Explosive Plays: Week 2, 2024

A ROUGH week for our 3 teams, but what went right?

This is the first time I can remember doing this series even going back to last year that every team we break down lost. Even so, there were still a few explosive plays for us to break down.

ZELDA

This rep shows the true chess match between top offensive and defensive minds. Zelda presents very similarly to Zorro, but the difference is in the front identification. Zorro is a “Mike Declared” play, a play where the Center is targeting the Mike LB with his combination. On strong/tight end side runs, that would generally be the play-side LB. Zelda is a “Will Declared” play, where the Center is targeting the Will LB with his combination. In my opinion, the magic in both of these plays is between the Y and the F in combination with the F coming from the backfield. The F is going to protect inside the Y’s block, ensuring a clear running lane for the HB. On Zorro, they will combo to the Safety (or CB, if Zorro Cat). On Zelda, because the Center is working farther back to the Will, the combination leads to the Mike.

Zorro is perhaps the signature two-back tag to Outside Zone for Kyle Shanahan. He loves it from under center with the F in Bump motion, normally from the I to the strong side. It’s no secret to defensive coordinators league-wide that when you play Shanahan or many of his tree’s branches, Zorro is going to come at you at least a few times throughout the game. Flores calls the perfect twist to pick it up. The problem for him is that Shanahan called Zelda, not Zorro.

Flores called for what amounted to a 5-2 Over front with defenders in the strong-side B, C, and D gaps, aimed at taking away strong-side combinations on Outside Zone. Personally, I don’t like Zorro unless the C gap is open. I want the OL to focus on sealing the front inside the play-side tackle and the Y and F to focus on widening the edge and leading through the alley. Hard to do that if the play-side tackle has a DE outside of him to reach.

Flores called this twist for both the DT (3T) and DE (5T) to spike across the face of the play-side guard and tackle, respectively. As the A and B gaps are now covered, the Mike can flow over to the open C gap. Had the call for Shanahan been Zorro, the Center would have had an immensely hard time trying to pick him up, whether trying to 3 man combo the twist or going “thru” to the Mike. However, because the call was Zelda, the F was accounting for the Mike, not the C. Now, the F never really gets hands on the Mike, but due to the twist and the DL getting completely reached, the hole was wide enough that the HB didn’t need to continue pressing the hole to deliver the Mike to the F. He simply cut once getting around the edge and made the Mike pay for leaving his feet to make the tackle.

ZORRO Z SWEEP

As I said earlier, when facing nearly any branch of the Shanahan tree, the defense had better be prepared to stop Zorro. Here, McDaniel has a nifty reverse sweep off of it. Similarly to Shanahan above, he calls for run action that presents just like they commonly run Zorro to create the defensive flow. Because Zorro is nearly guaranteed to get outside, they tend to get the HB outside faster through tossing the ball to him, especially under center. Here, Tua (pre-injury) provides that exact same toss action, but instead of tossing all the way to the HB, he merely pops it up for Tyreek Hill running a post-snap sweep behind the LOS. Hill gets the ball with about 25 yards of space to the sideline to outrun the surfing DE around the edge.

Lower levels may not run Zorro, but this is a really creative way to run a jet sweep-style play off of toss action!

If you are interested in breaking down the film for yourself, I do sell access to my Google Drive where I house the clips and their breakdown data. I use Tempo Video ($10/mo, not sponsored) to input game data every week so I can quickly sort by down, distance, play type, etc. This season, I am also going to do my best to tag the run plays weekly as they appear on the tape to me. I may do some general tagging on pass plays just tagging the base concept, but that will me more hit-and-miss than run plays. However, all my data is also available to you - game data AND tags that I input in Tempo. Subscribing to Tempo is not necessary to study the clips. It simply makes it easier. I do keep my spreadsheet in the Drive as well, so if you don’t want to add another subscription, the spreadsheet can serve as an index for the library to find specific clips as I tag them. The best way to access all of this film is through becoming a Founding Member subscriber to this Substack as you will have access to all my resources, monthly clinics, and film. However, if you just want the film and my data, you can purchase that here.

A picture of my film study experience with Tempo (not sponsored)

The difference between this and the new NFL+ Pro is that I will be tagging plays based off of my knowledge of this system, including shifts, formations, motions, and what the play plays out as on film, in addition to all the other data from the game. I’m not in the huddle and do not have access to their records, just a diehard fan of this system, so I tag it based on what I see on film, nothing else. This season, I am tagging the Rams, 49ers, and Dolphins as I believe they are the foremost pioneers of this system.

The Rams did not have a single explosive run in their loss at Arizona, so the rest of the article will focus on my favorite explosive pass plays from these teams this week.