Pressure: What a Blitz Buys and What It Costs

A blitz is a loan against your own coverage. Send five or six and you buy speed — the quarterback must decide faster than he wants to. The cost is paid behind the rush: fewer defenders covering more grass, and somewhere a receiver is single-covered or uncovered. Good offenses collect that debt instantly (Tier 3's hot routes). So modern defenses invented ways to get the speed without the full cost. The fire zone sends five but keeps three deep and three underneath — often by dropping a defensive lineman into the throwing lane the quarterback expects to be empty. The simulated pressure inverts it: show six, rush four, and let the quarterback's hot-route math beat himself.

Watch the fire-zone sim: count the rushers, then find the nose tackle sinking into the hook zone. The pressure's real product isn't the sack — it's the quarterback throwing his blitz-answer into a defender who, by every rule he knows, should not be standing there.