Film room for the second time this week. Looking at one of my favorite, albeit difficult to articulate, concepts. Pattern reading is a concept I’ve mentioned and broken down before and over the summer, I’ve been attempting to learn a little more.
Like a matchup zone in basketball, there is no pre-snap, definite assignment of who each defender will be responsible for. Instead, the responsibility is created based off of the offense’s route concept. That’s the basic, overall definition, and obviously can get a lot more complicated. It requires football players with a high IQ. If one person fails in their assignment, everyone fails, and the defense is going to allow a big play.