Loaded Zone

If you're looking for an edge defensively next year, I will offer this tidbit. This is a concept we stole from Iowa State back in the late 90's. They called it "Cover 6" / "Cover 9", in which they would load a side of the field with cloud (corner) support. This provides the best of both worlds for some, as it allows the benefits of Cover 2 (loaded zone) as well as Cover 3 (backside).

Being a Cover 3 team (in the past, when I was a DC), this provided the perfect bridge (both in game planning and with implementation) between running MOFC and MOFO coverages. This video is a handout created (via Powerpoint and Camtasia) for the players to better illustrate what we're trying to do. The selling point is that we always show Cover 3 (MOFC) and jump the flats (rotate secondary) at the snap. This is perfect (and geared toward) strongside runs and the 2-man passing game. We would flip this strong or weak, depending on game plan. The clips are of Iowa State and us running it in season

I felt that this was pertinent to provide as a prerequisite before engaging future posts about the Under front.

This stuff is available in the "download" section (free). We called this Cover 6 (though most teams Cover 6 is a weak rotation) and we would adjust / communicate with color call signs for all our coverages.

AFC: Automatic Front Check

I can't stress this enough - the cheap way of holding the chalk (last) on the field with this AFC concept we stole from Auburn (who stole it from countless others) years ago.

This is just an automatic check for the defense, that whenever they see a particular formation, they will check out of whatever was called and into the preferred coverage/front to best match-up with a given situation. Again, this is SIMPLE to do and ensures your guys are never caught with their pants down by being out-formationed.

In the situation below, we had the tendencies of this offense down to whenever they went to this Power-I look, they only hit 2 particular areas of attack. Because of this, we felt that the BEST defense in our arsenal against this set was "6 Under Will Line", which is just a strong side loaded zone (6), with an Under front and putting the bubble LB on the line....this is essentially a 6-1 defense.

So, regardless of whatever we actually called in the huddle, once the MLB/WLB recognized this formation, they immediately checked out into our preferred call. All this took was 10 minutes on Monday, recognizing the backfield set, and we were good for the entire week of game prep. We would present a couple of different formations the team would run (2x2,3x1,1x2), and the minute we lined up in double-tight-power-I...the *** hit the fan and we had the kids going bananas over their alert.

Base call "3" ----- checks into "6 Under Will Line" when confronted with Power-I (formation check)

Talking with the coaches from the other team later in that season, they mentioned they didn't know what was happening to them because their Power-I attack had previously been unstoppable.

Powerpoint Playbooks / Animation

The following are clips I made years ago from Powerpoint to better illustrate our 42 Nickel concepts.



This isn't what the team I coach at runs now (3-3), but nonetheless, this illustrates how a "coverage first" defensive concept works. The coverage determines
WHAT defense is being played. The coverage dictates the front. You see, we'd call the coverage and that
was it (it set the front and run support for all 11 players)



This is the loaded zone package we got from Iowa State years ago. Not many people do this, though I'm not sure why not. It affords you a cheap way of consistently getting number superiority versus 2-back teams.

If any of this is interesting, the download section below has write-ups, playbooks, and more videos on our version of the idiot-proof 42 Nickel.