also: scrape exchange · scraping · scrape over the top
A linebacker running laterally over the top of his own defensive line to get to the ball. Also names the scrape exchange, where he and an end swap responsibilities against the read game.
2 meanings, all below. Jump to the one you heard.
A linebacker moves laterally with the flow of the play, staying behind his own defensive line and going over the top of the blocks rather than trying to fight through them. It is the standard way a backer gets from his alignment to a play going somewhere else.
The coaching point that makes it a term rather than a description is depth. A linebacker who scrapes too flat gets caught in the wash of his own linemen, and one who scrapes too deep arrives late and outside. The whole skill is finding the line that keeps him free and still lets him fit inside out.
scrapingrun fit, gap-down-backerA specific answer to the read game. The defensive end being read by the quarterback crashes hard inside to take the running back, and a linebacker scrapes over the top to take the quarterback instead. The two have exchanged responsibilities.
The point is that the quarterback's read is now wrong whichever way it goes. He is reading the end, the end takes the dive, so he pulls the ball, and the player he pulls it into is a linebacker arriving free. It is one of the cleanest defensive answers in football to an offensive play built on making a defender choose. It works by making the choice somebody else's.
scrape exchangezone read, zone blitzThe plain movement is taught everywhere from youth up. The exchange needs two defenders to trust each other completely and to do it at speed, which is why it is a high school and above answer rather than a youth one.