IF YOU’RE A Denver Broncos fan, feel free to skip straight to the comment section and tell me what and idiot I am, how your team is 4-0 and heading of the playoffs and how you’re going to win the Super Bowl to send Peyton Manning out on a high.
If you would like to understand why the Broncos offence may be built on sand, stick around for the next few hundred words.
On Sunday, the Denver defence stood strong again with Von Miller recovering the football after TJ Ward’s strip sack of Teddy Bridgewater ended the game as the Vikings attempted a late comeback.
Peyton Manning continues to look a shadow of his former self, completing just 17 of 27 passes for one touchdown and two interceptions, the first of which we’ll look at here as a microcosm of the issues surrounding the 39-year old.
If you missed it Sunday, here’s how it looked on TV:
The Broncos are driving down the field hoping to add more points on the board before the half. Coming out of a time out, just over the half way line and with 32 seconds left, this is a pretty obvious passing situation.
Denver are in their 01 personnel grouping with zero running backs, one tight end (blue) and four wide receivers (red).
The formation they are in is known as ‘Shotgun Empty Trey.’ That simply means the quarterback is lined up in the ‘shotgun’ so, rather than receiving the ball from the centre at the line of scrimmage, he receives it 5-7 yards further back.
Empty refers to the fact there is no running back behind the quarterback while ‘Trey’ can refer to either the fact there are three receivers on one side of the play or — in Gary Kubiak’s zone-blocking scheme — a combo block between the tight-end and tackle.
Pre-snap read defence
The Vikings are in their Cover 4 defence which uses four deep and three shallow defenders to guard particular areas — zones — of the field.
At it’s simplest, the two corner backs are responsible for the two outside quarters of the field, while the two safeties are responsible for the middle two quarters (Robert Blanton #36 is just out of shot). While they defend against the long pass, the three linebackers each cover one-third of the field to defend against short/medium passes.
The problem here is that when Peyton Manning — one of the greatest football minds to ever play the game — came to the line of scrimmage, he looked at the defence and saw man coverage, not Cover 4.
After the snap
To be fair to Manning, Cover 4 has many similar principles to man coverage, but misidentifying the defence is just the one of a number of mistakes he makes on this play.
First, let’s take a look at the routes his four receivers are set to run:
Manning has four passing options on this play with two receivers running deep fades (Emmanuel Sanders #10, Jordan Norwood 11), Demaryius Thomas (#88) running a flat and Andrew Caldwell (#12) running a curl route.
Having misidentified the coverage, Manning then keys in on Cadlwell (red circle) because he believes cornerback Terence Newman (yellow) has blown his coverage and it will be a relatively easy pass in space to his receiver with room to make yards after the catch.
Again, because he’s misread the coverage, Manning has also failed to take into consideration that Vikings’ linebacker Anthony Barr (blue) isn’t tracking Emmanuel Sanders but is actually perfectly playing the ‘slice’ technique.
Knowing he has plenty of defensive back cover behind him, spotting Caldwell’s movement AND keying that Manning is just blatantly staring down the receiver, Barr is quick to jump the curl route and make the interception.
This wasn’t an interception caused by Manning’s inability to throw the ball deep (at least accurately) but despite being a relatively short pass — and under no pressure — look how much the ball struggles to get there:
Manning is almost certainly a first-ballot Hall of Famer but anyone with eyes and even a basic understanding of the game of American football can see that he’s struggling badly this year.
Cover 4 is a pretty basic ‘prevent’ defence, something that teams use a lot near the end of halves so they reduce the risk of giving up a big touchdown, and it’s relatively easy to read by how the secondary lines up — usually you can spot it when the corners are sunk to almost the same depth (10-12 yards deep) as the safeties.
And the problem for the Broncos is that this is Manning’s time of year. Warm weather, defences getting to know each other, etc, usually makes it relatively easy to pick apart.
But if he’s playing this poorly now, what will happen when the cold weather kicks in come playoff time?
Analysis: It's not just arm strength Broncos fans need to worry about when it comes to Manning
IF YOU’RE A Denver Broncos fan, feel free to skip straight to the comment section and tell me what and idiot I am, how your team is 4-0 and heading of the playoffs and how you’re going to win the Super Bowl to send Peyton Manning out on a high.
If you would like to understand why the Broncos offence may be built on sand, stick around for the next few hundred words.
On Sunday, the Denver defence stood strong again with Von Miller recovering the football after TJ Ward’s strip sack of Teddy Bridgewater ended the game as the Vikings attempted a late comeback.
Peyton Manning continues to look a shadow of his former self, completing just 17 of 27 passes for one touchdown and two interceptions, the first of which we’ll look at here as a microcosm of the issues surrounding the 39-year old.
If you missed it Sunday, here’s how it looked on TV:
Pre-snap read offence
The Broncos are driving down the field hoping to add more points on the board before the half. Coming out of a time out, just over the half way line and with 32 seconds left, this is a pretty obvious passing situation.
Denver are in their 01 personnel grouping with zero running backs, one tight end (blue) and four wide receivers (red).
The formation they are in is known as ‘Shotgun Empty Trey.’ That simply means the quarterback is lined up in the ‘shotgun’ so, rather than receiving the ball from the centre at the line of scrimmage, he receives it 5-7 yards further back.
Read more: The42′s introduction to NFL offences
Empty refers to the fact there is no running back behind the quarterback while ‘Trey’ can refer to either the fact there are three receivers on one side of the play or — in Gary Kubiak’s zone-blocking scheme — a combo block between the tight-end and tackle.
Pre-snap read defence
The Vikings are in their Cover 4 defence which uses four deep and three shallow defenders to guard particular areas — zones — of the field.
At it’s simplest, the two corner backs are responsible for the two outside quarters of the field, while the two safeties are responsible for the middle two quarters (Robert Blanton #36 is just out of shot). While they defend against the long pass, the three linebackers each cover one-third of the field to defend against short/medium passes.
Read more: The42′s introduction to NFL defences
The problem here is that when Peyton Manning — one of the greatest football minds to ever play the game — came to the line of scrimmage, he looked at the defence and saw man coverage, not Cover 4.
After the snap
To be fair to Manning, Cover 4 has many similar principles to man coverage, but misidentifying the defence is just the one of a number of mistakes he makes on this play.
First, let’s take a look at the routes his four receivers are set to run:
Manning has four passing options on this play with two receivers running deep fades (Emmanuel Sanders #10, Jordan Norwood 11), Demaryius Thomas (#88) running a flat and Andrew Caldwell (#12) running a curl route.
Having misidentified the coverage, Manning then keys in on Cadlwell (red circle) because he believes cornerback Terence Newman (yellow) has blown his coverage and it will be a relatively easy pass in space to his receiver with room to make yards after the catch.
Again, because he’s misread the coverage, Manning has also failed to take into consideration that Vikings’ linebacker Anthony Barr (blue) isn’t tracking Emmanuel Sanders but is actually perfectly playing the ‘slice’ technique.
Knowing he has plenty of defensive back cover behind him, spotting Caldwell’s movement AND keying that Manning is just blatantly staring down the receiver, Barr is quick to jump the curl route and make the interception.
Conclusion
This wasn’t an interception caused by Manning’s inability to throw the ball deep (at least accurately) but despite being a relatively short pass — and under no pressure — look how much the ball struggles to get there:
Not great is it?
Manning is almost certainly a first-ballot Hall of Famer but anyone with eyes and even a basic understanding of the game of American football can see that he’s struggling badly this year.
Cover 4 is a pretty basic ‘prevent’ defence, something that teams use a lot near the end of halves so they reduce the risk of giving up a big touchdown, and it’s relatively easy to read by how the secondary lines up — usually you can spot it when the corners are sunk to almost the same depth (10-12 yards deep) as the safeties.
And the problem for the Broncos is that this is Manning’s time of year. Warm weather, defences getting to know each other, etc, usually makes it relatively easy to pick apart.
But if he’s playing this poorly now, what will happen when the cold weather kicks in come playoff time?
Read more of our Coaches Film series
A quarter of the way through the season, who is the NFL’s best team?
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
American Football Anthony Barr Coaches Film Denver Broncos Minessota Vikings NFL Petyon Manning US sports