Developing Key Reads for Your Defensive Backs

As the secondary coach at Lehigh University, I usually get 20-25 minutes of individual time on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in season. My goal each week is to optimize my time. In doing so, I spend about ten minutes a day on footwork and ball drills. I then spend another five minutes per day on some aspect of tackling or block escape. I then split the group for the last 5-10 minutes. Both groups will work on the finer points of the same coverage for the remainder of the time. For example, if I am working cover 2, the corners will work on re-routing and funneling wide receivers while the safeties work on reading the QB and breaking off the hash to play the ball. One aspect that we can never get enough work on is our key reads for the running game. In today’s game, the corners and the safeties must be clued into the run game. I use the same key progression today that I used when I coached