Commanders Scheme Breakdown: Quarters Coverage
Quarters coverage is becoming more and more prevalent in the NFL as defenses attempt to combat the passing nature of the modern NFL offense. The Washington Commanders are one of the teams that have leaned heavily into the quarters coverage trend, so you’ll probably have heard lots of analysts talk about it since Ron Rivera took over in Washington. But what exactly is quarters coverage? Let’s take a closer look.
At its core quarters coverage, also known as Cover 4, is a coverage system that splits the deep part of the field into quarters. In its most basic form, the two deep safeties will account for the two inside quarters while the two outside cornerbacks will cover the outside deep quarters. The remaining three defenders will then split the underneath parts of the field into thirds.
Here’s an example of the Commanders running a basic form of quarters coverage. The Packers align in an even formation with a tight end and receiver to either side of the line. This means Washington can just play a basic quarters coverage system without having to worry about one side being overloaded at the snap. You can see how the two deep safeties, Bobby McCain and Darrick Forrest, start deep and stay deep as they play the two inside quarters. They’re joined by the two outside corners that sink back deep to play their outside quarters. That leaves linebackers Jamin Davis and Cole Holcomb, along with Kam Curl, to play the three underneath roles.
While the coverage starts off looking the same, it doesn’t always play out the same because the coverage responsibilities change depending on the routes that are run. You can see at the top of the screen, Bobby McCain gains a lot more depth than Darrick Forrest does. This is because to his side of the field there is a vertical threat, forcing him to work deeper while the outside receiver on Forrest’s side ran a crossing route immediately, causing Forrest to work much shallower.
To play quarters coverage well, you need each player on the same page and playing with good communication. That can be seen in this play. The receiver to the left of the formation starts off as the top threat to cornerback Kendall Fuller on that side. However, he runs a shallow crossing route, which would be nearly impossible for Fuller to cover given his deep outside quarter responsibility. So he makes a call to Forrest to try and cut the crosser. You can see Forrest starts to break down on the route, however, he then spots the tight end from the other side of the field spotting up over the middle.
The shallow cross call from Fuller makes its way all the way across the field to Kam Curl, who peels off the tight end and breaks down on the shallow cross from the opposite side of the field. Holcomb and Forrest then adjust their coverage to take away the tight end, making sure Curl is free to go cover the shallow cross. All of this good communication, along with some nice pass rush pressure up front, forces the quarterback to resort to a quick check down to the running back in the flat. The flats are the weakness of this coverage, which is why you need rangey linebackers like Jamin Davis that can cover ground quickly and then go make the tackle to keep the gain to a minimum and in this case, actually register a loss on the play.
Now that was a basic form of quarters coverage and you can see that even basic quarters coverage requires some good communication to help pass off routes and make sure everything is picked up. It’s also pretty rare that teams that play lots of quarters get to run it as simply as that. Changes in personnel groups, formations and motions can force the defense to make a check or adjustment to the coverage which can have a pretty big impact on what the coverage might look like.
For example, most offenses like to try and use trips formations against teams that run quarters coverage to try and overload one side of the field, so quarters teams will have to have multiple checks built into the coverage so that when it’s called and the offense uses a trips formation, they automatically know to check into the different variation of quarters to help combat that look.
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