“The offensive line’s job is to protect the quarterback, which I think everyone would agree with. What most people don’t realize is that the wide receivers are also tasked with protecting the quarterback. Lack of interceptions isn’t by accident.
“When an interception’s made, you’ll find the following: 50% of the time it’s the quarterback’s fault, 30% falls on the wide receivers, and the final 20% is due to protection breakdowns. In this case, it was mine because I threw the ball too hard for these receivers,” David said.
He could feel the dirty looks, so he turned around and gave them a wink to indicate he knew that they would catch the rest of his balls.
“When it’s the quarterback, he overstrides, throws a bad ball, or makes a bad read. The receiver runs a wrong route, tips the ball, or doesn’t get open. The quarterback and receivers HAVE to be on the same page. It all starts with coverage recognition,” David said.
He waited until he was sure everyone had heard what he had just said.
“In zone coverage, our job is to throw away from a defender. The wide receiver is responsible for creating space or running to a landmark. All the defenders are looking at the quarterback. That means you can’t stare down your target. If you do, they’ll know where you’re going to throw the ball, and they’ll be there to either disrupt the play or make the pick.
“What that tells us is that you can move the defenders with your eyes, which can create the space to make a throw,” David said.
“What about man coverage?” Coach Trent prompted.
“Our job is to throw to the receiver. The receiver’s job is to win his matchup. The difference between man and zone is that only one guy is really watching the quarterback: the high safety. All you have to do is use your eyes to move him to one side of the field. Then you can come back to the other, find your one-on-one matchups, and pick the open one.
“To understand man coverage, you have to know that a receiver will run one of two types of routes. The first is to run away from you. The ball has one trajectory. That’s a post, that’s a corner route, or that’s a streak.
“In this kind of route, the receiver’s job is to do what’s called ‘stack.’ If you are on the left-hand side of the ball, get inside position and then get your left arm and leg in front of the defensive back as you run down the field. With them pinned or stacked behind you, the defensive back can only stop you with pass interference or let you score a touchdown.
“The second type of route is plays coming back to the quarterback. This is more of a downhill throw. The key is that the receiver has to get leverage on the defensive back. If he doesn’t, the defensive back will be between the quarterback and receiver in position to intercept the ball.
“If you don’t have leverage, then the receiver has to create it. They should run to the defensive back like they plan to run past him. Then they use two hands to move the DB out of the passing lane as they cut to create space,” David explained.
David lined his team up to run another play. He threw a twenty-five-yard down-and-out. This time, his receiver caught it.
David again stopped everything.
“That pass right there is the difference between an average quarterback and a superior one. Being able to complete that pass puts the defense on notice that they have to cover the whole field. After you hit a couple of those, the rest of your passes will be easier,” he shared.
On the next snap, David ran the same play with a wrinkle. The NFL guys were crafty, and he knew they would jump the route. On a down-and-out that deep, the ball had to cover a good distance, making it easier to intercept if you knew it was coming.
David pumped his arm, which caused the defensive back to make his move. The receiver cut straight up the field, and there was a collective gasp as he ran free. Normally, David would have let the ball go right then, but he wanted to show off. He held it a beat longer and launched a bomb. The ball traveled about sixty-five yards in the air.
He held his breath because he would look foolish if the receiver dropped it. He let a slight smile touch his face as his man hauled it in for the score. David made a point to look like he expected the outcome.
Towards the end, one of the receivers made a nice run.
“All the way through. All the way through. Good effort running, number 83. But I just have one question. If you ran the last one faster than the other five, what’s holding you back?” David asked.
The kid gave David a sheepish look. He knew David was right to call him out.
“I’m not asking you to do something you can’t do. I’m not asking you to grow two inches or run twice as fast. I’m asking that you do things that you can control. As our competition gets tougher, the margin of error will become smaller. Our detail and exactness have to be there. Just do your best on every play,” David suggested.
“With that, we have to get to work,” Coach Trent said.
◊◊◊
Chapter 25
David
David returned home to a mixed bag. Cassidy looked guilty, Dare was moping, Corvus was excited, and Ruth looked pissed. It was no surprise he decided to talk to Corvus.
“We fixed it!” the young man shared.
“No more getting dizzy and losing your lunch?” David asked.
“Using 135 synchronized cameras was too much for the VR software to handle all at once without a lot more processing power. But it did help us figure out some stuff.”
“Like what?”
“The best placement of the three cameras is at 120-degree separation at a 60-degree down angle. When placed like that, the VR software gives us a flat eye-level view,” Corvus explained.
“You’ve used Google Maps?” Dare asked as he finally warmed to their conversation.
“You mean where you pick the little guy to walk you down the street?” David asked.
“That’s the view we’re talking about, but far more sophisticated. Now that we have the camera angles worked out, we’ll add multiple single 360-degree cameras around the field from above to allow for amazing VR eye-level images,” Dare shared.
“But we need more processing power,” Corvus blurted.
“We can keep the cost down if we build a PC ourselves,” Dare quickly added.
Corvus nodded vigorously. Cassidy raised her eyebrows at David to ask if he was really falling for their ploy to build a kick-ass PC. David was enough of a guy to be sucked in because he could only imagine how he would rule the gaming world if he had one.
“If you made a second PC for me, would it give me an edge in gaming?” David asked.
“If you let us have some bitcoins, I could get you AMD’s experimental Atomic Threadripper. There’s talk that they may only sell this model to the military, but we found a Chinese source on the darknet that claims to have access to the processor. It’s rumored to have more than twice as many cores as the current state-of-the-art and double that many threads, and …”
Corvus started to talk about multiple GPUs, but Dare held up his hand to stop him and then turned to David.
“Not too long ago, this kind of processing power would have cost millions. It would make your gaming opponents look like they were all on dial-up modems,” he said to dumb it down. “Old ones.”
Cassidy walked out of the room when David started dancing an excited little jig. She knew that Dare had just talked David out of more money.
◊◊◊
“You realize that Darius is playing you, right?” Cassidy asked when David came to find her.
He chuckled.
“It makes him feel superior, so I play along.”
“His ego did need a boost,” she shared.
“Veronica?”
“Yep. She got invited to sail on some rich USC donor’s yacht to Cabo San Lucas for the next three weeks. She told Dare that he was a nice distraction, but she couldn’t miss an opportunity like this.”