Question about safety blitzes

Every now and then you see a safety blitz that totally catches an offense off guard. It makes me wonder how a defense pulls that off. Normally the safeties are farthest back from the line de scrimmage and are like the last line of defense. If your safeties end up doing too much of the tackling on running plays, you know your run defense stinks. So how do you trick the offense to not account for a safety that ends up coming through to sack your quarterback. It seems tough to pull off since he would look way out of position when the play starts. Plus, there's the risk of screwing up your pass coverage and thus getting burned bad. I've seen teams pull off a safety blitz, but not that often. So it must be tough to pull off. Anyone know more about it?

Reverend Conehead said:

Every now and then you see a safety blitz that totally catches an offense off guard. It makes me wonder how a defense pulls that off. Normally the safeties are farthest back from the line de scrimmage and are like the last line of defense. If your safeties end up doing too much of the tackling on running plays, you know your run defense stinks. So how do you trick the offense to not account for a safety that ends up coming through to sack your quarterback. It seems tough to pull off since he would look way out of position when the play starts. Plus, there's the risk of screwing up your pass coverage and thus getting burned bad. I've seen teams pull off a safety blitz, but not that often. So it must be tough to pull off. Anyone know more about it?

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Sometimes safeties play close to the line of scrimmage, can be disguised or even a delay. Need to watch film on successful safety blitzes to get a better understanding of how it worked since there are many ways to achieve it.

Reverend Conehead said:

Every now and then you see a safety blitz that totally catches an offense off guard. It makes me wonder how a defense pulls that off. Normally the safeties are farthest back from the line de scrimmage and are like the last line of defense. If your safeties end up doing too much of the tackling on running plays, you know your run defense stinks. So how do you trick the offense to not account for a safety that ends up coming through to sack your quarterback. It seems tough to pull off since he would look way out of position when the play starts. Plus, there's the risk of screwing up your pass coverage and thus getting burned bad. I've seen teams pull off a safety blitz, but not that often. So it must be tough to pull off. Anyone know more about it?

Click to expand...

Safety need to pick up snap count clues and the defensive linemen take their blockers outside leaving a gap wide open for the Safety to fly through.

It's called disguising coverages.

As a Dallas fan you arent used to seeing much of that over the last....umm..well, decade.

Garrett insisted on keeping things dumbed down, supposedly for the players, more likely for himself.

fivetwos said:

It's called disguising coverages.

As a Dallas fan you arent used to seeing much of that over the last....umm..well, decade.

Garrett insisted on keeping things dumbed down, supposedly for the players, more likely for himself.

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Yeah Tony learned most of the offensive duties....I mean did Garrett just watch lol.

Basically, the safety needs to line up near or right on the LOS to make it home - he's not running in from 15 yards deep fast enough to make the play - and he either needs to be unaccounted for by the blocking scheme or some blocker needs to screw up their pickup. It's basically a play that needs to work with a free run or it's not going to work at all, so it's best used sparingly.

What teams like the Ravens and Patriots are starting to do is run the zero blitz - no deep safety, send 6 blitzers, trust everyone else in man coverage. Safety blitzes make up a huge part of this, as they are lined up in the box or over the slot, and it's ambiguous if they are going to cover or come on the blitz. The offense has a pretty good idea that 6 guys are going to come, but they don't know from where, and even if they do there's probably going to be a free runner (if a guy stays in to block, the defender covering him is supposed to realize it and come on the blitz). Safeties' speed and credible threat as either a blitzer or a coverage defender goes a long way to making the play work.

The play is designed to make a QB make a read FAST before the free runner gets there, and a lot of young or low-end QBs aren't ready to do that, so they take a sack or make a stupid throw. Then, the counter-punch to that once the offense thinks they can just instantly throw hot is to go to a max-cover look. You rush 3 and just flood the short part of the field with underneath zone coverage, and all of a sudden that hot route has 2 or 3 defenders crawling all over him. It puts offenses in a VERY tough bind, and in a league where free releases and offensive pass interference allows QBs to go from snap to throw in literally about 2.5 seconds, zero blitzes are one of the only ways to generate fast enough pressure to throw the play off.

Tl;dr: Belichick is a genius and shows the rest of the league how to run safety blitzes. He's still leading, everyone else is just following along.

I believe there are indeed some safety blitzes that actually do involve the safety running from all the way deep (10-20 yards) to go get the QB. I think Roy Williams or Ken Hamlin did it before. It takes time, so it's used in situations where you expect the QB to be holding on to the ball for quite some time. Very rarely used though. The advantage is that the QB usually wouldn't suspect a safety that deep to blitz.

These are guys who can cover 25 yards in three seconds, so it can still rattle a QB to see the safety coming at him.

I know one thing ALL qbs hate corner blitzes more than anything. We were eating up AROD the one year with it and then laid off at the end. Thanks Roddle

One thing to add sometimes safety blitzes aren’t called they are an assignment,

Ex: SS has the flat responsibility. If the RB stays in and blocks that flat zone goes away and the safety can get after the QB.

Reverend Conehead said:

Every now and then you see a safety blitz that totally catches an offense off guard. It makes me wonder how a defense pulls that off. Normally the safeties are farthest back from the line de scrimmage and are like the last line of defense. If your safeties end up doing too much of the tackling on running plays, you know your run defense stinks. So how do you trick the offense to not account for a safety that ends up coming through to sack your quarterback. It seems tough to pull off since he would look way out of position when the play starts. Plus, there's the risk of screwing up your pass coverage and thus getting burned bad. I've seen teams pull off a safety blitz, but not that often. So it must be tough to pull off. Anyone know more about it?

Click to expand...

Usually its the safety coming up to cover the RB or TE. He wont blitz all the time but he will threaten and show like he is once in a while and does sometime when its called. This is all scheme. Scandrick was great at CB blitz but because he would get there so quick but that was only called about 5-6 times a season.