Dude is displaying his small dick syndrome for all the world now.

Heard Zak Keefer on JMV yesterday and he said the thing he hears most commonly from players is that this year shows what a difference coaching makes.

Is there a ColtFreaks corollary to Godwin's Law whereby the longer a thread goes, it becomes increasingly certain that someone will find a way to bait Dam?

If not, there should be.

Yah man, in this case tho, YDFL started it...

It sucks that there are over a dozen or so otherwise good threads that have devolved into this.

Regarding Orlovsky's analysis, I'm surprised he's never seen it, I am surprised I have never seen it.

It has to involve some pretty significant two-way silent communication and trust... EG, if I follow X motion guy, you have to cover the Y zone... Perhaps it's more like, "if you are in X place when they snap the ball, you are responsible for Y"

I'd love to hear those conversations about how they decide it.

However this CAN'T be the only situation this has happened. An unusual wrinkle to the defense? Sure. A completely unique look that will make Reid's head explode? Can't be.

Can it?

Maybe Orlovsky has never seen it because he was a bad QB and didn't understand what he was seeing when on the field.

I like the tactic but disguising coverage is not new.

It might be relatively new for our defense though, as it takes time for the defenders to learn each zone responsibility since they won't know where they'll end up on the field when their "man" goes in motion.

If it was relatively common, teams wouldn't use motion as much as they do. One of the biggest points of motion, as he points out, is to get an idea of what type of coverage your opponent is running, because that makes the reads for the QB easier. It's also a reason offenses spread the field, they're trying to get as much information on what the defense is doing pre-snap as possible to make finding the open receiver/hole in the zone easier. When you show man and drop into zone or vice versa, it throws everything off for the QB and good things typically happen for the defense.

Disguising coverage isn't new, but it's typically done in the middle of the field. You might put a safety in the box and drop into a 2 deep look, or show a 2 deep look, then drop into a cover 3 with your safeties with a corner covering one of the flats, or show a zone look over the top but play man underneath among many examples of ways that coverages can be disguised. But switching zones by showing man coverage against motion can't be common, because motion is so prevalent.

And you mentioned what has to be the tricky part in this. On the Moore INT play, Kenny Moore had to know Darius Leonard's normal assignment and Leonard had to know Moore's, and they each had to know how to play the other's role, because by Leonard going out to cover the back, which "tipped" man to Watson (because on a normal zone play, Moore would've gone out to cover the zone), they essentially switched zone assignments. I don't think that's common in the NFL. I don't know if it's unique, but it's definitely not something done very often by NFL defenses.

It was the combination of 1) following a man in motion and 2) leaving a LB on a RB split wide. #2 in particular is rare enough, but doing them both together?

I have no idea how often defenses "fake it" vs the guy in motion to trick the defenses.

But its yet another example where the Colts never did this before under previous coaching and are doing it now with good results

You see the same thing with the blitzes. We used to see this all the time against Manning with good defenses, line up LBers or secondary up on the DL like they were blitzing and then dropping back in coverage to try and confuse him on the play call. The Colts are now doing this often as well. Sometimes they do blitz, sometimes they don't

Disguising coverage isn’t new, but that is usually involving the oline and trying to figure out who is rushing the passer. This puts the onus squarely on the QB and WR’s. Wr’s already have to be on the same page as QBs and have a lot more pre read adjustments than they did say 20 years ago. But this is effective because it increases the amount of processing time by the QB. He will likely have to go through his progression, and it does create doubt that he might not be reading the defense correctly. Hence, the QB needs to hold the ball a little longer allowing the pass rush a better opportunity.

I’m kind of surprised no one has done this before. I always thought the motion man was such an easy tell. Hell I do it almost every play in Madden to see the defense. I have not seen a defense motion their players to match the offense then be able to drop into an effective zone. I expect this will take off in the off season and we will see it a lot next year. It’s a copycat league.