Can the Tampa 2 Become the Tennessee 2?

PART I: What is the Tampa 2?

The hiring of Lane Kiffin at the University of Tennessee raised many questions: Could a guy that young and with that little experience cut it in the SEC? Why was UT picking up crazy Al Davis’ castoffs? Just how homoerotic could a football team’s promos be (I know Matt just linked to that, but, in my opinion, it simply cannot be mocked enough)?

One thing, however, that seemed certain from the very beginning was that defense wouldn’t be a problem. After all, legendary defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin, father of the new HC, would be at the helm, automatically giving the Vols the best defensive coaching in football, right?

While it’s certainly true that Monte Kiffin is one of the most respected defensive minds in professional football, it is not often mentioned that he has not coached in the college ranks in 27 years. Well, college offenses have changed just a bit in that time and, while they were changing, Monte was in the NFL learning how to stop the offenses that are run there. He did most of that learning at the feet of Tony Dungy – first as a LB coach for the Minnesota Vikings and then as Dungy’s DC in Tampa – and the defense he learned (and, by most accounts, mastered) was the Tampa 2. So, now that he’s brought his talents to the SEC, the questions are: (1) what is the Tampa 2, (2) does Kiffin have the personnel at UT to run it and (3) how will it fare against the modern college offenses he will be facing in the SEC? Hopefully, this 3-part series will provide some insight into these questions.

First things first: what is a Tampa 2 defense? Simply put, the Tampa 2 is a zone-coverage defense based on the principles of the traditional Cover 2 defense, but with a few tweaks. Obviously, that begs the question, what is a Cover 2 defense? To put it as simply as possible, a Cover 2 defense is one where the safeties are responsible all of the deep coverage, with each safety being responsible half of the field, while the remaining defenders are responsible for all the underneath coverage. Clear enough? No? Let’s see if this picture makes things clearer (warning: any mocking of my PowerPoint skills will not be appreciated):


See, it’s just how I described. The two safeties divide the deep coverage between them, leaving the cornerbacks to cover the shallow to intermediate, sideline-to-hash zones while the linebackers cover their respective underneath zones. The Cover 2 is an incredibly popular look on all levels of football (even my high school team ran it…poorly). It’s a fine, time-tested defense. It’s not without its faults, though. Chief among them: it’s very vulnerable to a deep passing threat. It makes sense, really. After all, they only have 2 guys covering the entirety of the deep passing zone. If an offense can get three guys deep (while still keeping the cornerbacks in their intermediate zones), those safeties are screwed. So, what to do? Dungy’s* answer was to create the Tampa 2.

As I said earlier, the Tampa 2 is just a slightly tweaked version of the Cover 2. What’s the tweak? See if you can tell:

Give up? Okay, I’ll tell you. Instead of leaving the deep coverage entirely up to the two safeties, the Tampa 2 tasks the MLB with retreating to the deep middle, so he can relieve the safeties of having the cover that section of the field. This allows the Tampa 2 to be much better equipped to face a multiple-receiver deep passing play than the base Cover 2, so you can see why NFL teams have become so fond of this defense.

Now that we know a little bit about what the Tampa 2 defense is, we will now turn to the remaining questions: Do the Vols have the players to run it and how will the Tampa 2 match up against the modern college offenses? Stay tuned to http://www.seccrush.com where I'll answer each of those questions in my next posts.

* Almost everyone agrees that Dungy did not create the Tampa 2 defense on his own, but rather adapted it largely from the scheme run by the 1970's Steel Curtain defenses he was a small part of.