Coach ,

Teaching a mix of interchangeable parts out of a similar look can make a defense become harder to diagnose and pick apart. That’s exactly what Cody Alexander has put together in his defense. He’s become known as one of the best teachers of quarters coverage and its variations.

Coach Alexander believes in creating a system in which the parts become interchangeable to create different split coverages.  That begins with teaching three different coverages:

Sky - Quarters

Cloud - Cover 2

Mix - Man

In a two-high structure, these can be run independently of each other which cuts down on communication and teaching.

In the example below, Sky and Cloud are paired together to create a quarter-quarter-half coverage. It’s a coverage that Kent State CB Coach Jason Makrinos favored as an RPO stopper while he was the DC at Findlay. See “Defending RPO with Quarter-Quarter Half” here. Makrinos likes it because it allows the defense to play the run fit of Cover 3 (a plus one in the box), but it is still a split safety coverage in which he can manipulate how he plays his triangles to the field and boundary.

It all comes down to understanding how each side works as Alexander diagrams here:

It gives the defense the ability to match verticals as well as play the floods of the outside quarter of the field. The defense has players for the flat, the intermediate, and the vertical.

Cloud Coverage Advantages

• Takes away the horizontal (out) routes
• Gives aggressive play on the edge
• Great vs switch and rubs
• Answer to a tighter WR split
• Natural RPO killer

Alexander uses tags to give the cloud coverage even more flexibility:

• Squat - no cover zone under 5 yards
• Press - press from outside in and funnel to help with eyes on #2
• Sticks - Bail and squat at the sticks (good situational)
• Trap/Tampa - Hard CB moves inside on snap

He illustrates the Cover 2 Read (Cloud) Coverage in this demo in practice:

Coach Alexander covers this and more in his course “Teaching Quarters: 2-Read (Palms/Cloud).”  The goal of this clinic is to give you a foundational knowledge of the scheme so that you can implement it within your program.

Having multiple tools within a teaching framework that builds multiple tools is an effective way to put together the back end of the defense and stay a step ahead of today’s dynamic offenses.

Always be growing!

Coach Grabowski