Defense Help Please...

Quick question - should my top corner be in the slot under the specialist section in the lineup screen or no? I had Bly there and he was invisible so I took him out and put 87 T. White.

It's good to know the weaknesses of the coverages. I also use the NE defensive playbook, btw. But generally; Cover 3 weakness is the seams - fly patters out of the slot. Cover 2 defense weakness is the sideline fly route or the post over the middle, Cover 4 weakness is the flats (and running up the gut). Man coverage is weak against deep crossers, motioned slants (against press), and drag routes. I also notice a lot of people are running man out of dime/quarter sets which you can absolutely run up the gut against.

Also, levels concepts can really cause Zone coverages trouble if the offensive player can read the field and hit someone in-between the zones.

What I enjoy about this year's game is; all of those weaknesses feel true-to-form. Last year, with the OP user + lurkers and enforcers, the User in the center of the field could eliminate so many of those inherent weaknesses in zone coverages, that a cover 2 drop or cover 3 sky could take away almost anything (other than roll-out corners with an escape artist QB).

It's always important to stockpile good corners. It's always important to have team speed on defense. But right now, more than ever, I think it's good to learn where coverages are weak, exploit them on offense, and understand that on defense. You're far better off, in the long run, understanding the concepts and mixing it up, then going the lazy way and spamming one or two defenses, hoping that things go well. So often, if you mix things up on D, your opponent will make a bad read and throw a terrible interception because he anticipated something else.

Using a good defensive playbook, I'm using the same Nickel 335 cover 2 man, probably like a fair few others.

With 89 Williams, 89 Bly and 89 Woodson I press everything whilst usering Fletcher at MLB. By no means am I good at this game, just rarther exploiting the speedy high overall man coverage early game, but it works for me.