If your opponent has a running game,use 4-3 on first down,2nd and 5 or less or 3rd and 3 or less.

Use nickel on anything greater,and dime on 2nd/3rd /4th down and 10 or more yards to go.

Use quarter for 2nd 3rd and 4th down with 15+ to go,or any obvious passing situation (unless your teams depth at DB is horrid,then just stick with dime)

Play using a fast safety,and choose/flip plays so he's the safety in zone,and run blitzes that send your best LB at them nearly every play.

Move him within a few yards of the line so you can get to the run faster,and drop him towards his zone once the ball is snapped. If nobody's coming near his zone,lean toward the biggest concentration of recievers and get in front of them and play interception using your strafe and jump buttons.

Once you get the timing of it all down you can snag 3-4 picks a game on anyone that gets pass happy ( as ~70-80% of human opponents do)

When using the safety D,the key to shutting down the RUN against a good opponent using a nasty agile RB is
1. switching players as soon as you know you can't get to him with the safety.
2. not getting blocked (it's better to hesitate and contain the outside if there's a blocker coming and someone else he can block)
3. swap players (again) the second you get blocked.
4. DON'T DIVE unless it's a last resort (turbo at them and run through them)

Once you get the timing of the switching and tackling VS. the run down it's possible to run nickel the entire game vs anyone who's not using LT and are real good at it....and still completely stuff the run.

If nothing is working and they are killing you all over, just pick cover 1 as a defense, or cover 1 robber and always audible your line to blitz, occasionally spread your linebackers to keep the edge runs stopped. If your still getting beat by the run press coverage and blitz the linebackers as well the lineman. Good luck!

adubile every time to a blitz make every position blitz sometimes the qb figures it out and gets a log pass but it useally only happends once or twice every game 5 min QT and all pro