Orlovsky: The Colts Defense Lies
 

https://twitter.com/danorlovsky7/sta...07007691038721

This is a great analysis on Kenny Moore's 4th down INT last week. I remembered thinking "they're in man" when Desir followed Hopkins in motion, but Moore obviously broke out of a zone coverage to make the pick.

I like it. I assume this is why Eberflus has the whole defense watch film together. The back seven have to know all the coverage roles in each zone defense if they're going to switch off like they must be doing here.

I'm sorry, but I've gotta do it. So coaching matters?

Yeah, if you ask me, he's a wee bit over-excited by this.

Sure, it's nice to see the Colts doing this. However, disguising defensive looks isn't something new in the NFL.

In. Player. Development. Yes. How many times must that be said? Dumbing something down to the point that you've shown you don't understand it doesn't make you right.

It's certainly unique. Motion is one of the biggest tells of man vs. zone defense typically. Taking that tell away from the opposing QB is HUGE, because it can cause misreads and potentially even get you turnovers like it did vs. Houston.

Dude, that wasn't player development. That was game planning.

So it's not player development to get each player in the back seven to understand all of the zone assignments on any given call? I'd disagree with that.

It is game planning. They were watching game film to see tendencies, not random film to see what each player should do no matter what the situation may possibly be.

stop dam. Just stop!!

Dude is displaying his small dick syndrome for all the world now.

Heard Zak Keefer on JMV yesterday and he said the thing he hears most commonly from players is that this year shows what a difference coaching makes.

Is there a ColtFreaks corollary to Godwin's Law whereby the longer a thread goes, it becomes increasingly certain that someone will find a way to bait Dam?

If not, there should be.

Yah man, in this case tho, YDFL started it...

It sucks that there are over a dozen or so otherwise good threads that have devolved into this.

Regarding Orlovsky's analysis, I'm surprised he's never seen it, I am surprised I have never seen it.

It has to involve some pretty significant two-way silent communication and trust... EG, if I follow X motion guy, you have to cover the Y zone... Perhaps it's more like, "if you are in X place when they snap the ball, you are responsible for Y"

I'd love to hear those conversations about how they decide it.

However this CAN'T be the only situation this has happened. An unusual wrinkle to the defense? Sure. A completely unique look that will make Reid's head explode? Can't be.

Can it?

Maybe Orlovsky has never seen it because he was a bad QB and didn't understand what he was seeing when on the field.

I like the tactic but disguising coverage is not new.

It might be relatively new for our defense though, as it takes time for the defenders to learn each zone responsibility since they won't know where they'll end up on the field when their "man" goes in motion.

If it was relatively common, teams wouldn't use motion as much as they do. One of the biggest points of motion, as he points out, is to get an idea of what type of coverage your opponent is running, because that makes the reads for the QB easier. It's also a reason offenses spread the field, they're trying to get as much information on what the defense is doing pre-snap as possible to make finding the open receiver/hole in the zone easier. When you show man and drop into zone or vice versa, it throws everything off for the QB and good things typically happen for the defense.

Disguising coverage isn't new, but it's typically done in the middle of the field. You might put a safety in the box and drop into a 2 deep look, or show a 2 deep look, then drop into a cover 3 with your safeties with a corner covering one of the flats, or show a zone look over the top but play man underneath among many examples of ways that coverages can be disguised. But switching zones by showing man coverage against motion can't be common, because motion is so prevalent.

And you mentioned what has to be the tricky part in this. On the Moore INT play, Kenny Moore had to know Darius Leonard's normal assignment and Leonard had to know Moore's, and they each had to know how to play the other's role, because by Leonard going out to cover the back, which "tipped" man to Watson (because on a normal zone play, Moore would've gone out to cover the zone), they essentially switched zone assignments. I don't think that's common in the NFL. I don't know if it's unique, but it's definitely not something done very often by NFL defenses.

It was the combination of 1) following a man in motion and 2) leaving a LB on a RB split wide. #2 in particular is rare enough, but doing them both together?

I have no idea how often defenses "fake it" vs the guy in motion to trick the defenses.

But its yet another example where the Colts never did this before under previous coaching and are doing it now with good results

You see the same thing with the blitzes. We used to see this all the time against Manning with good defenses, line up LBers or secondary up on the DL like they were blitzing and then dropping back in coverage to try and confuse him on the play call. The Colts are now doing this often as well. Sometimes they do blitz, sometimes they don't

Disguising coverage isn’t new, but that is usually involving the oline and trying to figure out who is rushing the passer. This puts the onus squarely on the QB and WR’s. Wr’s already have to be on the same page as QBs and have a lot more pre read adjustments than they did say 20 years ago. But this is effective because it increases the amount of processing time by the QB. He will likely have to go through his progression, and it does create doubt that he might not be reading the defense correctly. Hence, the QB needs to hold the ball a little longer allowing the pass rush a better opportunity.

I’m kind of surprised no one has done this before. I always thought the motion man was such an easy tell. Hell I do it almost every play in Madden to see the defense. I have not seen a defense motion their players to match the offense then be able to drop into an effective zone. I expect this will take off in the off season and we will see it a lot next year. It’s a copycat league.

A lot of coverage disguise is to fool QBs as well. For example, showing a 2 deep look and then rolling the safeties to drop into a Cover 3 is designed to get the QB to read Cover 2 and throw to what would be the holes in that type of coverage, where ideally you'll have a defender waiting to pick the pass. If a QB were to throw deep middle in that example, which is a classic hole of a Cover 2, the defense would be hoping that that would place their best ballhawking safety in position to intercept the pass or at least bat it down.

You could get seriously burned by deploying this too often. I bet the Colts saw something on tape to suggest that the RB was never one of Houston's primary reads, so they were comfortable with the disguise.

Furthermore, Houston likely would have picked up the 1st if not for Kenny Moore reading the play and leaving his zone. He passed off his man too early and gambled, but it paid off. If Watson throws that ball up the seam, it's a big gain. But that's where the disguise came into play. If Watson was able to read the zone coverage, he would've been more likely to watch for the seam route.

But QBs are trained to read the safety to determine what they are doing back there. They are already doing that post snap. This takes a fairly reliable pre-snap read and throws it out the window. It also ducks with the Chiefs even more because Mahomes depends on Reid feeding him the read on the defense pre-snap so he doesn’t have to do as much processing. So add the pressure of the divisional round then add that he won’t get as much help from the sideline. I like our chances.

Only if you know they are going to do it. You would have to find a tell. Not going to do that in a week. I don’t know how you would tell they are going to do this. WRs would have to react mid play and the QB would have to know exactly how the receivers will react. Or you could just keep running someone up the seam and hope you catch them doing it. I don’t really see any downside to it.

Watson just isn’t that good at reading defenses yet.

It's been covered I'm sure, but I kinda hope it snows. I don't think that KC will be half as good in bad weather or a snow globe

It's already snowing in Kansas City and the forecast shows snow through the game tomorrow according to the Weather Channel.

I'll be surprised if KC scores less than 30.

The D hasn't seen anything like this pretty much all year.

We need to keep them about a TD below their average and score a TD above our average. I think we can do both. Weather permitting, should see a decent amount of scoring.

Yep. I have a feeling the colts will have to put up high 30’s to win

I see the final score as 38-35, with AV kicking the winner in the snow as time runs out.