Many people continue to struggle with defending the deep pass. The reason it is harder to defend the deep ball this season is because the cornerbacks and safeties don't react to the pass as quickly as they did in the past. In this tip we are going to show you a quick and easy fix that will prevent a receiver from ever getting behind your safeties again. Take a look as Sports Gamer breaks it down.
Figure 1 - In this picture the defense has called a basic Dime Man Cover 2 coverage. However, for this first example we are not going to make any changes to the defense to allow you to see exactly what happens.
Figure 2 - The quarterback drops back to pass as the receivers head upfield.
Figure 3 - The safeties remain in the strafe position as the receivers are almost at the same depth on the field.
Figure 4 - The safeties finally turn and run with the receivers, but at this point the defense is already beat.
Figure 5 - The lob pass approaches the receivers as the defenders can only watch hopelessly.
Figure 6 - The receiver makes the easy catch and has about 2-3 yards of separation on the defense.
Figure 7 - Now we are going to run the exact same DIme Man Cover 2 defense. However, this time we are going to make one quick adjustment to move our safeties deeper downfield after the snap. The change that we make is playmakering both safeties up by pressing (XBOX - Y + right analog stick, + Y + right analog stick up (so you do the same sequence twice) / PS2 - Triangle + right analog stick + Triangle + right analog stick up (the same sequence twice).
Figure 8 - Immediately after the snap the deep safeties begin dropping back in the same way that we saw in the first example.
Figure 9 - In this image you can see that the safeties have already turned to run upfield with the receivers.
Figure 10 - The quarterback makes the deep throw, but both of our deep safeties are well ahead of their receivers.
Figure 11 - The receiver is completely blanketed as both defenders try to make the interception.
Final Conclusion
Stopping the deep lob is something that you have to be able to do when on defense if you expect to win consistently. This quick playmaker option before the snap not only makes it easy to take away this pass, but it also make your opponent think that he still may be able to beat you deep because the safeties don't move. Take this great tactic into practice mode and start putting an end to opponents that beat your defense for 6 points in just one play.
