the cover 2 family and in fact they more treated like it's an inverted Cover 3 that should only be used in very specific circumstances orgas technically covers three being inverted Tampa two what came first the chicken or the 2002 Buccaneers oh and one quick note for the three people that I think are probably typing rage-filled comments right now about the differences between too high and one high coverages uh yeah the famous defensive coaches that I referred to that do consider the Tampa 2 and cover three to be basically the same thing with minor differences and that they're just two sides of the same coin depending on down and distance yeah it's Monty kiffin the patron saint of the Tampa two in the first place and also all of his most famous proteges who you probably definitely recognize [Applause] whoa what you're looking at right now is all 22 of Monty kiffin's Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense from 2003 and as far as I know this has never actually been seen publicly before all of these snaps that you're watching with prime war and sap Derrick Brooks Simeon rice rhondae Barber and John Lynch all of them are on early down situations first and 10 primarily and for those of you who played at least a little bit of Madden and you're familiar with coverages the theme should actually be very apparent here Tampa is not actually in the Tampa 2 in any of these in fact after charting 11 full games of that 2003 bucks defense I know for sure that their most common coverage call was not actually the Tampa 2. it was that cover three two deep safety zone looks were definitely their most famous coverage and the one that got all depressed and longed down some distances like 39 but the spine of that system the very core of why it worked was actually built on cover three quick side note with the Whiteboard by the way and we will get back to the film in just a second I just think the whiteboard's an easier way to explain this the reason why the Monty kiffin coaching tree considers the Tampa 2 and Cover 3 to effectively be the exact same 3D coverage is because it's effectively the exact same Zone distribution you just have different players in each role this right next to me is a drawing of a pre-step rotation into a Nick Saban coverage called Cover 3 Buzz with a Mabel adjustment or cover 3 Mabel for short Mabel means man coverage in sabanese and this is usually used against a three by one look from the offense which means three receiving threats to one side one receiving threat to the other and you're gonna see this in literally every single modern defense in the NFL and most of them in college too if they've been even a little bit influenced by Nick Saban which a lot of them have you obviously could play this as a straight up Zone coverage but by the way actually that's a lie you can't I have a lot of coaches that follow me on this channel and they would yell at me if I just drew this as a straight up Zone coverage because nobody just plays country Cover 3 anymore you get absolutely [ __ ] annihilated so you're not gonna have this corner Zone off to a true deep third he's not going to be coming out here to play curl flat he's not just playing a hook Zone and letting this Crosser go because that's a 20-yard gain this is what they do they basically just play man to the weak side and then they flood it to the strong side and they play true Zone here and they play Man backside so I'm not just gonna draw a normal cover three because nobody plays normal cover three it's [ __ ] stupid to do that now absolutely carved up so three buzz Maple that is your new God learn it worship it and if you have no idea what I'm talking about come along for the next 45 seconds and learn some coaching terminology that you probably will never use the general structure of three buzz Mabel I like to call it a three-ish deep Zone coverage because it could be three deep you know if this receiver is running deep the corners going with him that makes it three deep but if this Y is also going deep and we're running four verts it's technically four deep it just kind of depends on on how the man coverage component of this thing plays out but we'll get to them in a second The Zone coverage on the front side is still the same as a normal cover three this corner zoning off to a deep third the nickel is buzzing out to play a curl flat zone underneath him that's why they call it three buzz by the way because he is buzzing to the curl flat zone to protect this corner underneath from any sort of comeback route he's going to be playing underneath this x receiver and just kind of creating a vertical bracket strong safety is going to be stepping down and playing a hook Zone that is his job as the hook Defender is to kind of take care of the low seam area as well as kind of protecting these two guys from inside cuts from the X receiver or from the slot kind of working up into that seam that's his job now free safety zoning off to the post but he's leaning more to the passing strength he's not just playing dead in the middle he is leaning to the passing strength and especially kind of keeping an eye on that number two receiver as a deep seam threat why does he have the confidence to do that why is he not playing dead in the middle of the field because this Mike linebacker is What's called the three up is three player again if you don't know what that is if three is up meaning if this number three receiver goes vertical the mic is carrying him in man coverage why did they do that they want to protect the safety from getting stretched out and not being able to protect the seam so if this y goes vertical on a deep cross they don't want this safety to have to kind of midpoint two guys that are in opposite seams because you just can't do that they don't want the safety to get pulled this way only for this slot receiver to go up the Deep seam run right by the strong safety and all of a sudden he's wide ass open in the seam they don't want to have that happen so the safety is going to be really protecting that deep seam area and if they kind of try to stretch that horizontally with a cross the mic is going to carry it so that's kind of what sets this coverage apart is you don't get the stress on the free safety he just has one guy to worry about or rather one area to worry about again on the back side the wheel is matching the running back this corner is playing and on the Z he's following him everywhere he goes so if he goes vertical he's going vertical that's why I say it's a three-ish deep we can get three we can get four we can get too deep it's three ish there are a bunch of different nuances to it and different rules that change based on formation and Personnel matchups and yada yada yada but that is the general structure of three buzz Mabel now with the magic of editing and taking a moment to completely redraw this board this is what a tamper 2 looks like from the very same pre-snap alignment against the very same offensive formation now the strong safety who let's pretend it's John Lynch or Kam Chancellor it doesn't really matter who instead of them coming down to play a hook Zone responsibility and also being involved in the Run fit now they are expanding out to play a deep half Zone the free safety or the weak safety depending whatever you want to call it they're also expanding out to play a deep half so both of these safeties are essentially playing the the same role as a corner wood in Cover 3 in that they're protecting against a default down the boundary and then you have the Mike linebacker who's basically playing the same role as a post player in a cover three and that he's doing what's called running the pole up the middle seam and his job is to stop anything up that middle seam especially from that number three receiver like I said we'd come back to it there's a lot of similarities here now when this coverage plays out you're gonna end up again with a three deep four underneath Zone coverage boundary boundary middle seam curl curl hook hook it's literally cover three or I guess technically they're correct in that Tampa 2 is inverted cover three now you may be asking the question after seeing all this okay why the hell are these coverages called so interchangeably then if they're the same thing why is Cover 3 called so much on early Downs while the Tampa 2 is called mostly on obvious passing Downs if their coverage goals are basically the same well the answer probably doesn't surprise you that much because it doesn't actually have anything to do with coverage at all so what's more through the magic of editing let's redraw this board again that by the way is inside Zone read against cover 2 and it's pretty much any defensive coordinator's worst nightmare because even normal inside zone is hard enough to stop from cover two let alone a Zone read and pretty much every single DC is not going to be caught dead in a position where they have to try to play a Zone read from cover two but what do I mean by hard to stop well you're even in the Box meaning six blockers for six defenders in the Box these safeties are not coming to help again they're in cover two they're playing deep half zones they gotta not be in the Run fit at all or else the coverage doesn't work so you're kind of on your own down here let alone when the quarterback is also a threat to keep it now you're minus one in the Run fit which is never where you want to be so pretty much the only way to stop the run from cover two and especially with mobile quarterbacks it's even harder to do but if you're gonna try to play cover two and stop the run pretty much the only reliable way to do it is with what's called a run stunt so that you can do what coaches refer to as stealing back a gap so cover two is pretty soft versus the run so to make up for that we run up let's stop with the d-line we just thought the um the three technique would run would cross the face of the center or whatever Gap and the alignment would run a pinch or a long stick and then if they ran that side lance would go chase the end and he would spill and I would come over the top so we try to make up take away one of the gaps that they have in coverage because there's only seven guys to stop the run and they have seven guys they can block us so they have a hat for a hat cover three you have an extra guy with the safety you don't need to run the step to do it though does that make sense yeah yeah in cover three looks where for instance against either 12 Personnel or 21 Personnel packages on early downs and distances and you're rolling down that strong safety to get an extra Man in the Box now the defense can be what's known as gapped out against the Run meaning they have one man for every gap on the line of scrimmage and everyone is flying downhill to the ball and just playing as fast as possible the coverage is the same on the back end if it's a passing play sort of like we said it's still three deep four underneath but the run defense specifically is better because you're gapped out with that extra Man in the Box it's just a much safer more versatile call especially on early Downs when teams run the ball more often or at least 20 years ago when they ran the ball more often now Cover 3 is not without its own weaknesses and Lord knows it has a lot of them and one of the main reasons why coaches in the Monty kiffin coaching tree transition from calling Cover 3 on early Downs to calling Tampa to an obvious passing Downs even though the Zone distribution is relatively the same again it's three deep four underneath the reason why they switched to Tampa 2 is that the angles and timing with which they get into that zone distribution tend to be a lot more favorable from Tampa too against a lot of very popular passing Concepts allow me to explain you know how in a quote-unquote normal cover 2 call where the mic linebacker is hanging really low towards the line of scrimmage and he's mirroring a running back and how a huge hole develops behind him over the Intermediate Middle area of the field that's a major weakness of old school cover 2 and one of the primary reasons why the Tampa 2 was invented in the first place to plug up that leak by having the Mike linebacker run the pole and get to that area and as you may have guessed quote unquote normal Cover 3 or country Cover 3 as most coaches refer to it also has that week weakness because that middle third Defender the free safety starts so deep and has to stay so deep so that he can give inside help to the corners it's very easy to use those receivers outside to just run off the deep three Zone Defenders and leave that same big void over the middle again the corners are playing a very different technique than they would in a cover too so the safety has to protect them first which means the linebackers get hung out to dry if the quarterback has enough time to hit that area you compare that to how a Tampa 2 look handles that same type of concept and that weakness mostly disappears again this is still technically a 3D look the outside thirds still have protection against the default down the boundary but the fact that the safeties are now protecting those deep thirds from inside leverage rather than the corners doing it from outside leverage like in a cover 3 that means that this Mike linebacker can just handle the Intermediate Middle threats from the very beginning and not have to worry about anything else going on behind him and again because nobody runs the ball on Third and eight anyway unless they want to get fired there's no real downside to calling this type of coverage in that situation because its main consistent weakness is the Run game the entire cabal of Monty kiffin disciples around the NFL and in college football all run essentially the same defense or at least different flavors of the same defense and they've done so for 20 years because it works you can go watch Bears games from 2005 and 2006 under Lovie Smith who coached under kiffin in Tampa and it's the same thing cover three on First and 10 to stop the run so you can get them into a second and long situation where they're probably gonna have to pass and then you call Tampa 2 to smother them with good coverage and force a mistake or an incompletion or something like that and then that brings up third and long where you show Blitz just for fun and to try to mix it up a little bit only to then drop back into Tampa 2 again Force another mistake and get off the field I'm not even exaggerating all of that was one series in order against Buffalo in early 2006 and the entire higher Bears defense from that mid-2000s era was just that sequence of events over and over and over again every single game that I charted looked exactly like that every player was so simple we were going to we go into defense in the games with five defensive calls five calls that's it we'd have a cover two cover three a man Blitz a Zone Blitz and then our third down stuff that was it you can look at Pete Carroll at USC as another example and keep in mind that Carol started working under kiffin in the late 70s at Arkansas and he frequently says that kiffin is his biggest inspiration as a coach and it was the exact same pattern even there Pete had a bunch of future NFL players on his front seven including three incredible linebackers in Ray maluga Clay Matthews Jr and Brian Cushing and he's still even with all that Talent called cover three on early down so he could be gapped out in the Run game and then he still leaned heavily on Tampa two calls in obvious passing situations when coach Carroll then later got to Seattle he famously transitioned into being even more Cover 3 oriented rather than Tampa 2 oriented on passing Downs just because he had the Personnel to do so and to be honest if I had Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor and Richard Sherman I'd probably do the same thing but he still did have some Tampa two elements from time to time simply because he also had Bobby Wagner who back in his prime could run the poll and carry the same threats down the middle better than almost anyone else and finally lest we forget about Mike Tomlin one of the greatest coaches in NFL history in his own right and also a former kiffin assistant in Tampa by the way if you go back and watch the Steelers defense literally just last year in 2022 it's almost the exact same money kiffin pattern even though Tomlin himself is not even the defensive coordinator on first downs last year between the 20 yard lines so not including either Red Zone area on either side of the field the Steelers were second in the league and cover three calls on those early down situations at 51.7 percent which is a lot but then on second and eight situations or longer after they get a stuff in the Run game by playing cover three they dropped that cover 3 percentage down to 32 percent and they were then second in the NFL in calling cover two in those scenarios at 30.5 percent which for context that is a lot of coverage 2 relative to the rest of the league by modern standards the mean number in the NFL for Cover 2 calls in those situations last year ironically was the Buccaneers at 16.7 percent so the Steelers were nearly double that mean number there have been a lot of incredible defenses to come through the NFL over the last couple of decades from the early 2000s bucks to the Bears in the mid-2000s to the beginnings of the legion of boom only five years later that was built by not one but two former kiffin assistant coaches people forget that Gus Bradley got his NFL start as part of that bucks crew as well and all of those great defenses share one common through line they kept it simple they played the same coverages in the same situations in the same order for the most part and everyone knew they were doing it cover 3 and Tampa 2 accomplished the same goals they just do it in a different way and therefore both of them are two sides of the same coin it's the yin and yang of football cover three on first down get a stop then it's time for cover two on second and third down just draft a bunch of freak athletes that can pull that off and call that same sequence on every single series and odds are you've probably got a legendary defense by the way one quick thing before we get out of here this episode took a long time to make it was about a year in the making if I include all of the random events that even led to the opportunity to me getting 2003 bucks film in the first place and and mid-2000s bears film it's a it's a crazy story and I'll say that for another day but um I made some really good true friends along the way and they they know who they are they're watching this probably um I'm also very lucky that I have a sponsor like manscape that was so patient and willing to wait for me to be able to do this one the right way just because there's so many historical references and resources that I had to go through and they were very patient with me for a lot of reasons um and I thank them for that as well as you know uh manscapes was also sponsoring our our draft coverage when I was out in Kansas City with our podcast the bootleg football podcast and I had to leave Kansas City early to handle a a pretty uh dire emergency back here in California and uh and so technically I didn't get to uh fulfill my obligations to them and they were very cool about it they totally understood again we've been partnered for a long time um and so in my very transparent effort to make that up to them because they were so gracious and so patient if you happen to be in the need for for any sort of uh grooming equipment whether it's trimmers like they just released a beard trimmer called The Beard hedger they have nose hair trimmers they have colognes they have lotions they have shampoos they have um ball toner like literally it's 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Channel: Brett Kollmann

Views: 239,975

Keywords: nfl, tampa 2, cover 3, legion of boom, bears, buccaneers, brett kollmann

Id: Vf9rML5A1X8

Length: 21min 42sec (1302 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2023