Zone Defense in American Football

Zone Defense In American Football

Zone coverage, (also referred to as a zone defense) is a defense scheme in American and Canadian football used to protect against the pass.

Zone coverage schemes require the linebackers and defensive backs to work together to cover certain areas of the field, making it difficult for the opposing quarterback to complete passes. Zone defenses will generally require linebackers to cover the short and midrange area in the middle of the field, in front of the safeties. In the case where one or two linebackers blitz, the remaining linebacker(s) expands his zone to cover the zone responsibilities of the vacating linebacker(s). Often, blitzing will leave larger holes in the pass defense, but it is a gamble the defensive coordinator wants to make to pressure the quarterback into a poor decision and hopefully an interception or at least an incompletion.

Read more about Zone Defense In American Football:  Coverage Shells

Famous quotes containing the words zone, defense, american and/or football:

    Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.
    Louis Aragon (1897–1982)

    I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
    Barry Goldwater (b. 1909)

    You’re contending with a genius, D.J. is his name, only American alive who could outtalk Cassius Clay, that’s lip.
    Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

    In this dream that dogs me I am part
    Of a silent crowd walking under a wall,
    Leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit,
    All moving the same way.
    Philip Larkin (1922–1986)