One Does Not Simply Replace Harrison Smith, Part (Cover) 2

This is part two of a three-part series about Harrison Smith, his impact, and how well his likeliest replacements, Jay Ward and Theo Jackson, will be able to fill his shoes. Part one, linked here, was about the basics of safety play, footwork, and tackling angles. Today is about safeties in Cover 2, and part 3 will discuss Quarters.

When discussing safety play, we’ll have to take a certain mentality about risk and reward. If an offensive lineman makes a mistake, the quarterback might still be able to scramble and save the play. If a receiver runs a bad route, someone else can get the target. 

Even defensive linemen or linebackers can err and still make the tackle, just further downfield. Safety errors lead to touchdowns. 

If the safety makes a mistake, it’s a long touchdown. There is no room to leave anything to chance. Safeties have to play it, well, safe, unless they have a reason to believe there are no deep threats. The purest distillation of this is Cover 2.

When the Vikings play Cover 2, or Tampa 2 or any other variation, the defining feature is the safeties’ deep half zones. In true Cover 2, the safeties are responsible for everything on their side of the ball that goes deep. Because they’re the only defenders playing anything deep, they need a lot of depth. Any clear-out route, post, or anything else deep is a touchdown if they let anyone get behind them.

For this reason, safeties are required to backpedal in Cover 2. Remember from part one, the backpedal is the most conservative footwork to select. But the play won’t end once you decide to back up some more — safeties have to decide when to break out of that backpedal and play a route.

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This is where defensive minds diverge. Some playbooks demand that safeties get more and more and more depth to guarantee that nothing can be completed behind the defense, breaking only when the ball is thrown. Some ask safeties to get more into the fray and allow them to break before the ball is thrown.

Flores, unsurprisingly, opts for the latter aggressive option. 

As such, Cover 2 exposes the general strategy and mentality of a given defensive back. Do you play it fast and loose, or lean more conservative? For the best safeties, the answer lies in the routes.

Here’s a great example. The Vikings are in Tampa 2, which encourages both safeties to widen out a bit. After all, there is a zone in the deep middle that they don’t have to worry about.

Theo Jackson on the bottom gets a different challenge than Josh Metellus, at the top. Jackson’s on the strong side, meaning more passing threats. Both Coleston Loveland and DJ Moore run aggressive vertical stems. So Jackson has to backpedal.

Conversely, Metellus doesn’t get any vertical threats to his side - the only eligible receiver over there is Cole Kmet, who stays in the flat. So Metellus can break the rule and avoid the backpedal in Cover 2.

This allows Metellus to lurk underneath the deep curl to DJ Moore. Caleb Williams doesn’t like it and checks down.

What he doesn’t see is how open Loveland was. Theo Jackson backpedals very aggressively, and justifiably so with two vertical routes. But one of those breaks off in the middle of the field, and the other is a tight end. Jackson backpedals so far that he’s unable to break on a theoretical 20-yard pass to Loveland.

Does Jackson really need to play that conservatively? Should he be worried about getting blurred by TE Coleston Loveland? Put another way, if you’re not defending a 20-yard pass to your side, are you defending the deep half at all? 

Again, this is a philosophical question. Some defensive coaches would say yes, Jackson should pedal that far and rely on help from his underneath defenders. God forbid you get tricked by a double move for a long touchdown. Some say that underneath help isn’t really there, especially as those players flow to the checkdown. So Jackson is solely responsible for Loveland’s route.