Whats the advantage between using a curl flat at 0 yards, or a hard flat?
say mesh plays at 5 yards is generally the location of the routes being the 2 drag routes come out to about the 5 yard area, while slants its about 10-15 yards so if someone ran slants all game i'd set the hard flats to 10 yards, if they ran something like double post id set it to 5 play hard flats the run a cover 3 cloud to have 2 coverages over the middle of the field , where as flood route on the outside route most people set HB to out route and the flood is about 25 yards , so you'd want the cloud flats at about 20-25 to stop the crossing, or deep outside route hope that helps
If you play Cover 2 and set your flat zones to 0, your corners will play the outside run super aggressively. I often use that at the goal line to stop stretch/toss. Generally, I use my Curl Flats at 15-25 to stop crossers and corner routes, while keeping my Flats at 0-5 to stop quick outs, drags, and table routes to the RB. But you can switch that up and play your Flats deep and Curl Flats closer to the LOS if you want to mix it up.
Curl flats are Purples - Keep these at 20-25 yards to stop deep Corner routes and crossers.
Flats are blue - Hard flats play the sidelines better, id keep these at 0 or 5 yards and see what your opponent is constantly doing, if hes using crossers and deep corners, call cover 3 and keep it as is/Stock. If hes playing the flats, call cover 3 and shade underneath/down to play the flats instead of Curl flats.
Edited by wrjose81
curls play inside out while clouds play the sidelines better. If you're wanting a flat at 0, do your clouds
It’s dumb we can’t layer our zones better. If I want to play outside in at 5 yards and 20 yards and have a deep third over top, I should be able to do that. But in this game, I have to play inside out on one of those zones. Just dumb
You're saying clouds opposed to hard flats? Why?
clouds and hard flats are the same. Light blues
Huh? I thought hard flats and cloud flats have always been different? Shading up vs. shading down in a blue zone? Clouds playing the flat but backed off a bit and hard flats playing super close to the line of scrimmage? In past maddens (idk why they changed it this year) hard flats were super light blue and cloud flats were a slightly darker light blue
They are different if you don't run zone drops. If you set zone drops, they will all drop to the same depth
I hear a lot of players say to put one or the other at 0, but how do they play differently?