A Simple Way to Shallow Cross

by Andy Talley, Head Coach & Dave Clawson, Offensive Coordinator Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania
1998 AFCA Summer Manual Andy Talley, Head Coach Villanova University was the only regular season undefeated I-AA football team in the country. Our offense had a lot to do with our great season. We averaged over 40 points a game, and along the way, developed a great wide receiver who went on to win the Walter Payton Award. The Villanova offense was led by Offensive Coordinator Dave Clawson and assistant coaches Mark Ferrante, Sam Venuto, Stan Drayton, and Drew Maginnis. This group worked tirelessly from week-to-week to come up with the subtle changes that are so necessary in any offensive game plan. I have never been hung up on statistics. The only one that matters as far as I am concerned is points scored per game. In 1997, our offense was one of the very best in the country at scoring points. We appreciate the opportunity to share some of our passing principles with you. Dave Clawson, Offensive Coordinator At Villanova, we rely heavily on our five-step dropback passing game. In doing so, we have always subscribed to two basic principles of attack in throwing the football. The first is that we want to attack zone coverages by running routes that give us a horizontal and/or a vertical stretch on a potential zone defender. The second basic principle is to attack man coverage with separating patterns. Within every dropback pass we call, there is a zone-stretching component to the play as well as an answer to man coverage. The post-snap reaction of a particular defender clues the quarterback to the nature of the coverage, and the recognition of zone or man starts the progression. Apart from a scheme philosophy, a second goal we try to accomplish is to create mismatches through personnel in the passing game. This can be done through alignments, motions, or the route being run. With the great job defenses now do with reading and matching up against routes, the defender who becomes responsible for matching up with the route becomes more important than the route itself. In our offense, we try to force defenses to match their linebackers against our X and slot receivers as much as possible. A major part of our passing game is focused around a variety of crossing routes we run that stretch zones and run away from man coverage. One of our most effective and productive shallow crossing routes has come off of our vertical game. Like most teams in the country, we have a vertical route series that attempts to stretch a cover three or a man-free single safety down the seams or a cover two safety from the hash to the boundary (Diagrams 1 and 2). We have always given our receivers simple landmarks. The outside receivers work their best release to a point one yard from the bottom of the numbers. The inside receivers work the seams at a landmark of two yards outside the hashes. The critical exception to this rule is against a two-deep boundary safety, the inside receiver can cross the hash in an attempt to force the safety to open his hips, to get a better horizontal stretch on the safety. These concepts have been effective in attacking traditional two and three-deep coverages. However, with the amount of quarters and man coverage that are being played from two-safety looks, the man-beating concept of working the best match-up became a very low percentage throw, as defenses played the straight vertical game extremely well. To better attack man and match-up zone coverages, we developed a delay series off of our vertical routes. To do this we would simply call 79 (our four verticals) and tag the delay route. As an example we could call 79 X-Delay. (Diagram 3) The delay series is primarily run out of balanced one-back sets, where the threat of four immediate verticals forces defenses into two deep safety looks. The rules for the delay series are easy. All receivers run their normal routes with two exceptions. The first is the receiver who has been tagged with the delay should push vertically up the field to a depth no deeper then 4 yards. While doing so, he should eyeball all linebackers for man coverage keys. For example, a blitzing Will or Sam linebacker would clue the X receiver to a possible man coverage situation. (Diagram 4) If the X receiver sees no man clues, he stems his route up to 4 yards and comes inside underneath all linebackers. If the X receiver recognizes man coverage, he shortens the vertical stem and looks to immediately separate from the corner in man coverage. The other exception is the inside receiver away from the delay tag. The seam route away from the delay becomes a seam read. Against a deep third center field safety, he will keep his original landmark of two yards outside the hash. This would include any two-deep looks that rotate to a single deep free safety post snap. If the coverage remains a form of two-deep, the inside receiver on his seam read will climb the linebacker over him, and look to break the seam route off at a depth between 14 and 16 yards. If the inside receiver recognizes man coverage through a blitzing linebacker or man coverage technique by the safety over him, he will attack the outside shoulder of the man safety and attempt to close the cushion before looking to break the route off in a separating manner between seven and eight yards. This makes him a possible hot read against any linebacker blitz. These two simple adjustments give us our answers versus man and zone. For example, if the team stays in some type of cover two zone or a quarters coverage, we have a good vertical and horizontal stretch versus a middle linebacker, which also gives us the personnel match-ups we look for. Against any type of rotation to a three-deep zone, we still have two seam routes to stretch the center field free safety. If the coverage becomes some type of man-free on the snap, we have an excellent separating route with the X receiver running across the field. Finally, we feel good about our blitz answers with good recognition by the slot and X receiver and their route conversions.

Quarterback Read The quarterback takes a five-step drop and his reads are similar to the vertical game. First, he will key read the free safety for any type of rotation. If the free safety rolls into the deep middle third or jumps into the middle of the field to hunt up crossers in a robber coverage, the quarterback immediately looks to stick a quick seam route away from the rotation (Diagram 5). If the free safety works for depth on the hash, the quarterback then progresses his read to the middle linebacker, where we have a basic high/low stretch working with our delay route and the seam read. Finally, if the safety screws down and is playing a man technique on the boundary inside receiver, the quarterback should recognize pressure, and look to hit the field slot hot or the delay route separating from the corner. Other Delays From this simple framework, we can design many other seam delay combinations where the same zone stretch / man separate philosophy remains intact with virtually the same progression for the quarterback, but changing up who has the delay route and rules and the direction from where the seam read comes from. Shown below are two of our most popular combinations, Right-In 79 Y- Delay and Rob 79 H Delay (Diagrams 6 and 7). Conclusion It has been an honor to represent our staff in writing for the AFCA Summer Manual. We hope some of these ideas can benefit your program as so many of the previous manuals and articles have helped us tremendously. If we can ever help, please do not hesitate to call.