In Part 1 we talked about the Vikings building that six man front out of their base 3-4 odd look, and combining it with “hot” or “eyes” coverage. But the question becomes, what happens when teams start to spread out? The Vikings’ answer is to deploy their Nickel package, and at its core it’s still a very similar game plan to their base, just with a slight coverage adjustment. Let’s get into it.
Playing from an Even Front
While we’re going to see a shift from odd to even, the same theory applies, we’ve got to get six defenders to the line of scrimmage to defend the run, and on pass, we’ll find a way to drop extra defenders. Think less “hot” or “eyes” coverage and more fire zone quarters variations.
Here we get a cross dog double A gap pressure from the Vikings, something I’d assume every Defensive Coordinator has somewhere in their playbook. The Vikings build that six defender line of scrimmage, and on pass the two edge players now become the underneath “vision break” zone players with quarters coverage over the top. When this was taught to me, someone called it “spot” coverage, so we’ll go with that for now. The underneath players deter a quick throw, and the quarterback has to scramble away from the rush. And once the QB escapes the pass rush, the vision break players are right there to corral him out of bounds near the original line of scrimmage.
We get linebackers through the B gaps here to build that six man front with hot quarters behind it. This is a great example of how they’re still able to build that 6-1 front and defend the run out of nickel, and the result is another tackle for loss for the Vikings defense.
