I’ve talked about this in multiple spaces before, so this humble little Substack wouldn’t feel officially christened until I talked about it here as well.
The history of concepts is tricky, and the naming can be just as tricky. What might be Mills to one person might be Fox 2 XY Hook to another. When I tag concepts in my spreadsheets - my really cool spreadsheets - I don’t particularly care what I call them, as long as I keep it consistent for a year-end lookback on the offense. It also helps to keep consistency in my writing; calling the same concept a different thing every week is just as confusing for you as it is for me.
Today we’re going to talk about a concept that works well off the wide zone running game the Packers are based out of. You can call it Drift. You can call it PA Bang Dig. You can call it Backside Dig. For our purposes we’ll call it Drift, because that’s the lingo Kyle Shanahan uses, and also because it’s the shortest one.
Drift is essentially a two-man concept. You can leak some guys out or put in a flat control or something, but it’s basically a two man concept run exclusively off play action. The frontside receiver runs a vertical route (go, post, corner, out, etc.) and the backside receiver runs a dig.
Simple, right? Every time I see a concept that looks so simple, my main question is: why does this work? The answer to that - much like the answer to all of these - is “it’s complicated. But also not.”
In short, it works because of what it works off of. This system is based off the wide zone running play, and that starts with the offensive line. Unlike some of the man/power concepts and systems, wide zone has the offensive line moving laterally, blocking a zone instead of a man. (It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the general idea.) The running back takes the handoff, follows the flow of blocking to find a hole, while keeping an eye on his cutback options.
One of the core concepts is PA Boot. The quarterback sells the handoff to the running back, then boots to the other side and looks for one of the 2-3 receivers running parallel to him.
It’s a concept we’ve all seen a thousand times by now. The idea of the play action is to sell it as something it’s not, get the defense flowing up-and-over, then boot away from that action and find some receivers running free.
The more this stuff is run, the more defenses look for ways to stop it. As more and more teams have started running the wide zone system, it has become imperative for the defense to find ways to stop it. As defenses find a way to stop it, offenses start using more wrinkles. One of the ways offenses can do this is by using a half boot, or just the threat of a boot. Make everything look the same up front, sell a familiar motion in the backfield, then turn it into something different.
One of my favorite variations of this is the half-boot throwback, where the deep receiver to the boot side sells a release shadowing the boot motion of the quarterback, then cuts back to the opposite side of the field. The Packers picked up a touchdown on that variation against the Bears, Week 12 of the 2020 season.
Drift plays on all of that, and it starts up front. The offensive line is pushing laterally and selling the run. That’s important for defensive keys. The entire defense isn’t looking at what Rodgers is doing with the ball: the front 7 is keying on the movement up front. On this play, they’re showing a split-zone look, with Josiah Deguara cutting under the line to block the backside. An important note here is that the offensive line is doing enough to sell the run, but none of them are climbing to the second level. With a long-developing concept, climbing to the second level would get them hit with an ineligible receiver downfield penalty, and we simply can’t have that.
Billy Turner [77] does a nice job of selling a potential climb to that second level, but he never attacks; it’s just an initial move to help sell the illusion.
The line sells the run and Rodgers/Jones sell the run. Rodgers shows the ball and Jones opens his arms wide, like he’s ready to receive the handoff. All that motion helps to pull the defense up to the line. And when they’re being pulled up to the line, they’re not patrolling the middle of the field. Which is good, because that’s where the dig route is going.
So they sell the run. They sell it like Big Tom Callahan selling a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves. Instead of carrying out the boot after the fake, Rodgers turns like he’s going to boot, but instead flips back violently and finds the backside dig route.
With two defenders on Davante Adams and the second level of the defense looking for the run and anticipating the boot, there’s plenty of room in the middle for Allen Lazard and Rodgers hits him with a frozen rope.
When you draw out the lines, it’s a simple concept. But there is a lot of set-up and showing of tendencies that goes into the successful execution of it. Going into this Week 4 match-up, the Packers had run the ball on 54% of their 1st downs. That’s not a huge tendency, but it’s by far their most run-heavy down. Set up your tendencies - down & distance, formation, pre/post-snap movement, etc. - then run counter to them. Simple, right?