1 - Lots of zone
In stark contrast to Buffalo’s previous man coverage scheme, McDermott’s scheme plays a good deal of zone coverage. Cover 3 along with Cover 2 and Cover 4 are among the more popular calls on the back end of his defense.
“In Carolina they played a lot of zone under McDermott,” Kelso said. “When they went to the Super Bowl they were playing a ton of Cover 3 with basic zone defense and had linebackers that really understood leverage control and where to drop and whether they needed to be inside or outside of receivers.