Prisco: Manning will be "licking his chops" to face Cover 3

Article/video link, with quote at 4:43 and relative context at 4:16.

Pete Prisco's rationale - as well as that of Chad Johnson - is that Seattle's not exotic enough to stop Manning with their secondary formations, amongst other points I won't spoil here.

Maybe so. Maybe not. I think he's selling Seattle's historically good secondary as being exactly the sum of their Cover 3 parts. I want to point out that Prisco's not just spouting off here; he backs up what he says to a degree. His rationale is that one safety deep is not going to be as effective as two against Manning, even when it means ceding the ground game to Moreno/Bell.

I don't want this to turn into another boring "bash the sportswriter" thread - purposeful teaser title aside - but I would like to read your opinions on the potential strengths and weaknesses of our Cover 3 vis-à-vis Manning.

Matt Hasselbeck said this morning that this actually favored Seattle. He can't make any adjustments at the line, because Seattle doesn't run anything exotic. For the most part, you know what coverage they're in, and it's up to you to beat it. All that "Omaha" nonsense isn't going to help him on Sunday.

He will be licking his wounds is more correct.

I think Earl Thomas is licking his chops at Manning's perception that he can exploit the Cover 3 more than anything. ET's been largely quiet as of late because no one is testing him. I see ET having a big game Sunday.

I don't buy into the concept that you have to be exotic with coverages with Manning to be effective. Manning has seen and beat everything, you're not going to fool him. What you can do is outplay him or his receivers though. Line up and dominate your one on one matchups, that's our strength and that will determine the outcome of this game.

Really? I would think not being exotic would actually be helpful. In the end it will come down to pressure, if we let manning sit back and throw it doesn't matter how "exotic we are"

Every QB in the last two years knew what we were going to do defensively going into the game. And more often then not they came out of the game with a loss.

Good QBs like Brady, Rodgers, Romo, Eli, Brees couldn’t do much against a defense plan they knew was coming.

It's all about execution folks. If our DBs cover well (execute), we force him to check down and then it's all about limiting YAC. I am confident our D will do this.

Not sure what Prisco's smoking, but the teams that have given Manning fits are not the teams that run exotic schemes or try and win the Omaha war of cracking Peyton's complicated play changes and formations.

The teams that have crushed Manning are teams that control the ball on offense and bully his receivers with press cover and physicality to get them off their timing. The Chargers did that this year, and Falcons did that last year...........and I expect us to do it in six days.

The in 2007 Giants were not exotic enough to stop the high-powered Dallas offense in the postseason, then not tough enough in Lambeau, then again, not exotic enough to slow down Tom Terrific and the undefeated Pats.

Great defense doesn't have to be exotic. This isn't a freaking beauty contest.

A true cover 3 has specific zone that are "mostly" open, with the Seahawks running an hybrid and the speed of our safeties those specific zones are not open and their are floating zones that Manning will have to identify on the fly. the one place where the Hawks will be suseptible in my opinion is when the Broncos stack three. If the hawks abandon the run and fill the stacked side the hawks are really weak against (I mean extremely) a run play off the opposite edge, if the hawks play the modified 3 then one of those stacked receviers will be open for a 5-8 yard gain and have the ability to run after the catch with the other WR's blocking. Cam will be able to blow this up but the Hawks will have to be perfect on it each time.

I would expect us to be in nickel as the base defense anyway. It's silly to think we'll have the same personnel for Denver as we did for Arizona or San Fransisco.

DavidSeven":acciolzs said:

Matt Hasselbeck said this morning that this actually favored Seattle. He can't make any adjustments at the line, because Seattle doesn't run anything exotic. For the most part, you know what coverage they're in, and it's up to you to beat it. All that "Omaha" nonsense isn't going to help him on Sunday.

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I heard this and I agree with it. Teams that rely on exotic defenses and exotic coverages generally count on confusing the offenses either in part or in whole and thus generating mistakes in rushes or mismatches in coverages or even blown coverages, or all the above. Peyton Manning DOES eat exotic defenss for breakfast because he's really seen it all, and can exploit them ruthlessly. That's because of his almost maniacal attention to detail.

By contrast Seattle's defense isn't exotic at all. Seattle uses unusual coverages relying on the strength of their back-end (as Hass alluded to in the red zone), but there's nothing sneaky or unusual about it. That diminishes the advantage Peyton can get from microanalyzing the defense. To be sure, Peyton will get the best out of his offense against our defense, but that won't get him nearly as much as vs teams that rely on trickery. Peyton and his offense isn't going to be able to trick anyone. It'll be match vs matchup and may the best unit win.

Couple thoughts...

a) Prisco is an idiot. He's an emotional and biased guy, who sees what he wants to see.

b) Saying the Hawks run a Cover 3 is a gross simplification of the system.

c) Being Vanilla, and being dominant doing so, is so much more effective against a seasoned/smart QB like Peyton. A loose analogy is the little league pitcher who drops down and throws sidearm on every 0-2 count. Everybody knows it is coming and the smart ones know it's going to be a ball 99% of the time. Being exotic can actually be the kiss of death against guys who know what they are doing. The whole point of being "exotic" is to create confusion and a sense of panic. If a QB doesn't panic, then all of a sudden your "exotic" look is full of holes and can be taken advantage of. It's one thing to create a frenzy with a young QB, it's entirely different to do that to the best QB of all time, who thrives on taking advantage of the weakness the Defense gives.

A some have said, chalking up anything to scheme issues is beside the point.

Seattle's use of press cover 3 is pretty unusual when compared to the rest of the league, but we can go to cover 1 with the same look. There are plenty changeups we can do, like drop a lineman into middle coverage like we did vs the Saints. And change it up a bit from time to time, the Chancellor pick of Kaepernick was a changeup on standard cover 3. That hole in the cover 3 zone over on the left side was the Niners bail out and go to play, at least twice we schemed to put a second player under that hole and force a difficult throw over that guy. In the preseason, Manning went after that hole to attack Browner in his cover 3 bail, and no doubt there will be some timing patterns to do the same this time. With Mannings limited arm, I doubt we see that throw from the right hash, and I expect we will be plenty aware of putting a guy under that route when the Broncos are on the left hash.

kjreid":26slulug said:

A true cover 3 has specific zone that are "mostly" open, with the Seahawks running an hybrid and the speed of our safeties those specific zones are not open and their are floating zones that Manning will have to identify on the fly. the one place where the Hawks will be suseptible in my opinion is when the Broncos stack three. If the hawks abandon the run and fill the stacked side the hawks are really weak against (I mean extremely) a run play off the opposite edge, if the hawks play the modified 3 then one of those stacked receviers will be open for a 5-8 yard gain and have the ability to run after the catch with the other WR's blocking. Cam will be able to blow this up but the Hawks will have to be perfect on it each time.

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Matt Hasselbeck broke down the cover 3 very well this morning. He said cover three's most susceptible areas are exactly the areas that teams we play try to attack.........which is sideline stuff over the shorter DB or safety (Trufant last year in Atlanta and Kaepernick trying to throw over Thurmond and Kam last week)..........and about 15-20 yards down the seam.

The problem for Manning is these routes take more than his 2-3 second release routes that he likes to run. So if he wants to try to expose that, he's going to have to hold the ball for 3.5-4 seconds, which should allow us to destroy the pocket. Add in a little wind and bad weather and those routes may be VERY hard to complete with any sort of efficiency.

The whole "two weeks to prep" thing is hilarious too..

Last I checked, Peyton had 2 weeks to prep for the Saints in 2009 too.

Peyton is such a great quarterback, top 3 all-time, and I respect the hell out of him. But our defense isn't chop liver either.. and I'm sorry but Denver's defense is NOT good. We WILL score points on Sunday.

I'm not an X's and O's guy but I would think the Seahawks' ability to jam at the line and then having more players shallow and fewer deeper will actually be quite effective against Manning.

I agree with those who say that being exotic is not th way to beat Peyton. When has enyone every beaten Manning because they fooled him? Take away his first look with good coverage and / or knocking his receiver around and then have your pass rush get to him before he can get to his next read. If the pass rush gets there, Manning isn't running away like what the D faced last week. We need the pass rush to be good cause if there are natural holes in the D, Manning will find them.

Hasselbeck":35te6d4x said:

The whole "two weeks to prep" thing is hilarious too..

Last I checked, Peyton had 2 weeks to prep for the Saints in 2009 too.

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He was 1-4 in the divisional round coming off a bye prior to this season. 1-1 in SBs. Not an exactly stellar post-bye playoff record.

Against the Saints, later in the game, Brees found an open spot with WR's running a shallow (7-8 yards) crossing route to the opposite sideline. Our LB couldn't keep up with the WR on that long of a route. It took an incredible pass, and pass protection, but he hit it at least 2 times. I was getting worried that he found a weakness, but it was too little/too late. Kaepernick can't make that pass, but Manning certainly can.