Explosive Plays: Week 1, 2024

Explosive play breakdowns are back!

The NFL season is officially upon us, and that means it’s time to break down how the best offenses in the league manufacture explosive plays! Analytics show that an explosive play on a drive triples the scoring rate for that drive. Explosives don’t often happen by accident, so let’s dive into how the Shanahan/McVay tree creates them.

Discussing explosive plays has become more commonplace as a result of the analytics behind them, to the point where there are now a few different definitions for what an explosive play is. For the purposes of this exercise, I use 12+ yards for a run and 16+ yards for a pass.

One difference you will notice right away this season is I am not currently including the Packers in my breakdowns. Originally, I broke down the 4 coaches featured in “The Playcallers,” but I want to narrow the scope and dive deeper into the more popular schemes of the 49ers, Dolphins, and Rams. Here is what I think each brings to the table:

• 49ers: best Outside Zone scheme, 2 back run game, play action

• Rams: maximizing talent, 1 back run game, drop back pass

• Dolphins: creativity, putting defenders in conflict

In general, I plan to keep a similar format as we had toward the end of last season: best explosive run and best explosive pass of the week for each team with the best plays and a cutup of every explosive from these teams for the week being exclusive to paid subscribers. Sometimes, there may not be an explosive or there may be multiple that I feel the need to break down, but one of each is the general idea. Let’s dive in!

POWER

Mike McDaniel implemented a few new motions that I really liked in this game, but none of them led to an explosive run (yet). The lone explosive run the Dolphins had came off of one of the most classic plays in the history of football: 22P Power. Double Tight I with a single WR to the field, it doesn’t get more face-melting than this.

What I enjoy the more I watch this clip is the technique of the blocking surface. The RT does a great job covering up the 5T so the TE can drive him down. The back-side ILB comes downhill because the HB is correctly pressing A Gap before working outside, and the RT falls off perfectly to close the window with play-side leverage. Back-side, this is an INK adjustment: TE climbs to second level & Tackle picks up the DE. This could be teach tape for a back-side Hinge block. LT steps hard inside and disrupts the outside shoulder of the 3T to prevent him from beating the back block of the Center, and then the LT works outside to collect the DE as he tries to chase down from the back-side and realizes the play is inevitable.

The wrapping LG is who really makes this play work. Structurally, the offense has an issue: there are only 8 blockers for 9 defenders. At the lower levels, we would normally even the box with some kind of read. At the NFL level, this extra defender is normally held by a boot fake on the back-side of zone runs, but gap runs are harder to handle this player with because he’s harder to put in conflict. The LG makes it right by wrapping for the ILB and driving him out to the OLB, getting the OLB caught in the wash outside, and the HB gets skinny through the crease between the wrap block and the TRAM combo.

DAGGER THUNDER

I tweeted about this play the other day, but I think it still merits more discussion. At face value, this just looks like catching a CB in a blitz and throwing a hot hitch to the WR he is leaving, but it’s much more than that to me. They didn’t actually run their routes, but based on my knowledge of this system and the way the routes were distributing, I am convinced that the other eligibles were running Dagger.

One of the main reasons I don’t carry Dagger is ambiguity on what to do with the 4th WR. To me, Dagger is a 3 man concept: Basic-Go with some sort of underneath control route, generally a Shallow coming from the other side. Here it looks to be like a 5 yard Over. Either way, the idea is that the Go is going to carry the deep coverage, the Over/Shallow will prevent the LBs from sinking too far, and the Basic can be thrown between the second and third levels of the defense. It’s a concept that can be slightly tweaked/tagged and have answers vs. almost any coverage…but what about the 4th eligible?

That’s where I like this combination of the motion and what I believe to be a Thunder route, which has a few more nuances than this, but can generally be considered the popular pre-snap alert/access/gift hitch/fade option at the lower levels - hitch vs. off coverage, fade vs. press. It can be alerted vs. specific matchups or alignments, and if the Thunder doesn’t look clean pre-snap, you can feel secure in someone else getting open because of the answers that Dagger carries vs. many coverages. Even here, the Rams are running it from a stack, which is going to prevent the DBs from ever getting leverage on the Basic.