As your high school football teams lead cornerback, you\’ve been dreading this moment and at the same time looking forward to the challenge. As a cornerback, you don\’t usually get too much attention unless something go wrong since interceptions are pretty rare. It\’s a low reward position for most of the time. This week\’s a little different and you\’re getting all kinds of attention in the team meeting prior to this week\’s prep football matchup. They have this star receiver on their team who\’s suppose to go Division 1, full-ride. The quarterback\’s good enough to put the ball in his general vicinity and at 6\’4\”, 215, he has a way of getting the ball. Running a 4.4 50 yard dash doesn\’t hurt either. The coaches are all giving a mixture of warnings and thin-veiled support. They don\’t think you\’re really up to it and who would be. This is high school football after all. Looks like we\’ll be running a lot of Cover 3.

When you\’re staring across the field at a high school receiver, it\’s nice to know you\’ve got back up. Cover 3 is a defensive set for the defensive backs that splits the backfield up into zones…roughly 3 of them. Typically, each corner takes the outside zones where a receiver is usually lined up while the strong and free safety cover the middle zone. The strong safety will be closer to the line which make sense since he has general responsibility for the tight end who typically resides on the line. The free safety generally is deeper in that middle pocket and plays almost as a defender of last resort. He not only covers the back end of the middle zone but will give support to the corner backs for the deep ball. Generally speaking, the free safety has the entire width of the field extending back from the corners/strong safety back to the end zone if need be. It\’s a lot of territory to cover in a Cover 3 situation.

So why would a high school defense run a cover 3 for the defensive backs? It\’s mainly a defense aimed at controlling the passing game. If you\’re facing a strong high school passing offense as in the situation listed below, you want to make sure to avoid the long passes and the touch downs that can result. In a Cover 3 set, the cornerbacks are actually back off the ball by about 10 yards. This gives up the small passes out to the flats but all helps to prevent a receiver getting back behind the cornerback for a long pass down the sideline. Of course, the running game has a little more room to operate but you can\’t take too many long passes down the sidelines with a dominant receiver/quarterback combination and hope to win the game.

Cover 3 also has it\’s disadvantages aside from giving up the short pass and opening up the field for the running game. A good high school offense will run crossing patterns which can cause mistakes and miscommunications as a receiver crosses into another defender\’s zone or worse yet, double with another receiver in the same zone. To some extent, you always have the free safety to help in this situation but with the speed of high school football, any seam or 5-10 lag on the field will be taken advantage of. Cover 3 is insurance against the long pass but everything comes at a price.

Author Bio: Dennis Jarvis writes about the world of Prep Sports including high school sports such as high school football, basketball, and baseball.

Category: Sports
Keywords: cover 3, high school football, prep football, prep sports, high school sports, defensive back