The new new thing. The spread offense, as it has matured, seems like it continues to absorb and assimilate every offensive football concept ever run — quick passing game, option, single-wing, wing-T, etc — and the play-action passing game is no different. The rise of pistol and even three-back “Diamond” formations have been big factors in spread offenses incorporating using more and more play-action over the past few seasons. And with the rise of the “inverted veer,” which involves a pulling guard and has the quarterback read a play-side defender (as opposed to a backside defender as with the zone read), it was only inevitable that offenses would use that play as the foundation for play-action.
And no one did it better this past season than Art Briles and Robert Griffin III at Baylor. Griffin, of course, throws a beautiful deep ball — probably the best I’ve seen from a collegiate player in at least a decade. But he also benefited from a lot of wide open deep tosses, often off this very run action. The typical inverted veer play is as drawn up below:
So how do you adapt this to play-action using the same principles as above? You guessed it: The line to the play-side blocks down while the pulling linemen is responsible for the defensive end to his side, i.e. the “C” gap.
One important note is that as I have drawn this up — which is how Baylor typically ran it — there are only five offensive players pass blocking. Unlike above where the backside tackle steps down and an H-back or fullback has the C gap, here the backside tackle just locks on to the defensive end. Note that one can easily put another blocker there backside to get a sound six-man surface.
In any event, as shown here as well as the video clips below, Baylor decimated people with this concept. They loved to fake the inverted veer one way and to have the backside slot get deep, often off of a fake-slant-and-go concept. But any passing concept should work, especially considering that the runningback becomes a swing or flare-control checkdown receiver.
So that’s how to use the pulling lineman with the inverted veer. The other method to pull a linemen in pass protection from a spread set — one used by many college and pro teams — is not quite as good in terms of the run fake but still does the trick and it provides a full six-man pass protection surface. In this method, shown below, the pulling linemen and the runningback go in opposite directions. I have shown this with a pulling tackle to mimic the common “Dart” run play, where the playside tackle pass sets and the backside tackle, not the backside guard, is the one pulling. For the play-action concept, essentially the interior line squeezes down while the runningback and pulling tackle are responsible for the C gaps — and outside rushers — to either side. And, as mentioned above, this has traditionally not been a difficult block because those defensive ends tend to read run and step down, waiting for a ballcarrier.
06-01-2012, 08:25 PM
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