Four Verticals

[packabacka19]

Is it a cheat? My friend runs it a lot, so I'm trying to find sliders for our dynasty so that it's not an automatic completion for him but I can't seem to find any. How can I fix this? Because whenever he needs a 1st, he can just run 4-verticals and it's there.

[gatorman1050]

I will admit for me it is like 9 out of 10 times a completion and usually for a fairly large gain. I have to resist to call that play just because I know how cheesy it is.

[NoDakHusker]

It's pretty much guaranteed yardage no matter what. Tell him to stop running it. I don't use it at all, it's just too easy.

[LucianoJJ]

Four verticals is also a cheesy substitute for a QB draw. The DBs go deep in coverage, and the QB can scramble for yards once he beats the D-Line.

[Bullet Sponge]

Interesting that everyone seems to feel it's cheese. It might be because I'm rebuilding Utah State, but there is NOTHING in my arsenal that is automatic yardage. Even 4 verticals, which I call now and then in realistic situations. I've tossed as many picks to the "wide open" slot guy and been sacked trying to scramble to the outside as much as had success. Maybe when my players don't suck I'll find certain plays are cheesy but for now I don't see it.

[Gotmadskillzson]

I wouldn't call it cheese, considering if you got DB's with pretty good speed and YOU switch to the DB when he throws it to the WR, you can bat it down majority of the time. Not really an automatic play.

[Card-me]

The best way to counter it is to crank up the pass rush (or turn the pass block down) and increase the coverage a bit. The defense that works against it the best seems to be a 3-3-5 Nickel Cover 2, and set zone coverage and pass defense to conservative. This way the MLB in the middle hook zone can cover the slot receiver.

The problem, of course, is that that's a lot of stuff to do just to stop one play, and you still don't know when it's coming (though you're practically guaranteed that guys like this will run it on 3rd or 4th and 5+). And if the guy has a good offensive line and you have poor DBs, it can still be a problem.

This is one of those plays where it really depends on the game if it's cheese or not. Between two good teams, I would say no, since the defense can actually stop it through the pass rush and coverage (as long as your sliders are set properly). But if you're playing an overmatched defense, it's as close to automatic as you'll get unfortunately.

[packabacka19]

This is mainly for CPU games, because I was able to pretty much shut him down when he tried it on me.

Lately I've had pass coverage at 95 and pass rush at 65 (I think?) but he was still putting up some ridiculous numbers with Wake Forest, so I just moved pass coverage up to 100.