The Plays: X Post

The Medium Square In Read - Not what we have!

Sometimes in NCAA, we need to take the plays that are given to us by the designers and use them in unconventional ways because the programmers put them in the game incorrectly.  Consider the X Post standard pass play out of the I Formation.  What we have looks like it is supposed to be what is known as a Square In read - you look at the safety and linebacker on the strong side to read which of the two In routes is open for the throw.  If the interior defender breaks with the TE making the first cut, you throw to the outside guy.  If the interior defender stays in the lane to the wideout, you would throw it to the TE inside.

Take a look at the Square In play shown on Smart Football's bit on Bill Walsh's passing notes. It is almost identical to what we see on the X Post play in NCAA 12, except the two In routes are deeper than drawn on the X Post play.  The writeup from Walsh's notes say:

- Prefer to throw square in to the RIGHT.
- QB 5 BIG STEPS - HITCH and throw on time. WR does NOT keep running. Catch ball no more than 3 steps inside original position. (keep ball in middle)
-WR catches ball and runs straight upfield.

The idea here is to use the Square In as a stop move like a hitch, getting separation as the assigned defender realizes the receiver is no longer running with them and has to react and catch up.  That's why the receiver is not intended to take a lot of steps to the inside before catching it.  That foot plant (the "Dig") is just for a change of direction like on a slant route.  Start at about 3:55 in the following video linked by Smart Football:



Although it looks very similar diagrammatically, it does not function the same way because the timing and distances are all messed up.  Instead, we need to play this route combination like a quick hitter.

The Levels Concept

Smart Football had a great post about the Levels concept, which Chris calls "Peyton's favorite pass play."  The play takes the conventional deep to short read progression and turns it completely on its head:

Both Peyton and Tom Moore have both stated that their favorite pass route is one known in many coaching circles as "levels." (The Colts have their own unique lingo, but "levels" gives you the gist.) Most other pro teams use it too, including the Patriots, but no one does it as well or as often as the Colts. At the college level, Oklahoma State (Mike Gundy and Gunter Brewer) and Arkansas (Bobby Petrino) both use this concept with some regularity. And June Jones has used a three-man version of levels for some years at Hawai'i and now SMU.

The concept is simple: the outside receiver runs a five-yard in route, and the slot receiver or tight-end runs a ten-to-twelve yard square-in (with a slight outside release). On the backside, the Colts have the outside guy run a take-off (or sometimes a comeback at eighteen yards) and the backside slot or tight-end runs a "divide" or seam-read.

When you look at the play the NCAA 12 programmers have given us in X Post, you see basically the same elements: a 5 yard square-in on the inside run by the TE, a longer square-in with an inside release by the frontside wideout, and a deep seam hitting post route by the backside WR.  What we have is merely a slight horizontal flip of the same play being described, so we can use it almost the same way.

Unlike most pass concepts which are read deep to short, this play is read short-to-deep. (Though with Peyton Manning -- who likely has an excellent idea of where he's going with the ball on every play -- the difference between "coverage reads" and "progression reads" is blurry.) But the philosophy of the play is to throw the five-yard in route whenever it comes open; they want to treat it like stealing yards and to get the ball into a playmaker. Traditionally this was Marvin Harrison, but more recently you'll see Reggie Wayne run this route play after play.

Broadly, if the defense comes up for the quick in route, the quarterback looks for the square-in behind him. In other words, this is a two-man high-low or vertical stretch concept, which puts the underneath defenders in a bind with a guy in front of and behind them.

That's what this play is looking to do - you steal 5 yards on a super high percentage throw to the TE on the 5 yard In route.  This is an excellent play to pair with an offense using Quick Slants because the appropriate way to shut down the slant route is to float the linebackers back into the side alleys and drop the MLB into a deep underneath zone like standard Cover 2.  When that happens, you have a TE who releases upfield and then cuts to the inside right in front of the linebackers for a quick lob pass for easy yards.

The Built In Hot Read

The extra bonus to this play is that it has protections against blitzes already built into the routes being run.  Again, a post from Smart Football talks about this in depth, this time in a breakdown of Bobby Petrino's shallow cross concept:

The above “hots” are important because they are not full-blown “sight adjustments” where the receiver, reading blitz, runs an entirely new route. In each case — the wheel to flat, or the shallow to settling in the open area or looking sooner — the receiver simply runs his normal path and then looks for the ball earlier than they would have. This way, if the receiver has made the wrong read or the ball isn’t thrown quickly to him hot, he simply continues on his earlier route. This is the only kind of “hot” route that I think consistently works. If the man over you or in your path blitzes, look back for the ball; if you don’t get the ball, keep running your route.

The shallow cross is something we will get to in the next pass play, the Cross In out of the I Formation, but for now let's stick to this X Post "Levels" read.  As pointed out in that excellent Smart Football post, "Ryan Mallett explained it all to Jon Gruden recently. Jump to the 2:05 mark. (My favorite part of this is when Mallett begins discussing the hot reads and Gruden’s eyes light up.)"  This is where Mallett is talking about how the existing route in the pass pattern can be broken off at any point:


"Now if I have blitz on this side, what Joe will do is he would stop and catch the ball right there, or if there was a middle blitz, there's what I call hot middle, and I would just throw right there on the middle, so that was my two hots."  What Mallett is talking about there with the crossing route run by the wingback can be done in X Post by the TE, and in fact NCAA 12 receivers are programmed to behave in exactly this manner.   In fact with this play, like with any good quarterback, you want to be blitzed.  The reason is that the TE's upfield release and foot plant acts like a 3-5 yard quick hitch pattern if you need to dump the ball very fast.  When you have this quick release, the blitz does not have time to get to you and the ball is being thrown into the very spot the blitzing linebackers just vacated: "When will the league catch on that Peyton Manning wants to be blitzed? The hitch action enabled Manning to release the ball very quickly, before any blitz could reach him."  The same blitz reads that Mallett is talking about on the strong side and middle are the best possible places to be blitzed from.

Against regular zone coverage or man coverage, you can just wait for your TE to make his break and run past the defender (out of his zone or away from the man defender), or if you have no pressure you can look upfield at the deeper square-in route for a bigger gain.

Throwing the TE Route

Here's Hawaii at Auburn on Heisman difficulty, running the TE route as a broken off, short route.  As the TE releases, we look to see if there's anyone home.  If not, it's an easy immediate throw that will beat any pass rush.  Start with the formation, showing a stacked linebacker in front of the tight end in the second play of the video below:



The linebacker blitzes, leaving a hole for the TE to run into.  When the TE releases into that hole, the read is immediate and the throw comes very quick, almost off the back foot:



By the time the back side pass rusher can get to the quarterback, it's too late.  First down.







Throwing the Deeper Square-In

Here is a video showing X Post run multiple times against #17 Maryland as Hawaii at home on Heisman difficulty.  First play, they blitz both of the linebackers that Mallett talked about, leaving a gaping hole in the underneath coverage for our TE to sneak into.  It goes for a big gain.  The next few passes show Maryland dropping into zone coverage, rotating the defense over to the strong side.  The TE cut to the inside gets separation for quick completions. 



Then you notice on the fourth play, the weakside zone defender comes over and smacks the TE right after catching the ball.  They start taking away the short square-in, and sure enough on the fifth play you see them completely take it away by bracketing him high-low with two guys.  That's when we look to the other deeper square-in - and Billy Ray Stutzmann is open on what is basically a medium range hitch route.



As the TE makes his cut, there is a linebacker right on him and another one waiting in the zone he's about to run into.  The defense has completely taken away the quick route, and waiting for the TE run all the way across the field is risky, so we glance up at the wide square-in pattern.  The receiver is running man for man up the field and the inside defender is clearing to the outside.  Anticipating the open passing lane, we can time the throw to the receiver to arrive right after he makes his stop for separation.



That's the WR throttling down to stop.  It's what Plaxico Burress is doing on this ten yard stop route run for ESPN Sport Science starting around the 1:36 mark:



Here is the same read as New Mexico against Nevada on All-American difficulty.  Again, we are watching the TE release and want to see if the defense has the linebackers staying at home to take away the shallow throw.  If those linebackers are all the way up near the front defending the quick square-in, it means there is nobody in a wide space between them and the deep safeties.  That's where the medium square-in route is being run.  So, when you see the TE covered by LB, you know you have a good shot at the deeper throw.



That's basically triple coverage on the TE!  Now let's look at this from the other angle, to see it from where the WR is.  This gives a good idea on the kind of timing you want on when you're starting the throw and where you expect the WR to be.  Notice that when the WR is making his break, the ball is already in the air.  Like the slant route, the QB needs to anticipate the WR running to where the ball is going to be - running into the open space to go get the ball. 



As I mentioned above, this play is a great complement to the Quick Slants play because it takes advantage of cases where the defense drops back into deep and wide coverage against the slant, leaving the center exposed.  It can be used as a blitz beater, and works well with a rushing game because it is so high percentage; this will rarely get you zero yards.  But that doesn't mean it's completely risk free, as the third play in the video below demonstrates - it can be covered by a good team in man.