Any time an offense runs the same play twice you have to think it must be pretty good. The Patriots ran a double over concept with an outside vertical twice with great success against the Ravens in their Sunday Night Football matchup.
The play is commonly run with play action, but the Patriots chose to run it as pure shotgun dropback.
Against open coverage, the read for any post-over concept is the near deep safety. We define the near deep safety as the safety nearest the post. The quarterback will throw the post unless the near safety either gets a lot of depth (even if his hips are down) or if he turns his hips to run vertical.
If the safety does either of those, then the quarterback should reset to the over. He needs to get his eyes to the over route rather than a defender to stay on time. Therefore the play needs a reliable flat control. Here, the Patriots run a free release swing with their running back to the side of the post. Should the quarterback feel the flat defender under the over, he should get the ball to the swing.
Now on to the two examples.
1st & 10 at the -49 (10:52 1Q)
Offensive Concept: 11p 2x2 Post Double Overs
Defensive Structure: Even Open Zone
Breakdown: The Ravens do their best to disguise their coverage as closed. The Patriots’ shift from 3x1 to 2x2 doesn’t cause any Raven to follow so Maye should feel confident it’s going to be zone. In addition, all defenders eyes are on him.
Conversely, I’m not sure there was much there for him to catch the closed to open disguise. The left safety pre-snap is over to the left, but right before the snap starts to cheat toward the middle.
The post isn’t going to be there most often against closed so the quarterback needs to either confirm they stay closed at the snap and then be prepared to work the over to the swing off the flat defender.
As we’ll see with the next clip, I believe the Patriots convert the post to a go route against closed coverage. So if it were man, he could work there in place of the post.
It appears that Maye’s eyes are right down the middle as he starts his drop so I’m sure he saw the disguise unfold. If so, he take his eyes to the near safety and track him until the back of his drop.
Maye probably moved on once he saw the safety turn his hips to get vertical. The free release swing from the running back took care of the flat defender by design so then all Maye had to do was wait for the over route to come into his vision.
The near safety’s reaction was really quick being able to come back to the over right at the catch. Nonetheless it was too late. I wonder for a moment if that meant Maye had the post, but I don’t think you can bank on those hips getting vertical like that and take the post. Therefore, the safety appears to have been in the perfect middle position. A perfect ball by Maye and strong hands from Stefon Diggs eliminate the fast instincts, however.
3rd & 3 at the -32 (9:05 2Q)
Offensive Concept: 11p 2x2 Post Double Overs
Defensive Structure: Even Closed Man
Breakdown: The Ravens showed closed pre-snap again, though now they are showing man too. It’s 3rd and 3 so that makes sense. Even if they’re disguising, Maye should’ve felt comfortable being able to deal with it.
Runaways are a great man answer so now both over routes are great options. Additionally, though I have no evidence other than these two clips, I’d bet that the Patriots convert their posts to go routes against closed as the field side number one receiver’s route is the only main difference on this concept compared to the last. The other difference is that the running back is on a chip release to the swing rather than the free release.
Neither here nor there though as Maye appears to be thinking about the overs. The go route is perfectly viable given that he’s one on one and doesn’t get bullied at the line, but Maye doesn’t like it pre-snap for some reason as he never looks that way post-snap. Instead, Maye appears to lock in to Diggs route and after about two to three resets he lays out a beauty on the hash.
This play call on 3rd and 3 at your own 32 yard line is fantastic. That fact must lend credence to their strong belief in the play. They’re not really at a spot on the field where going for it on 4th is obvious, so their mindset was this play better work or we’re punting. They obviously do the job and pick up about 30 more yards than necessary.