For the past couple weeks, I have written about the need for the Panthers defense to pattern match against an offense’s route concepts. Under Ron Rivera, Carolina’s defense has consistently been a heavy zone coverage team.
There are two simple coverage principles taught when playing zone defense. Spot dropping or pattern matching. Spot dropping is simply dropping to a landmark of the field. Pattern matching involves a set of rules designed to match with the route concepts. Spot dropping in today’s NFL will simply not work. Despite every fan base despising their offensive coordinator, play callers are still smart enough to beat any defense that spot drops.