Looking ahead to the season opener, Greg Cosell did a great job on PE.com breaking down Dan Quinn's Cover 3 defense. He showed ways in which offenses approach Cover 3 and how to beat it. Specifically he focused on 4 verticals. I wanted to go back to when the Eagles played Dan Quinn's Seattle Seahawks defense last year and show another 4 verticals concept that I expect we'll see more of tonight.
The Eagles did not have much success against Dan Quinn's defense last season but you have to believe that personnel had a big part of it. Quinn has a few nice players in the front seven but his secondary is missing the likes of Earl Thomas, Richard Sherman and Byron Maxwell. One way the Eagles looked to exploit the cover 3 defense was with, as Greg suggested, 4 verticals. In fact, Zach Ertz scored a TD on the four verticals concept before:
Let's break this one down, because it is really brilliant play design against a Cover 3 defense. You'll see the Seahawks in single high. The Eagles will run 4 verticals. Thomas is the deep safety highlighted in red. The Eagles will motion McCoy to the bottom side of the field requiring 3 defenders. The interesting design on this play is the motion to the flat plus a double switch concept where the outside receivers both run in-breaking routes towards the single safety while the inside receivers, Ertz and Matthews in this case, run a wheel route to the boundaries. As you can see, this really forces that single safety to play the complete width of the field which is virtually impossible to do.
As the play unfolds, you will notice a couple of things. The underneath slot corner has to pick up McCoy in the flat, Sherman follows Maclin on the in-breaking route and Jordan Matthews is wide open streaking down the sideline. Where's the safety help? Well, he's got his eyes on the top of the field where Cooper is running an-in breaking route and Ertz runs the wheel route to the boundary. Here you can see just how much ground Earl Thomas would need to cover to provide deep help. Against Cover 2, this is more manageable. With only one deep safety, this concept is nearly impossible to defend against:
Sanchez has a nice window and hits Ertz for the TD:
Later in the 2nd half the Eagles defense forced a huge turnover and the Eagles got a chance to get right back into this game. They immediately went back to the same playcall against Cover 3. Let's slow it down a bit here. The action to watch this time is on the bottom of the screen. McCoy gets motioned to the flat, Cooper runs an in-breaking route and Matthews runs the wheel route out of the slot. Note, that's Byron Maxwell lined up over Matthews who bits on McCoy in the flat. This leaves Jordan Matthews wide open down the sidelines. Unfortunately, Sanchez gets flushed out of the pocket and instead throws the ball to Cooper who is covered and underthrows it terribly giving the ball right back to the Seahawks on an INT. Huge, game-changing play there:
A little later in the game, the Eagle went right back to the same play again:
Note once again the slot corner will take the RB in the flat freeing up Jordan Matthews wide open down the sideline.
Unfortunately, once again the pass protection doesn't hold up and Sanchez can't get the ball to a wide open Matthews down the sideline:
With the Falcons expecting to play a lot of Cover 3 tonight, expect Chip Kelly to break out this concept a few times. They ran it 4 times in total against the Seahawks last year but unfortunately were only able to convert on 1 of them. Hopefully we'll see better pass protection and QB play tonight from the Eagles. There will be a lot of opportunities for plays on this defense.
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