The Bear Raid Quick Passing Game

The most characteristic element of our offense is the quick passing game. The quick game doesn't refer to every pass that's thrown short, however. On almost all of our pass plays there are short routes built in, so it's useful to define the quick game as contrasted with other passing plays. One key feature is that it usually uses 5-man protection (protection involving only the OL) while the QB takes a 1-step drop from the shot-gun.  In the most common versions of these plays, the RB is an essential part of the passing concept and so we can't use 6-man protections here. Another feature is that in the quick game the “concept” that's being worked happens less than 10 yards from the line of scrimmage. This contrasts with our down-field passing game, where we'll use more 6-or even 7-man protections, the QB will take deeper drops, and the concept that's being worked is meant to read defenders farther downfield. So, we might throw short routes such as outs, slants, or flat routes on any number of passing plays, but the quick game only refers to a subset of them.

In the previous paragraph I've used the term “concept” several times to refer to pass plays. What exactly does that mean? When you watch a game in full-speed it can be hard to see what receivers are doing if the QB doesn't throw them the ball, so we tend to label plays based on the route that gets the pass. We think about plays like “outs” and “slants,” but that's not how these plays are called. Outs and slants can be thrown on a large number of plays in our offense, but each one attacks the defense differently. A passing “concept,” then, is the combination of all the routes run by all the receivers on a given play. These routes are put together in a way that attacks the defense in a very specific manner, and different concepts attack in different ways. Let's look at the most important examples from the quick game.

Stick

In the first three games of the season our most important quick-game concept was “stick”:

This was also one of Sonny's favorite plays at Arizona, and can be found in the playbooks of all sorts of offenses. Of course, it's also an old Air Raid staple. The primary concept here, the “stick” concept itself, is being run on the left side of the diagram where we're setting up a “triangle read.” This is a common strategy for attacking zone coverages. I've drawn this against Cover-4 here because this coverage is often used to combat 2x2 spread formations. In a triangle read like this we're trying to isolate three receivers on two zone defenders.

In this diagram the X-receiver makes the top of the triangle. In Cover-4 the CB's and safeties will divide the deep field into quarters. Because the X runs deep and outside, the CB has to go with him. This leaves the WLB in a bind, because F and H are making the two bottom points of the triangle, creating a horizontal stretch that he can't cover. Technically the WLB is responsible for the flat route by F here, and the solid line in the diagram shows him covering this. If he covers this route, however, he's going to run right past H, who's running the “stick” route to the inside. The “stick” can look either like a slant or a curl; If this were man coverage he might keep running on the slant, but since it's zone he'll break inside and immediately sit down in space. The MLB is technically supposed to cover H on this route, but in practice he'll hardly ever get there before the ball's caught. If the WLB stays with H to compensate for this (shown by the dashed line), then he can't cover the flat route by F. The QB reads the WLB and throws to wherever he isn't.

There are a variety of ways that teams can try to defend this route. One way is to rotate a safety down over the H so that the defense is in a 3-deep coverage:

 Now the stick is easy to cover, because the SS is responsible for the flat and the WLB is responsible for the stick. The defense has, in essence, put themselves in a position to cover the two bottom points of the triangle. This is where the backside routes come into play. In Cover-4 the CB on the right of the diagram was able to play pretty aggressively over Z because the FS was nearby to help on various route combinations. Once the defense switches to a 3-deep coverage, however, the CB's and FS divide the deep field into thirds. You can see in the diagrams how much more space this creates on the right side as the CB plays softer and the FS moves out of the picture. This leaves a lot of open grass to that side, and the slant by either Y or Z (usually Z) should be open depending on what the SLB does. If the QB reads a safety rotation toward the stick side, he knows that he's got a slant on the backside of the play. In fact, the QB will throw the easy slant against any coverage if he feels like the defense is leaving enough open grass.

We've seen scenarios that can get the ball to H, F, Y, and Z on this play. Because of the way this concept is set up and the coverages it's meant to attack, X will rarely get the ball here, but there is one scenario where he can. Against Cover-3 we saw that defenses can take stick away by making a safety responsible for the flat. You can do much the same thing by making the CB responsible for the flat and playing Cover-2:

This coverage can contest all four of the short routes. The WLB drops under the stick route and the CB is on the flat route. On the backside the CB and SLB can contest the slants. In any coverage where a CB is squatting in the flat like this, however, there will be a brief window where the QB can make a “hole throw” and hit X after he clears the CB but before the safety can get over the top of him. X should always be looking for the ball at around 10 yards from the LOS.

If you can hit all of those throws with precision, it is very, very hard to cover all three points of the triangle with standard zone coverages, and the adjustments that you have to make to take away the bottom points of the triangle make you vulnerable elsewhere.

In our first three games we ran this play eleven times. Here're the stats for the routes we threw:

X: 0/0

H: 2/4, 17 yards.

F: 0/0

Y: 2/3, 10 yards.

Z: 3/4, 32 yards.

That particular variant was H-stick. We also run Y-stick, which is the same concept run to the other side of the formation:

The stats for this play are as follows:

X: 4/4, 27 yards

H: 0/0

F: 0/0

Y: 2/2, 11 yards

Z: 0/2, 1 INT

From these stats there are a few trends worth noting. First, when the backside slants are open they are clearly our most productive option. Treggs (X) and Harper (Z) were almost identical in productivity when running this part of the concept, and Rodgers (Y) was a good option on the backside slant as well. On the stick side of the route F never gets the ball in the flat. This is largely because every defensive call has a clear flat defender, and that defender takes off after F the second he releases. It's the inside routes that can get lost in between LB's, and the stick route by both Y or H is a solid if not spectacular play. Finally, there were two times where Goff tried to throw the go route to Harper. One time was intercepted and the other was incomplete. Both of these were in the Northwestern game (I'll probably talk more about that cat-and-mouse game between coordinators in a later post) and we didn't throw this part of the concept against Portland St. or tOSU.

Out and Corner

Stick is our most common play in the quick game, but we have two other plays that set up the same basic read for the QB but attack the defense in different ways. The first that I'll deal with is called “out”:

This sets up the same kind of triangle we saw with stick, but gets receivers to those three points in a different way. In the above section I noted that the flat route never got the ball when we ran stick. If you look at the diagram for stick against Cover-4 it's easy to see why. The RB is running the flat, and is lined up farther inside than the WLB who is covering the flat. Because of this aligment it's going to be very hard for the RB to outflank his defender. If you want to attack the flat, say because the MLB is really active and is taking away the stick route, or because you think you have a good match-up against the WLB, you can run “out.” This concept will put H in the flat on an out route. Because the WLB will usually line up inside of H, he's got great leverage for running this route and might even be able to turn upfield after getting the ball. If the WLB flies to the flat to cover the out, then the check-down route to F should pop open into some space. Even if the MLB is really active in coverage it will be hard for him to make an impact here since F is breaking to the outside. The QB reads the WLB just as he would in stick, so very little changes for his read, making this is a really “cheap” play to add. As with stick we can run slants on the backside, but for any of these quick passing plays we can game-plan or tag any backside routes we want. Also as with stick, we can run it either to the left with X and H or to the right with Y and Z.

We didn't run this to the left enough to reveal anything interesting, but to the right (with Z on the go and Y on the out) these were the stats:

X: 1/1, 3 yards

H: 2/2, 18 yards

F:

Y: 1/2, 13 yards

Z: 1/1, 36 yards

Out and stick are both designed to get the inside receivers the ball on a short route. Our last adjustment, “corner,” changes up the WR assignments:

If you look at the final distribution of routes here, you'll see that the receivers all end up in similar positions to stick. One receiver (H) ends up deep down the sidelines, another (F) runs to the flat, and another (X) breaks inside. When compared with stick this is really just an assignment switch between X and H, and once again produces a similar read for the QB while attacking the defense with different leverage and spacing. We ran this several times against Ohio State. On these plays we used motion to get Bigelow into his route early. tOSU was concerned about Bigelow getting in space for obvious reasons, so when we sent him in motion to the outside the WLB flew out to avoid getting out-flanked, which opened up a massive void for X on the slant. There's no way the MLB is getting to X before he gets the ball here, and the one time we did throw to X (Treggs) on this concept he gained 11 yards, the biggest gain of the day on this play.

This concept has the added bonus of good leverage for the inside receiver (H) running deep. It will depend on exactly what coverage variant the defense plays, but if H gets matched up on the SS here he's got really good leverage to get open breaking toward the sidelines. This is a more realistic intermediate shot than what we saw with X running straight down the sidelines into the CB. As with our other plays, we can also run this to the right side of the formation.

Those are some of the most interesting elements of the quick game.  Next week I'll look at our most common down-field passing games.

For discussion on this thread, check out the BI thread here: http://bearinsider.com/forums/showthread.php?p=842280269#post842280269