Slot coating is largely used in the manufacturing process of many products. In general, the minimum thickness that can be coated is proportional to the gap between the coating die and the substrate (usually backed- up by a rigid roll) and inversely proportional to the liquid viscosity. Therefore, in order to obtain thin films with liquid of high viscosity, a very small gap would be necessary. In practice, the clearance between the die and the web has to be large enough to avoid the risk of clashing two hard surfaces. A common solution is the use a backup rolls covered with an elastomeric layer. The liquid in the coating bead develops high enough pressure to deform the resilient cover, which changes the geometry of the flow, characterizing an elastohydrodynamic action. The understanding of the flow is vital to the optimization of this widely used coating method. Theoretical model has to take into account the viscous flow, the roll deformation and the free surface effects in order to predict the flow behavior. A theoretical analysis is presented here, that consisted of solving the Navier-Stokes equation to describe the free surface flow coupled with an array of springs to model the elastic cover deformation. The equation system was solved by the Galerkin / Finite element method. The resulting set of non- linear algebraic equations was solved by Newton´s method. The results indicate how different operating parameters, liquid and roll cover properties affect the flow.