What beats zone coverage in 5v5 flag football?
Flood one side. With four defenders covering areas, there are only four areas, and a 5v5 field is wider than four players can honestly cover. Sending three receivers to one side at three different depths leaves one defender responsible for two of them, and the throw goes to whichever one he did not take.
Three answers, in the order to try them
- Start here
Flood
Start here
Three receivers, three depths, one sideline. With four eligible receivers against four defenders, committing three to one side means that side is outnumbered before the snap. The quarterback reads the deepest defender and throws underneath him.
- If they will not commit
All Hitches
If they will not commit
Against a zone that refuses to chase, stop chasing back. Every receiver settles in a window at the same depth so there is no decision to make: throw to whoever is standing alone, which at five a side is always somebody.
- If they sink under the deep routes
Smash
If they sink under the deep routes
A 5v5 zone that drops hard has nothing left underneath. The hitch sits in front of the dropping defender and the corner route goes over the top of him, so whichever he takes is the wrong one.
What changes at this size
Four defenders cannot cover this field
Zone at 5v5 is not a shell, it is four players standing in four places and hoping. There is no deep middle player, no rotation and no pattern matching, because there is nobody spare to do any of it. That makes zone the softer of the two coverages you will face at this size, which is the opposite of how it works at eleven a side. The practical consequence is that you beat it with arithmetic rather than with route running: put more receivers on one side than they have defenders for, and somebody is uncovered before anybody has run a good route. It also means the underneath is always open. A 5v5 zone that drops to take your deep routes away has left nothing in front, and the five-yard throw is free every single time.
When not to call it
Against man coverage
All three of these ask a defender to choose between two receivers, and a man defender never has to choose. If a defender follows your motion across the formation, go to the man page.
When your quarterback cannot see the whole field
Flood in particular is a read of the deepest defender, not a pre-snap pick. With a young quarterback, All Hitches is the safer version of the same idea because it removes the read entirely.
Take it to your team
Draw your plays in the free play designer, collect them in the flag football playbook builder, and print play cards so every player knows them come Saturday.
Draw any of these in about a minute
Open the designer, change the routes, save it to your playbook.
Open the designerRelated questions
What beats zone coverage in 5v5 flag football?
Related guides
Coach Ray Carroll
Coaches 5v5 flag football from kindergarten through 7th grade in San Mateo and San Carlos, California, and built RC Football to design, teach and print the plays his own teams run.