Cover-1 Beaters

Beating man coverage is critical to winning in the NFL. Often, it comes down to a receiver’s ability to win 1-on-1 matchups and the quarterback’s ability to make accurate throws into tight spaces. However, there are also a number of ways to create open receivers with scheme.

In traditional cover-1 (man-free), there are always two defenders in the middle of the field, one deep and one underneath. Defenses will often mix up how they get to and play this look. Sometimes a safety will drop into the middle of the field. Sometimes it will be a linebacker. Either way, most coverage defenders on the field will play to their help inside (depending on the alignment of the offense, of course).

So the key for the offense is to remove, manipulate, or put those help defenders in the middle of the field into conflict. Below are some of our favorite examples of how teams around the NFL have done this.

This first play was a 4th-and-3 from the Packers’ blowout win over the Bears in Week 1 of the 2023 season.

This was a high probability man-coverage situation. From the way the Bears matched up pre-snap to the Packers’ 3x1 formation, they appeared to be in cover-1 with the highlighted safety and linebacker as the two inside help defenders:

The way Matt LaFleur would put the underneath hole defender (linebacker Tremaine Edmunds) into conflict was a thing of beauty.