Understanding CONE, STUMP, SMASH, POSTER and FIT within the split safety coverage
Understanding Jeremy Pruitt’s split safety coverage: CONNIE
Understanding Jeremy Pruitt’s split safety coverage: STUBBIE
Understanding Jeremy Pruitt’s split safety coverage: CLIP
Tennessee travels to Georgia on Oct. 10, a week before the Bulldogs play at Alabama.
Georgia enters the season as the three-time defending SEC East champions.
During the offseason, Kirby Smart hired Todd Monken as the Bulldogs’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. Monken is bringing an Air Raid attack to Smart’s program.
Georgia’s change will create an interesting matchup between Monken’s Air Raid offense and Jeremy Pruitt’s predominantly split safety coverage defensive scheme, whether it be Cover-4, Cover-2, or any variation in between.
Vertical attacks and post routes are two areas that give Pruitt’s split safety coverage looks in CONNIE calls a difficult time to defend.
In Cover-4, both safeties in a split safety look are tasked with keying the inside receiver, while still being responsible for their deep quadrant of the field (along with the two corners). Many spread concepts, such as Monken’s, look to attack the safeties in that very predicament by putting the inside receiver on a route in front of them while sending and outside receiver on a post route behind them to exploit the coverage.
In a Cover-2 look, there are five defenders covering the field underneath, with only two safeties being responsible for an entire half of the football field, generally, which leaves three holes for the offense to exploit on the deep left — between the corner and safety — middle between the safeties and the linebackers, and deep right between the corner and the safety.
Part of the Air Raid offense is the 6 concept where all four wide receivers are going downfield. The point of the Air Raid 6 is to go get six points where all four wide receivers stretch the field, while exploiting the weaknesses of the split safety looks described above.
The 6 concept, also known as 4 verticals, has both outside receivers — the X and Z — running vertical go routes, while taking an outside release to stretch the defense, yet still leaving space between their bodies and the sideline to shield a defender in the event they need to make an over the shoulder catch with room to spare. The inside receivers are taught to take their vertical release and end up at their landmark, which is typically two yards outside of the college hash marks. If the defense moves to a 1-high safety look, the inside receivers will remain +2 yards outside the hash to make that safety cover more ground. However, if the defense is in the split safety, a 2-high look that Pruitt runs, the inside receivers will bend their route inside of the safety in front of them.
Against a Cover-4 look, the purpose is to act as a decoy where they attract the safety down and open the post route behind them for a home run shot. Quarterbacks will give a hand-signal on 4-verticals to the outside receiver to change their route to a post when they see a defense in a pre-snap Cover-4 look.
Against a Cover-2 look, the bend by the inside receiver becomes a primary, unless the safety decides to not split the inside and outside receiver on their half of the field, the bend route typically gets the ball. Lastly, the running back will check down in front of the linebackers to prevent them from dropping so deep in a split safety look that they can cover the inside receivers. In all of these scenarios, the 6 concept puts a defense in a bind.
Safety play is critical against the Air Raid 6 as the quarterback (right-handed) reads the defense pre-snap to select which side of the defense he will attack. Quarterbacks are taught to attack the lower of the two safeties in a Cover-4 look, in hopes of hitting the post over the top, and versus a Cover-2 look the quarterback attacks either the widest safety pre-snap in hopes of hitting the inside receiver streaking down the middle or they will choose his best matchup. There are several other factors that go into the totality of selecting a side to work, such as knowing tendencies of your opponents or the specific chemistry you have with certain receivers. With four receivers running the defense deep, check downs often become a great option, as well.
A quarterback’s progression can change if a tag is made, for instance, if the X-receiver has a cornerback that is playing off the ball and not in tight coverage. If a quarterback tags SMASH on the weak-side, the tag being on the right-side, a tag trumps the progression because the quarterback’s goal is to take the easy 6 yard completion.
The option route is another area of the Air Raid 6.
In an option route, each wide receiver will have landmarks to dictate their way into getting open. The X-receiver will continue with a go-route. The H will run 8-10 yards, the Y-receiver will go 12-14 yards, while the Z-receiver will be 16-18 yards in their route. Different landmarks provide each receiver to be on different levels. The progression coincides with the break in the receivers, creating space to get open. A quarterback would typically scan the full field from a go-route, usually deciding pre-snap if he has a chance, to the H’s option, the Y’s option and then outside to the Z’s route.
Safety play is again critical as they determine if it is needed to come over the top, crashes or plays down. In the Air Raid, wide receivers have the ability to post in a direction that they feel a safety is not headed. There is a lot of freedom within the Air Raid offense to make these decisions. There is a large burden on defenders as they need to be able to cover in open space.
For Tennessee’s sake, the WILL in Henry To’o To’o can cover the H if he stays short, and cornerback Bryce Thompson can play tight coverage on the X-receiver, providing Trevon Flowers and Jaylen McCollough to play the ball deep against other receivers in essentially a no-fly zone.
The 5-foot-11, 195-pound Flowers has the ball skills to defend Georgia’s new offensive attack. Flowers’ high school head coach Lamar Bryan says Tennessee’s strong safety has “great ball skills” playing against the Air Raid offense.
“He does a great job,” Bryan told Vols Wire of Flowers. “He can really run and covers ground well. He has tremendous ball skills, so he does really well in those situations.”
Allan Bridgford played for Monken at Southern Miss in 2013. Bridgford understands what Monken will bring to Georgia’s offense this season as the Bulldogs are all-in to revolutionize its offense and attack split safety coverage schemes.
With spring practices being canceled in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, Georgia did not have the traditional amount of time to implement the Air Raid offense during the offseason.
“Team’s may start out a little slower, maybe the older teams will benefit more,” Bridgford told Vols Wire. “I think towards the end of their SEC season, football is going to be a lot better due to live reps, just like any other season.
“What makes the Air Raid is how simple you keep it and how well you do it. There are half field reads where you are looking pre-snap at what the coverage is and what side of the field you are going to work. Let’s say you have a two-high beater to the left and a one-high beater to the right, there is a certain look you could get and you choose that side. Then you have full field scans where you are basically just counting numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, to the running back for a checkdown. Monken is just really good at teaching progressions and what you are looking for. He is really good at disecting defensive tendencies and how to identify them — he helps you play fast.”
Bridgford also discussed Georgia attacking Tennessee’s split safety coverage.
“You have to take the top off these coverages and work underneath,” he said. “The Air Raid has an answer to everything. There are so many nuances and only a handful of plays.
“You can have four verticals where there are two different types of four vertical calls. You have all-go, which is just 4-verticals, where the inside guys bend versus 2-high and the quarterback has the ability to put an outside receiver on a deep post versus Cover-4. Then you also have a streak variation, where if the chemistry between the quarterback and inside receivers is there, the inside receivers can either hook up, run inside, run outside, continue straight and basically just find the open hole in the defense based off their defender’s leverage. That takes chemistry, reps and practice. Every quarterback Monken has coached for an extended period of time has had that with his receivers.”
The matchup between Georgia and Tennessee will come before the Bulldogs’ much anticipated contest against the Crimson Tide, and will be one that is somewhat of a different ideology with Saban favoring a STUBBIE call within a split safety coverage compared to Pruitt.
Saban is known to not want to play STUMP because cornerbacks play a lot press coverage, causing him to think his players do not execute when playing off coverage. Saban likes to play STUBBIE to play tighter coverage.
This makes for the Tennessee-Georgia matchup being one of the most anticipated games within the 2020 SEC schedule.
