You need to be able to disguise your pass coverage if you plan on having a successful attack against your opponent’s offense. We don’t want the offense to be able to pre-read our defensive coverage and determine if we are in man or zone. We also need to be able to hide if we are in press coverage or not. This year in Madden 09, we can call defenses that have our men in press coverage without having to call press. This is like an auto delay bump-n-run. We will take a look at disguising coverage in general by going over some things we noticed that defensive players do when in man or zone coverage, and finding ways to use those tells to confuse our opponent’s pre-read. 

Nickel Normal Quarter Half

The first defense we’ll look at is the Nickel Normal Quarter Half versus the Gun Doubles Slants. This is always one of the first defenses that we use because it is half man, half zone, and normally makes it hard for the offense to pre-read our pass coverage.

When the offense comes out they are pre-reading man coverage. We’re saying this because when in man coverage, your secondary and even linebackers will not move around constantly as they do when in zone. So if the offensive player sees this and thinks he can run a two receiver combo to the twins side designed to beat man, then they are actually playing to the strength of our defense.

Here is one thing that will really throw off the offense. If they motion the tight end out, normally the defender covering him in man coverage will align on the outside of him. When the defender lines up on the tight end, then that means we are in zone coverage. This is just a simple way we can make the offensive player overthink and get uncomfortable with their reads, and hopefully make a bad decision because of it.

Nickel Normal Cover 3

Now we are going to move on to the Nickel Normal Cover 3 versus the Gun Doubles Drag Under.

In the screenshot, we are in all zone coverage, and you can see our defenders moving around before the snap. The safeties and corners are walking up and back, trying to throw off the read.

When the TE motions out, you can see that the defender stacks head up on him. This tells the offense we are in zone. We just want to make sure you see how the coverage can tip the offense to what we’re doing, and how the Quarter Half really threw this read off.

Dime Normal 2 Man Under

Let’s go to a typical man coverage defense, in the Dime Normal 2 Man Under versus the Gun Doubles Strong Flood.

When the offense comes to the field they see that we are in man coverage.

1. Because our secondary is not moving back and forth.
2. Because the defender playing the tight end is outside shaded.

If we know that the offense is pre-reading man coverage and trying to get reads based off of our defensive alignments, then we can change individual defenders that normally give them their pre-read. In this case, we have changed the dime back to a buzz zone. This will will make him line head up on the tight end.

In doing this article, we figured instead of going with the norm, why not show you how to disguise man or zone coverage based on the little tricks the offense can do to tell if you’re in one or the other. As long as you know what the offense can look for, then we can further play with their minds and keep them confused.