Disguising Your Pre-Snap Defense

by: David Purdum
© More from this issue

          
Sometimes the best way to disguise a defense is with no disguise at all. Miami (OH) defensive backs coach Tim Cooper relies on that type of deception to confuse offenses.

Instead of throwing multiple looks at offenses, Cooper often prefers that the Redhawks’ defense looks identical to the way it did on the previous play. That doesn’t mean Miami will never use pre-snap movement. Stemming the line, bluffing pressure with creeping linebackers and showing multiple-safety looks are all ingredients used to create the Redhawks’ defensive disguise.

Building the Disguise

The Redhawks’ base defense seems simple enough: a 4-3, Cover-2. The safeties are ten yards off the ball on the hash marks and the corners are in press coverage. It’s a look offenses become very familiar with throughout a game; it is one that helped Miami finish second against the pass last year in the Mid-American Conference. But, while it may look like the same 4-3, Cover-2 before every snap, it’s anything but.

The Redhawks can jump into multiple coverages and zone pressures out of their base set; this gives the QB the same pre-snap read the majority of the time. With that in mind, the coaching staff begins designing its disguises in the film room, where Cooper starts dissecting an offense’s tendencies. The first thing he studies is how a quarterback reacts to certain looks.

“Typically, most quarterbacks begin their pre-snap read by looking at the safeties,” Cooper said. “It’s one of the first things that I look for. What is he doing against a Cover-2 look? When that QB sees a single safety, where’s he going? Is he trying to hit vertical against a single safety? Where does he take his shots?”

By showing a QB consistent looks early, the staff and players become more comfortable with the offense’s tendencies. Later in the game, this will make their disguises more effective. One thing to keep in mind, Cooper said, is a disguise should not prevent a player from being in the area he’s assigned to after the snap.

“Disguise is great if you can do it,” Cooper explained, “but if it’s affecting your responsibility then it’s really defeating the entire purpose. If you’re in a situation that you don’t feel like you can get to your responsibility because of the bluff or the disguise, we need to go away from the disguise.”

Pre-Snap Movement: Bluff or Show

As the game progresses, Miami will begin to mix in multiple defensive looks, using pre-snap movement. It becomes a game of bluff or show.

“We’ll move pre-snap to try to give them a false read early,” Cooper said. “Then, we’ll either stay in it or not. By that I mean, we’ll start to cheat the corners out; they’ll bail out initially pre-snap, then sit or squat and play Cover-2 or keep going. These tricks are called designated by bluff or show in the play call.

“If we’re in a two-deep, which is our base defense, and we’re going to go to a Cover-3, where one of the safeties is rolling down and one is going to the middle, we might say ‘show.’ So we’ll just come out in it, line up in it and just play it.

“If we call ‘bluff’ with it,” Cooper added, “we’ll stay in our base set. Our safeties will start to widen and move out like it’s a Cover-2. Then on the snap of the ball, they’ll go ahead and squat down and play our Cover-3.”

To get into a one-safety look, Miami will walk down a safety to within six yards of the line of scrimmage. He can either squat in the flat area, while the remaining deep safety drifts to the middle of the field 12 yards back or just drop back into his Cover-2 responsibilities at the snap.

“Or vice-versa,” Cooper adds. “We’ll come out and initially have one safety down in the flat and one in the middle of the field. Then, on the snap of the ball, the flat player will go play back on the hash and the single safety will go to the opposite hash. The idea is to cause them to change a formation, check out of a play or shift a protection when it’s not necessary, based on what they’re seeing.”

The pre-snap movement is not limited to the safeties. Linebackers, who originally begin five yards off the ball, creep up from the boundary or the field to represent pressure. “When we’re doing that stuff with the linebackers we want them to do it early on in the cadence,” Cooper said, “since that’s probably a little more difficult than in the secondary. For those guys, it’s easy for them to get out of position real fast.”

The corners, who always begin in a press coverage look, have a series of techniques they can play. “There are times when the corners will be up there and then they’ll start to cheat out a little bit early and show their bail,” explained Cooper. “From there, they can either keep bailing to a deep third to a quarters technique or they can bail out and come back and squat on that guy.”

Other times, the Redhawk corners, especially in a zone pressure look, will show no movement pre-snap, giving the quarterback the idea a blitz is coming and the receivers are facing tight press coverage. This is one of Cooper’s favorite ways to bait a quarterback into making an unwise decision. “Out of the zone pressure, when they see press coverage, they like to throw a fade,” Cooper said. “That’s when we’ll tell the corner not to bail until the receiver moves. This way, we’ll try to bait the quarterback to just throwing one up.”

Blitz Disguise

Miami relies heavily on zone pressures. The process of disguising these blitzes begins in the film room, where the Redhawks’ defensive staff pays close attention to an offense’s protection schemes. Cooper wants to know: “If they see edge pressure to the running back, is the back immediately looking toward that edge pressure? If there is edge pressure away from the back, do they flip the back and try to pick up that edge pressure that way? Are they sliding to the edge pressure up front and the back’s going opposite?

“From their protection schemes,” he added, “you could possibly show to the back and make them use the back to pick that up. On the snap of the ball, come from the other side and drop out to where you were showing pressure from originally.”

Once they’ve determined how best to attack an offense’s protection, the staff will ‘marry up’ several blitzes out of the same pre-snap look and bluff from the opposite areas of where the pressure is actually coming from.

“We’ll show like we’re coming from the field and come from the boundary or show like we’re coming from the boundary and come from the field,” Cooper said. “We have a couple of zone pressures where we’ll walk guys up, on the snap show pressure, then back off. We’ve got two or three zone pressures that initially, pre-snap, look exactly the same, but different guys are coming.”

Occasionally, Miami will stem its offense line, shifting it from one left side or right side before the snap. “Initially, our defensive line will line up in a strong-side right call and we’ll show pressure from the other side,” Cooper explained. “Then, right before the snap of the ball, our linebacker will yell move, the entire line will shift to the left, and we’ll bring pressure back from the right.”

Three Keys to Building a Good Disguise

1. Give the offense a consistent pre-snap look.
“That’s our base philosophy on disguising coverage,” said Cooper. “We want to show them our base look, line up the same way every time, then move to a coverage at the snap of the ball.”

2. Pre-snap movement.
“This is kind of the opposite of the first one,” said Cooper. “But if you move around a lot pre-snap, you end up never giving them a set read, where he’s doing the same thing every time.”

Miami likes to walk a safety down out of its base 4-3, Cover-2 look to give a single-safety. The linebackers often creep up to the line of scrimmage to represent pressure, only to jump back into coverage, and the defensive line will stem, shifting from one side to the other directly before the snap.

3. Don’t risk blown assignments when trying to disguise your defense.
“Ultimately, I’m a big believer that you cannot allow your disguise to affect your responsibility, “ Cooper emphasized. “We would rather line up, let them know what we’re playing, be sound and take care of our responsibilities rather than disguising it and missing a lot of assignments.”

NEW BOOK!

Digital Download - 304 Pages of Football Forms for the Winning Coach