The cover 2 defense is a zone defense where all of its defenders must cover a specific area. The free and strong safety will cover deep their job is to make sure no one gets behind them. Three linebackers and the two corners on the field cover the underneath part of the field. The job of the corners is to try to jam/collide into the receiver this will flatten up the receivers route thus helping the safety if a deep route is being ran.
In the cover 2 the corners should line up outside of the receiver so that once they bump the receiver hopefully they can push their route inside towards the other three defenders. The weakness of the Cover 2 defense is that the two zones the deep and underneath are split at about 10 to 15 yards. In order to be affective you must have a strong defensive line because usually the cover 2 is ran out of a 4-3 defense ( four defensive lineman and three linebackers) There are five offensive linemen which the cover 2 defense is usually ran by teams with at least one guy on the defensive line that requires to be doubled teamed, everyone else gets to play one on one.
So the play from the defensive lineman is essential to success for your defense. They must force the quarterback to make the quickest decision possible make him throw on his first look. This will help your defenders as they should be keeping an eye on the quarterback following his eyes if you have a decent rush the quarterback will throw in the direction he looks in first unless you get the sack! Another thing to note that the Cover 2 defense thought is consider to be a zone defense the linebackers must take notice to any wide receiver on the inside trying to stretch the safety deep in hopes of outnumbering a the safeties.
This situation will come up if you run cover 2 a lot. So the linebackers must apply man defensive tactics giving the safety a little help. Primarily though the cover 2 has become popular because it helps avoid the big play having two safeties deep usually keeps teams from hitting you deep. If the cover 2 is played correctly it can be rather effective however if one of your defenders aren't meeting the job's requirements well that's all it takes to become vulnerable. As well there are several tricks the offense can do to expose the weak areas of the cover 2.
