I heard a commentator (can't remember who) say that when a defense goes into "Zone Defense it's to give the DB's a breather. I don't know if that is true but I do know that when we go into a zone or soft zone our DB's get burnt. Is this a wrong statement or thought and is there anyone out there that can clarify?
I heard a commentator (can't remember who) say that when a defense goes into "Zone Defense it's to give the DB's a breather. I don't know if that is true but I do know that when we go into a zone or soft zone our DB's get burnt. Is this a wrong statement or thought and is there anyone out there that can clarify?
It's not 'wrong,' exactly. It's a bit of an oversimplification, imo.
Yeah, it's true you can't run 100% man or press man all game; your DBs would be gassed before the 2nd half. By running zone, DBs only have to run when an offensive player enters their zone, so less running overall for the secondary.
But also, in some cases, you don't have the DBs to play man across the board because the other team has a Mike Evans equivalent that'll beat man all day. And the other part of it is that there's a lot of variations to "zone coverage," so you can disguise whether it's zone or man, or what kind of zone, even the type of blitz. Also, in zone, you can temporarily 'double' more than one player, or even triple-team a player, without necessarily destroying the integrity of your coverage elsewhere.
So many reasons to play zone and most teams are not one or other. I guess lower work rate might be one, but I think its mostly driven by the type of talent
definitely true, whe you gotta trail a guy 40-60 yards it’s gonna be tiring if you do it all game. One of the reasons I think Bowles likes zone so much is that he doesn’t like his defense gassed, he’s also a former db so he knows what’s it like in man. Mike evans takes breather after every long route so he doesn’t gas if you rewatch all his games.
But that just one piece of running zone. We’re actually bad at running zone, because you need all guys to be on the same brain one weak spot in the zone and the coverage is busted and nfl teams will consistently attack the area til it’s shored up. But also there’s so many ways to attack zone even if you do everything right you can still be wrong because of how things are executed by the offense. To run zone to really strong efficiency you need “football players” with high football iq and able to understand how the offense wants to manipulate spacing and the defense to know what to look out for. It’s why guys like barber who wasn’t elite in man was elite in zone high football iq.
we also run some half man half zone schemes which I’ve liked we changed it up these past weeks. Which I would say has been working because we’ve thrown these teams off our usual.
when you have athletes you can say hey you get him and that’s all you need to know when you run zone you run a lot of if and then possibilities which requires high football iq
definitely true, whe you gotta trail a guy 40-60 yards it’s gonna be tiring if you do it all game. One of the reasons I think Bowles likes zone so much is that he doesn’t like his defense gassed, he’s also a former db so he knows what’s it like in man. Mike evans takes breather after every long route so he doesn’t gas if you rewatch all his games.
But that just one piece of running zone. We’re actually bad at running zone, because you need all guys to be on the same brain one weak spot in the zone and the coverage is busted and nfl teams will consistently attack the area til it’s shored up. But also there’s so many ways to attack zone even if you do everything right you can still be wrong because of how things are executed by the offense. To run zone to really strong efficiency you need “football players” with high football iq and able to understand how the offense wants to manipulate spacing and the defense to know what to look out for. It’s why guys like barber who wasn’t elite in man was elite in zone high football iq.
we also run some half man half zone schemes which I’ve liked we changed it up these past weeks. Which I would say has been working because we’ve thrown these teams off our usual.
when you have athletes you can say hey you get him and that’s all you need to know when you run zone you run a lot of if and then possibilities which requires high football iq
Excellent and I agree.
