The one takeaway from the Nebraska game that isn't crushing dominance was Michigan's zone defense on in-breaking routes (slants/digs) needed a lot of cleanup. What went wrong wasn't hard to figure out, but there's some understandable confusion I think about how, or in some cases whether, it was supposed to go right. ZONE REFRESHER Cover 3 at its core has three deep zones, two Curl/Flat zones, and then you can vary how many players you want to drop into Hole zones. Drawing circles is a bad way to represent zones, however, because it makes it seem like defenders are tasked with sitting in the middle of their circles and projecting strength over their fiefdoms. We call that "covering grass." You do that, you end up like Stephen of Blois with rebellions springing up everywhere around you. You have to play zone defense with the constant movement of a Henry Plantagenet: anticipating trouble, heading it off, harrying it out of your kingdom, then snapping quickly to stop the next threat before it gets out of hand. The route you take to your zone is important too, because you can't give receivers the run of the roads. Note how the paths of the SS and Nickel will have them above the Y and the H respectively, while the CBs would be escorting the outside receivers to deep 1/3 zones. Those defenders are heading elsewhere, but for the duration of a quick seam they're right in the way. That takes care of the seams and fly routes, but there are a few known vulnerabilities where offenses know you can squeeze a ball between the zones. [After THE JUMP: Feeling attacked]