Disguising Pass Coverage

ou need to be able to disguise your pass
coverage if you plan on having a successful attack against your
opponent's offense. We don't want the offense to be able to pre-read
our defensive coverage and determine if we are in man or zone. We also
need to be able to hide if we are in press coverage or not. This year
in Madden 09, we can call defenses that have our men in press coverage
without having to call press. This is like an auto delay bump-n-run. We
will take a look at disguising coverage in general by going over some
things we noticed that defensive players do when in man or zone
coverage, and finding ways to use those tells to confuse our opponent's
pre-read.


Nickel Normal Quarter Half

The first
defense we'll look at is the Nickel Normal Quarter Half versus the Gun
Doubles Slants. This is always one of the first defenses that we use
because it is half man, half zone, and normally makes it hard for the
offense to pre-read our pass coverage.

When the offense comes
out they are pre-reading man coverage. We're saying this because when
in man coverage, your secondary and even linebackers will not move
around constantly as they do when in zone. So if the offensive player
sees this and thinks he can run a two receiver combo to the twins side
designed to beat man, then they are actually playing to the strength of
our defense.

Here is one thing that will really throw off the
offense. If they motion the tight end out, normally the defender
covering him in man coverage will align on the outside of him. When the
defender lines up on the tight end, then that means we are in zone
coverage. This is just a simple way we can make the offensive player
overthink and get uncomfortable with their reads, and hopefully make a
bad decision because of it.

Nickel Normal Cover 3

Now we are going to move on to the Nickel Normal Cover 3 versus the Gun Doubles Drag Under.

In
the screenshot, we are in all zone coverage, and you can see our
defenders moving around before the snap. The safeties and corners are
walking up and back, trying to throw off the read.

When the TE
motions out, you can see that the defender stacks head up on him. This
tells the offense we are in zone. We just want to make sure you see how
the coverage can tip the offense to what we're doing, and how the
Quarter Half really threw this read off.

Dime Normal 2 Man Under

Let's go to a typical man coverage defense, in the Dime Normal 2 Man Under versus the Gun Doubles Strong Flood.

When the offense comes to the field they see that we are in man coverage.

Because our secondary is not moving back and forth.
Because the defender playing the tight end is outside shaded.

If
we know that the offense is pre-reading man coverage and trying to get
reads based off of our defensive alignments, then we can change
individual defenders that normally give them their pre-read. In this
case, we have changed the dime back to a buzz zone. This will will make
him line head up on the tight end.

In doing this article, we
figured instead of going with the norm, why not show you how to
disguise man or zone coverage based on the little tricks the offense
can do to tell if you're in one or the other. As long as you know what
the offense can look for, then we can further play with their minds and
keep them confused.