Plays to know in 2024: Cover 1
Texas has been a predominantly Match Quarters defense for the last few seasons. Match Quarters is a complicated, two-high safety coverage where the defenders have a number of rules which dictate who they cover, how, and when.
But Texas’ main change-up in 2023 was good old fashioned, single-high safety man coverage. The most straightforward and simple, mano a mano defense there is. In the spring game they Cover 1 a bigger piece of the formula and ran it effectively at times, at least when the starters were in the game.
This summer we’re breaking down some of the basic plays that will matter for this coming Longhorn season, including old fashioned Cover 1 and how it works.
Cover 1
As our own Joe Cook noted during a recent Monday nITe Live stream, Nick Saban has referred to Cover 1 as “the best coverage in ball.” The reason for this adulation is that the coverage helps you stop the run, loads up the middle of the field, and takes away all the easiest throws.
The catch with Cover 1 is that it’s man-free. There’s a single deep safety who (usually) stays back to defend any post routes over the top and then underneath everyone is assigned a specific man to cover 1-on-1. If you can’t cover the other team 1-on-1 in space, it’s not so great. If you can, the coverage is relatively simple and thus actually quite flexible in terms of what it allows a defense to do.
Saban developed his pattern matching version of Cover 3 to answer the question of how to play Cover 1 when you don’t have athletes who can hold up in man. Both Pete Kwiatkowski and Johnny Nansen have used versions of Match 3 in their past to allow their defense to play either Cover 1 and Cover 3 to different areas of the field on the same play based on what gives them the best chance to stop a particular formation or opponent.
We’ll worry about that as it comes up, today I’ll just give an overview of Cover 1.
Here are the foundational pieces.
The offense has five skill players on any given play. The defense needs to assign a defender to each of them who is responsible for covering his guy man-to-man if they run a route.
The defense always has one defender who stays back as a deep, post safety.
That still leaves five defenders for the defense to use however they want.
That last point is a big reason why Cover 1 is really popular. If you want to send five pass-rushers after the quarterback you can still play man coverage on all five skill players and keep the post safety over the top as an insurance policy. If you want to bring a normal four-man pass rush you get an extra man to use somewhere in coverage. He can play in the middle of the field as a “rat” and spy the quarterback’s eyes, he can spy the quarterback and prevent scrambles, he can double a particular receiver, etc. There are a lot of options.
The next aspect of what makes Cover 1 popular is that you can change up who covers who, although things tend to be fairly straightforward as defenses aren’t usually interested in having a linebacker cover a receiver. Here’s an example though of how defenses can be multiple in Cover 1 and create issues for the offense.
Pre-snap the defense is lined up in a two-high shell but they can easily get to a Cover 1 alignment just before or after the snap by dropping a safety down. When they do so, there are multiple options for how to divvy up the tasks. They could drop the strong safety down to cover the tight end and now the Mike and Will linebacker can divide who will cover the running back and who will be free to blitz, spy, or be a “rat” in the middle of the field.
Alternatively, they could cover the tight end with the Will linebacker who’s already across from him, cover the running back with the Mike, and drop a safety down to be a rover in the middle of the field.
As you can see, the options start to get extensive. If your Edges can drop and cover as well it can become overwhelming for the quarterback and offensive line to figure out, even though you’re playing the most basic coverage imaginable.
Simplicity begets versatility and flexibility.
Cover 1 with the 2024 Longhorns
Texas has been using Cover 1 for the last few years and it was their primary blitz coverage in 2023, although they had some major issues getting it right.
You need to be in nickel to really make Cover 1 work or else a three-receiver formation of the sort drawn above will cause major problems as the defense won’t have enough defenders who can cover to match up. If the defense has a nickel corner it’s much easier as they always have a man to realistically match all three receivers. It’s easier still if at least one of the safeties can also play some man coverage on a tight end or slot receiver. If both safeties can and there are zero clues for the offense about who might drop down and who will play the deep post a defense becomes very versatile.
The Longhorns do have the guys to present these problems in 2024. Derek Williams and Andrew Mukuba can both cover man-to-man well enough to be realistic options at the “Star” nickel position if Texas didn’t already have Jahdae Barron and Jaylon Guilbeau. Michael Taaffe is reasonably solid here as well, particularly if he’s playing in the more limited spaces of the boundary. With so many versatile defensive backs, it should be easy for Texas to draw up varieties of Cover 1 that protect their linebackers and free them up to help the pass-rush.
Texas will undoubtedly play a fair amount of single-high coverage in 2024. If they invest enough practice and installation this offseason to mastering the techniques and different varieties available it could be their new base coverage.
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