3-4 Defense: Cover Six Check vs. Empty

Presented by Head Football Coach Aaron Brady, courtesy of Glazier Clinics.

3-4 Defense System, Coach Brady. We're talking about defending three-by-one sets and empty sets today in the three-four. We're going to go through a few things. A couple of variations. Our goal going into every game is to have two answers to trips three-by-one, and to have two answers to empty that our guys are solid with. A lot of times, our empty checks will be the same throughout the season, so it's consistent for them. They know what they're doing from a defensive perspective.

Let's go to empty. We got an empty set, whatever that is. We don't care if it's tight and empty, five receiver empty. We don't care. It doesn't matter us. It's still three-by-two or four-by-one to one of the sides. That's how we're going to term it. All right. The first one we're going to check cover six. Cover six would be away from the Sam to the weak side or the short side of the field to the J side. We're going to have the corner cloud and the rover half field player.

The Will has to be involved over there on that side. He is going to be the curl player. He is inside. He is going to work to basically play skiff, but we're really worried about the seam here. We want to take it number two out of the seam. The Mike is gonna of work off at three. His rules stay the same. Our Sam is going to be skipped to the other side and we got our free-end corner playing cover six. They're playing quarters. We're not reading this at all. They're just all going to basically pedal on their quarter to the field.

All right, we're talking about empty. Here's the first example. We're going to check quarters here. Now, they're kind of moving around and we get messed up because here's our Sam. They've got three receivers to our left. He makes a strong left call. He makes a strong left call, everybody echoes the call, we get lined up, then all of a sudden, oh shoot, now the guy goes to the other side. It's another three-by-two, the other side. We're okay. We're not going to change it now. We're going to stay in it for this play. What has to happen though is our Will has to know, understand, "Hey, I'm off at number two. I'm of at number two so I got to work outside to get to number two." He needs to widen his alignment and again, it's empty.

Now, we got to have a BTF here. Called a blitz the formation, which is in one of the other sessions you can watch. We're bringing that backer already. We didn't call it off. We kept it on. We should be fine here. We got the secondaries playing quarters. I'm sorry. Yeah, actually, yeah, quarters. We're getting back there, we're playing a ball in here, we get a pick. Again, it's about getting pressure on the quarterback. You can't be afraid not to pressure, when they go empty and spread formations. We still want to put pressure on them.

The Sam here is going to work the two. That's his job, normal rules. My Will is just not wide enough. He has to be wider so he can get to number two. At least reroute two. Okay, we're going to lose the Mike here. So that's a little scary. All right. But we’ll live to fight another day if they get a play. At least we have four guys deep. We can knock it down and run in our play, it doesn't work out.

All right. So that's empty check right there. Now, again, we didn't check on this one. This was not a check for us, we just ran the call and kept it on. In a perfect world, we should have called off the Mike blitz, if we wanted, called the BTF off, kept our Mike in coverage. Now, our Mike has worked to three, which is right here and our Will, who's not wide enough. He needs to be wider. Our Will should be standing out here. He could work the two and the Mike to work to three. So then we get everybody covered right. Then, we're fine.

About Coach Aaron Brady

Aaron Brady is the Head Football Coach  and College Placement Professional at St. Mary's Ryken High School in Leonardtown, Maryland. He is a regular contributor to Glazier Clinics and Glazier Drive.