Continuing with my breakdown of the Flexbone Offense we are going to look at the play action attack. In this particular entry I am going to discuss two different play action passes that we used during my short stay at Timpanogos High School in Orem, Utah. There are many more variations that you could run off of Inside Veer, but these two were our most successful: 312/313 and 312/313 Switch. In the Paul Johnson terminology anything in the 300 series is a play action pass.
The first play we would run was our regular 312 play action pass. We would call this when the safety was coming down hard on the run. To stop the option many defensive coaches will get their safeties involved in the run game. When this happens it is time to take a shot over the top.
On this play our outside receiver (Z) would sell his block before releasing vertical. Our playside A back would sell his arc release as if he were going to block that safety like normal before slipping by him (as if he missed his block) and into that space the filling safety vacated. On the backside we would run a post which would often be open if that backside safety was rotating with our A back’s motion into a traditional Cover 3 shell.
The other play we would run is 312 switch. We would use this version of the pass when we were switch blocking between our Playside A Back and Playside Wide Receiver on our Inside Veer play. This play was essentially the same as our basic 312 pass but the PSA and PSWR were switching responsibilities.
This was called when we were getting a traditional Cover 2 look. What we were looking for was for the CB on the playside of Inside Veer to be filling on the run (this meant that he was #3 in our option count and was PSA’s responsibility). If we were getting this look we would have PSA release toward him like normal, and then slip the block into his wheel route. This would give our QB a quick read on the safety. If he drifted to cover the wheel route our Z was open. If he was staying home our A back was open on the wheel route.
ryan smith's professional portfolio 