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madden 12 coverage

Enhanced Cover 3 Zone Defense

Yesterday we showed you a simple way of getting pressure on opposing quarterbacks.  Today’s free madden-school.com tip goes over how to enhance your zone defenses.  There is so much talk about how effective light blue flat zones are that people forget about the effectiveness of the purple buzz zones.  We are going to demonstrate how the purple buzz zone defends against everything the light blue flat zone does and much more.

Formation: Dollar 3-2-6

Play: Cover 3

Setup:

  1. Hot route both cornerbacks in the light blue flat zones to purple buzz zones

Lets go over this coverage defense in a little more depth…

The first play we demonstrate our modified cover 3 against has flat routes on both sides of the field.

madden 12 coverage

You can see in the pre-play screenshot that it appears that the flat routes should be open for about a 5 yard gain.  (In past versions of madden this would be true)

madden coverage2

However, you can see that our defender in the purple buzz zone still jumps that route and can swat it down or get an interception.

Now we are going to run the exact same defense just this time against extended out routes which would crush the light blue flat zones. 

madden 12 coverages

 You can see that everything is set up the exact same way except this time the offense has changed it’s play to try to beat our cover 3 defense.

 madden 12 interception

 You can see that our defender in the purple buzz zone drops all the way back to the 20 yard line and gets an easy interception.

This whole week we will continue to provide more defensive tips for madden 12, but if you want to instantly get better on defense, make sure to check out the madden-school.com defensive lockdown ebook.

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MaddenPlayer007
MaddenPlayer007
13 years ago

How about if your TE is running a 10 yard out, and your FB is running to the flats.

Which will he go for?

psn:h2yellaboi
psn:h2yellaboi
12 years ago
Reply to  Madden School

hotroute ur receiver to do an out route like u reguraly do then press hotroute again then click the middle of the right analog its called smart route

John
John
13 years ago

How do you do an extended out route on ps3?

TECHNO_NINJA4
TECHNO_NINJA4
13 years ago
Reply to  John

bring up the hot routes, select an out route for the receiver of your choice, then make the same player run a smart route (L3)

reVICKulous
reVICKulous
13 years ago

does this concept work for other formations that run cover 3?

Josh
Josh
13 years ago

I have been wanting to know this as well. I cannot figure it out.

Bobby Willis
Bobby Willis
13 years ago

how do u hot route the cornerbacks to a purple buzz zone

Alex3490
Alex3490
13 years ago
Reply to  Bobby Willis

D-pad,very easy

kevin
kevin
13 years ago

good stuff thanks for all the tips

Kevin
Kevin
13 years ago

so is there any reason to use use flat zones when the buzz zones are doing such a great job?

BroadwaE
BroadwaE
13 years ago

how do u make the corners go to purple buzz?

ddeeej
ddeeej
13 years ago

ya how do u do teh purple buzz zone

Chad
Chad
13 years ago

I can't find the buzz zone hot route on xboox 360. It doesn't say buzz zone. Thanks.