Reading the "square" to determine coverage

I didn't invent this, but thought I'd pass it along. Sorry that I don't have any diagrams, those would help. From what I remember a lot of this came from Lindy Infante, but it's been used by lots of great passing coaches for a long time. This deescription is close to what I've always taught:

POST-SNAP READS (“READING THE SQUARE”):

The most important area for determining secondary coverages is the middle of the field about 15 to 25 yards deep and about 2 yards inside of each hash. We call this area the “square”.

We normally read the “square” in our drop back passing game. Reading the “square” becomes necessary when it is impossible to determine what the coverage they are in before the snap or to make sure of secondary coverage after the snap.

In reading the “square” the QB simply looks down the middle of the field. He should not focus on either Safety but see them both in his peripheral vision.

A) If neither Safety shows up in the “square”, and both are deep, it will indicate a form of Cover 2. A quick check of Corner alignment and play will indicate whether it is a 2/Man or 2/Zone. If neither Safety shows up in the “square” and both are shallow, it will indicate a Cover 0 (blitz look).

B) If the Strong Safety shows up in the “square”, this will indicate a Cover 3 rolled weak or possibly a Cover 1.

C) If the Weak Safety shows up in the “square”, this will indicate a strong side coverage. It could be a Cover 3 or a Cover 1. If the coverage is Cover 3, it could be a Cover 3/Sky (Safety), or a Cover 3/Cloud (Corner), depending on who has the short zone.

NOTE: When either of the Safeties shows up in the “square”, the best percentage area to throw the ball in is the side that he came from! If NEITHER of the Safeties show up in the “square” – throwing the ball into the “square” is a high percentage throw.

Should you be worried about avian flu?

Richard Posner says yes:

The world in general and the United States in particular are unprepared for a flu pandemic. Although the current strain of avian flu was discovered eight years ago, vaccine development and production are just beginning, along with stockpiling of Tamiflu. Apparently there is at present only enough vaccine for 1 percent of the U.S. population. Roche has only a limited capacity for producing Tamiflu and, as mentioned, is reluctant to license other pharmaceutical firms to produce the vaccine. The President recently announced a $7.1 billion program for improving the nation's defenses against flu pandemics, but it will take years for the program to yield substantial protection.

So we are seeing basically a repetition of the planning failures that resulted in the Hurricane Katrina debacle. The history of flu pandemics should have indicated the necessity for measures to assure an adequate response to any new pandemic, but until an unprecedented number of birds had been infected and human beings were dying from the disease, very little was done.

The causes are the familiar ones. People, including policymakers, have grave difficulty taking measures to respond to risks of small or unknown probability. This is partly because there are so many such risks that it is difficult to assess them all, and the lack of solid probability estimates makes prioritizing the risks inescapably arbitrary, and it is partly because politicians have truncated horizons that lead them to focus on immediate threats to the neglect of more remote ones that may be more serious. ("Remote" in the sense that, if the annual probability of some untoward event is low, the event, though it could occur at any time, would be unlikely to occur before most current senior officials leave office.) But by the time a threat becomes immediate, it may be too late to take effective response measures.

There is also a psychological or cognitive impediment--an "imagination cost"--to thinking seriously about risks with which there is little recent experience. Wishful thinking plays a role too. There is the inverse Chicken Little problem: the illogical reaction that because the swine-flu pandemic never materialized, no flu pandemic will ever materialize. Another example of wishful thinking is the argument that most people afflicted by the Spanish flu in the 1918-1919 pandemic died not of flu, but of bacterial diseases such as pneumonia that the flu made them more vulnerable to. But, first, is is far from clear that "most" died of such diseases, and, second, the current strain of avian flu appears to be more lethal than the Spanish flu. Only about 1 percent of Spanish flu victims died, whereas 50 percent of known human victims of the current avian flu have died. That percentage is probably an overestimate because many of the milder cases may not have been reported or may have been misdiagnosed; but it is unlikely that the true fatality rate is only one-fiftieth of the current reported rate. It is estimated that even a "medium-level" flu pandemic could cause up to 200,000 U.S. deaths and a purely economic impact (that is, ignoring the nonpecuniary cost of death and illness) of more than $150 billion.

Read the rest here.

Zone Blocking

Sometimes we like to make things more complicated than they are. Zone running is a classic example. What is intended as a simple system designed to get combo blocks at the point of attack results in lots of confusion about who to block and where the hole is. To be honest I have gotten scared off by the zone at times, but it is definitely the dominant scheme at this time, and some teams do it better than others. This little blurb is an excellent demystification, particularly since the discussion often veers off into "if there's a 3 and a 1 tech do we "deuce" call on the frontside?" etc. These are valid, but it's good to step back.

There is a common misconception that on zone plays - everybody "zones". Zone plays start out as simple base man on man blocking, and if you are uncovered - you zone with your playside teammate. In a 2 TE Oneback set - it is not unusual for only TWO of the 7 O-Linemen to be zone blocking (say if everybody is covered except for the Center, as example).

When an uncovered man zones - he zones playside. A covered man zones with his backside teammate. Think of it as an inside/out double team.

Makes a lot more sense. Also for an excellent explanation, check out this article from American Footbally Monthly.