Transcription
Hey, welcome to Football 101. Today we're going to be taking a look at passing concepts, skill positions, and wide receivers, and really how pass plays work, and different types of utilization of the skill players, and you'll understand more of the ideas behind pass plays, and you'll understand the different advantages of routes and route combinations.
So, the reason behind this series is I get a lot of comments all the time of people being like, "Hey, there's not really just a great channel to dive into football at a little bit of a deeper level." Of course, there's a bunch of videos like, "Hey, what is offsides? How do you score six points in football?" And so, there's a lot of those options out there, but I've gotten a lot of comments of people asking me to explain like why like today the concepts of pass different passing schemes. And so, let's get into this.
I have a bunch of different videos. These will slowly roll out. It's just a different series of mine to really break people out of the common fan if they want to. There's nothing wrong with being a common fan into being able to see football in the analytic way. And so, we're going to get into this. I'll do these videos sporadically. Hope you guys like it. I have a bunch of other stuff like offensive line, defensive line, and all this other stuff. And maybe one day we'll build up to a video of how to analyze film. And so, let's get into this.
So, what are passing concepts? Passing concepts are a series of routes commonly used together meant to break defenses. For example, you'll see rout you'll see passing concepts where like three routes go into one zone like flood where you're trying to flood one side of the field to break up the zones or stuff like that. Basically, it's to capitalize on different coverages. And it's the reason why you see pass plays where a lot of those same routes are used together. Because while one route can do something, when you have three routes ran in a specific way, it can completely break a coverage.
So before we completely delve into that, we've got to make sure we're all on the same page of the rules of wide receivers and where people can line up. So first of all, seven players will always be lined up on the line of scrimmage. The five players in the middle will be the offensive line. So, you always have to have seven people on the line. You'll see this here on the screen right here. And then only two people outside of those core five can be lined up on the line. And no more, no meth less. There will always be seven people right on the line of scrimmage.
And then second off, the two people who are on the line of scrimmage, only the ones on the ends are able to be considered eligible wide receivers. So, this means you can't put a skill position player in between two offensive linemen because then technically the wide receiver would become the offensive lineman and the offensive lineman would be the wide receiver and so on.
There are two common ways you'll see wide receivers line up. One is called a bunch and one is called trips. A bunch is where you have one wide receiver in the middle and two each on each side. Looks like a V shape. You'll see it on screen there. Trips is when you have three wide receivers all on one side, kind of like the bunch, but they're lined up in almost a line. Obviously, not a straight line because only one can be on the line of scrimmage, but you understand what I'm saying here. And if the trips is on the right, it's called trips right. And if it's on the left of the offensive line, it's called trips left.
Next thing we're going to take a look at is that how wide receivers line up, they line up in different sets. So, if you have three wide receivers on one side of the line of scrimmage and one wide receiver on the other, it's a 3x1. If you have two wide receivers on one side and two on the other, it's a 2x2. Also, take note that this is it goes by the highest number. So, if there's three wide receivers on one side and two on the other, it's 3x2. It is never 2x3. It does not go by right or left side of the offensive line. Like say there was two wide receivers on the left side and three wide receivers on the right side of the offensive line. It's not two by three, it is three by two.
And so if we put it all together now, look at this image. If you have three wide receivers on one side, one wide receiver on the other side, and you've got trips on the right side. So if we put it all together, this is 3x1 trips, right? And I will make another video on formations in this football 101 series. So you viewers might not know this yet, but because the quarterback is back there, this is shotgun trips right 3x1 based on where the quarterback is at shotgun obviously. Three wide receivers on the right side, one wide receiver on the left, 3x1, and then the trips are on the right. Got it all?
Now, let's get into passing concepts. There are practically an endless amount of passing concepts. There are a lot of mainstays that are used a lot more than others. That's the thing about football. It's always evolving and new things are always being made. There are new passing concepts made every day. So, I could make a series of these videos going over over every passing concept. So, let me know if you guys want another part where I go over more. But today, the passing concepts we're going to cover is smash, mesh, flood, stick, levels, scissors, divide, post wheel, double slant, and verticals. I know that sounds like a lot, but a lot of these concepts are only like two routes combined or three. So, we'll get through it. So, buckle up and let's get into this.
So, we're going to start simple here by looking at two most common ones. Even a lot of viewers who haven't even looked at passing concepts might know. Double slant and verticals. Both of these concepts are ran in sets where you have two receivers on a side. So, per say 2x1 or 2x2 or 3x2. And so basically with double slants, your two wide receivers are just both going to run a slant. It's as self-explanatory as the name says it is. With verticals, both of those wide receivers are going to guess what? Run verticals. They're going to run a seam route. They're going to run a go route. They're going to run a vertical. Whatever you want to call it. There's a lot of different names depending on which coach you ask, but it's just a straight line down the field. You just go for it. You might have heard the term four verticals. Well, you guessed it. is just four verticals, four wide receivers, 2x2 formation, and all four receivers are just going to run down the field.
While we are already looking at these two wide receiver sets, let's take a look at three other passing concepts that come out of two wide receiver sets. First up, we have scissors. In this concept, you have two wide receivers that are both going to run 10 to 12 yards just straight off the line of scrimmage. And then they're both gonna cut in towards towards each other until they go for another 14 to 18 yards. The idea of this is to maybe have the cornerbacks collide into each other or to split a safety who who will have to choose between one of the two scissors.
The next concept we're going to look at is divide. This concept is very similar to scissors, but the receivers instead of crossing each other both cut inwards and then cut outwards like corner routes. This is a lot more useful to man coverage because you are having an additional cut for each wide receiver. So, it's harder for the quarterback to keep up, but it keeps the same idea with trying to split the safety over the top.
And finally, with these 2 by two sets we're looking at today, we've got post wheel. So, once again, we're looking at the ability to move the safety. These three pass routes, if you haven't seen the theme, is about going deep. And these three pass passing concepts are all about maneuvering that safety and forcing him to commit to one or the other. And so in this one, you've got the first wide receiver, the Z receiver, as you see there, going on a bit of a post route. And so the idea here is that he's going to pull in that safety over top. And then the Y receiver on the wheel route will sneak in behind in a blip in between the zone and will be able to move and go down the field.
Next, let's take a look at levels. Levels can be ran with two wide receivers. Levels can be ran with three wide receivers. Basically, the concept behind levels is that you have three different receivers doing deep in routes and at different levels, different heights. You're trying to get to different zones, force people to move around, and basically, as the name says, you just have different levels of ends, and you're just trying to get one of those guys open.
So, the next thing we're going to look at is called smash. This passing concept deals with this route in specific called the smash route. This route right here is a deep cut towards the pylon. And so most commonly the base smash look is paired with this little curl underneath. Another variation is called smash out and it has an out route paired with the smash smash route. Another variation is called smash whip. It's kind of self-explanatory. You've got the smash route and then you've got the whip. There's a lot of other smash variations and you can even find smash variations in three wide receiver looks. Like for example, if we take a look here, you have smash in a 3x1 situation. The one wide receiver is off the screen, but here you go. Once again, the smash route is there and then your two wide receivers in this situation are both doing in n inward routes. And so what's most important in a smash concept is that obviously the smash route and it is your wide receiver nearest to the line of scrimmage and to the offensive line. And so he will be cutting out towards the end while the wide receivers towards his right or towards his left if you're on the left side of the offensive line will be doing different variations depending on the type of smash the offensive coordinator called.
Next passing concept we're going to look at is called stick. Basically, stick is always going to consist of a curl, a vertical, and a flat route. The flat route can either be ran by a wide receiver or a running back coming out of the back field. And so, you can see it out of the two wide receiver set or the three wide receiver set, but the premise is the same. You either you are going to always have that curl route and that vertical route highlighted underneath almost like an underlined by the flat route.
We've got two passing concepts left we're going to look at today. And the first one is going to be flood. Flood is seen out of either a two wide receiver look or a three wide receiver look. But just like the passing concept we just looked at, it's basically the same thing cuz when you have two wide receivers, the halfback is just going to make up. So what you're going to see is you're going to have a vertical, an out route, and once again, you're going to have another flat route. Basically, the idea here is is especially in in zone coverage, excuse me, you are going to try flooding and overrunning the zones cuz if you only have two zones on that side of the field and you have three wide receivers, one is guaranteed to be open. And so, if you have a team who's running a lot of zone, you might want to try running the flood concept because then you flood the zones and you can always try basically guaranteeing one of your receivers open.
And so, the final passing concept we're going to look at is mesh. This is a very commonly used passing concept and is where two wide receivers run ends across the middle of the field. They are supposed to get as close as the high-five each other. And so against man, what this does is one of the wide receivers basically supposed to get big and basically force the cornerback off of his route and leave the other wide receiver on the end wide open. Against zone, what this does is this is supposed to pull the two middle linebackers who are in zone in the middle of the field away. And when it's paired with a variation called mesh spot, you'll have a curl route open in the middle of the field where the two linebackers just open wide up looking at the mesh routes.
So there we have it. We took a look at all the wide receiver rules, formations, different types of sets, so we have an idea of what you can do with wide receivers. And then we broke down a couple passing concepts. There are actually things called full field passing concepts where it involves every single eligible receiver on the field, but obviously that's time for another video with this one maxing out. I hope you guys like this for this football 101 series. Like I said at the beginning is a highly like requested series. No one's exactly requested the name Football 101, but all the time I get requests like people are saying, "Hey, can you explain this concept or this concept?" So, I thought this would be a fun series to go along on the side with my other series that I'm currently running. Of course, you've got film room, which is my favorite series. Only about five videos in that. And then you've just got storyline videos about stories. But yeah, I'm excited to keep this one going, hopefully educate some people, and really just try bringing up the intellect of everyone on this channel. And so then we can get into even deeper concepts the further we get into Football 101 and we can get into some really exciting stuff.
All right, thanks for watching. Hope you guys enjoyed. Not much to say this time. Excited for NFL Sunday. I'm hoping to see some Sam Howell out there on that Washington team. Got a lot of situations. As always, prayers out for Dear Hamlin. I heard the recovery is going well and I'm excited about that. But it's about all today. Thank you guys for watching. Till the next one. See you.