RPOs and the Evolution of

the High-Low Concept

November 21, 2017 Mark Schofield

Like all of you, I have a daily routine. Most of it focuses on wrangling two young children
from the bedroom through breakfast, into their bedrooms to get dressed and then out the
door to get to school on time. In between those moments, and then for most of the day
afterward, my routine includes firing up Twitter, everybody’s favorite website, to scroll
through the unrelenting takes of the day.
In between the growing number of hills on Draft Twitter, the opinions flying about regarding
current NFL quarterbacks, and even the daily updates on the state of American government
from our 45th President, you can find some very illuminating and thought-provoking ideas.
One I came across recently stopped me in my tracks, and made me think. Which is usually
not a good idea:
help me out. I want to group concepts into categories:
Hi-Lo
3 level reads
Timing
Shot Play
Does every passing concept fit into on on these?
— betz® (@alltwentytwo) October 25, 2017
I thought this was a brilliant way to segment and compartmentalize offensive concepts.
Because when you boil them down, they can largely be put into a small number of buckets.
While there are countless numbers of passing concepts at an offensive coordinator’s
disposal, they can be largely grouped into a small number of categories.
At the heart of these is the idea of conflict. Fans of football, and the strategy behind the
game, often refer to football as the ultimate chess match. A major tenet of chess is conflict.
Putting your opponent – and more specifically one of his valued pieces – into conflict.
Where making one decision could cost him the loss of the piece in question, or even the
game.
Football, and the never-ending battle between offense and defense, contains numerous
examples of the same idea: Isolating one defender – one piece – and putting him into
conflict. Where making one decision could lead him and his team to surrender a big play to
the offense. This notion dates back to the earlier days of football. What does an offense do
on an option play? Identify an edge defender and put him in conflict between the
quarterback and the pitchman.
Spin this forward to today’s passing game. Take everyone’s favorite play, four verticals.
You can look at all the variations of the concept, running it out of 2×2 or 3×1, using switch
concepts, etc, but at its core you are trying to catch the defense in a single-high look and
put the free safety into conflict. That extends to running four verticals against two-high
safety looks. Then you look to the boundary and the combination of a vertical route and a
checkdown ideally puts one of the cornerbacks into conflict. Of course there, the
quarterback is likely taking that checkdown, but the premise stands.
Returning to the above tweet, high-low concepts are an easy way of identifying a defender
and putting him into conflict. Only in this case you are not bracketing him with routes on
either side of him, but putting one route in front of him, and one route behind him, and
forcing him to choose. Teams can do this at both the second- and third-levels of the field, as
well as along the boundary against cornerbacks. For the quarterback it simplifies the read
process: Look at the targeted defender, decipher his reaction, and throw accordingly.
Coaching manuals, playbooks and clinic presentations are littered with Smash
concept examples and variations, all with the basic idea of putting the cornerback into
conflict with a high-low concept.
At the 2014 Nike Coaches Clinic Mick McCall, who was and still is the Offensive
Coordinator and Quarterbacks Coach at Northwestern University, gave a presentation on
“Quarterback Drills and Third Down Plays.” He broke down the Smash concept and delved
into the idea of conflict, and reducing decisions for the quarterback:
The quarterback sees the flat defender and the safety. He reads from high to low. If he can
throw the hitch, he takes it. If they cover the hitch, he looks for the corner route. If the safety
is over top of the corner route, his focus goes to the backside.
When you teach the quarterback, he must eliminate choices. If the corner presses the hitch,
the quarterback reads 1-2. That means he barely looks at the first read and goes
immediately to the second read, which is the corner route. If the corner defender retreats,
he reads 1-2. That means he throws the hitch if he can. 2014 Nike Coaches Clinic Manual
pg 148
Now the Smash concept was not invented in 2014, and it dates back well beyond that. In
1999 Frank Rocco was the head coach at Shaler Area High School in Pennsylvania. The
Titans were running a spread offense with Run and Shoot elements and he spoke about
this – and the Smash Concept – at a coaches’ clinic. For him it was very simple for the
quarterback. On Smash, the quarterback simply reads the cornerback on a three-step drop.
If the corner plays Z on the hitch, he throws to Y on the corner route. If the cornerback
sinks, the QB throws the hitch:

Put a defender in
conflict, simplify the read and eliminate choices for the quarterback.
Let’s extend this idea down the field. Whether you call it Mills or Pin, the post/dig
combination is a perfect way to stress the defense – and the free safety – with a high-low
combination. The beauty of the design is that it works to beat zone coverages as well as
man coverages, but when you catch the defense in a single-high look you can truly put that
free safety into conflict.
I like to refer to this as Mills, as it dates back to Steve Spurrier’s days at the University
of Florida. Spurrier called this the Mills concept after Ernie Mills, a wide receiver for the
Gators who caught a critical 70-yard pass against Alabama in 1990, helping Florida to the
win and earning Spurrier his first SEC victory in the process. Here’s how Spurrier drew it up:
 Looking
at the coaching point for the quarterback, he reads the play Post to Middle (Dig) to
Underneath. The goal is to high-low that middle safety with the post/dig combination. If he
stays deep on the post, throw the dig. Should he come down on the dig, hit the post over
the top. Here’s that in action:

For more on the Mills Concept I strongly recommend this meaty piece from Chris
Brown on the design.
Now MIlls/Pin is not the only way to attack the free safety with a high-low concept. Before
his season cruelly ended early, Deshaun Watson was off to an incredible rookie season.
Many people – not all – but many questioned how Watson would translate to the NFL. But
Bill O’Brien found ways to play to Watson’s strengths while using passing concepts that you
can find in almost every NFL playbook. One of these was the Yankee concept.
The Yankee Concept is a staple of passing offenses. At its core it is a two-receiver,
maximum protection passing play that is usually run off of play-action. As broken down in
the Inside the Pylon Glossary piece on this design, it is generally a two man deep
crossing combo, with the underneath receiver running a deep over route, and the other
executing a deep post route over the top from the opposite side of the field. You can look to
stress the free safety with those routes, and if he jumps one, you can throw the other.
From the Glossary piece, here is an example of the Washington Redskins running the
Yankee Concept from a few seasons ago:
But Washington is not the only team that runs this concept. Before his injury Watson was
running this play to perfection with the Texans. As broken down by Ryan Dukarm in this
great piece on the Texans’ play-action passing game, the Yankee Concept is a core
component to their aerial attack. On this play against the New England Patriots, they run
the scheme out of an i-formation using 21 personnel:
This is your more typical look at the Yankee Concept, a run action out of an i-formation, not
a lot of window dressing here from Houston. Later against the Seattle Seahawks, they
added some window dressing. The Texans faced a 1st and 10 midway through the first
quarter with the football on their own 39-yard line. They line up with Watson (#4) in the
shotgun and 11 offensive personnel on the field. Tight end Ryan Griffin (#84) is in the
backfield to the left of Watson, and running back Lamar Miller (#26) is also in the backfield,
to the right of the quarterback. Two receivers are in a slot to the left with Will Fuller V (#15)
spilt alone to the left:

Prior to the snap slot receiver Bruce Ellington (#12) starts in Orbit motion toward the
backfield:

He will be behind Watson at the snap, and here is the offensive design:
Griffin blocks across the formation as Miller and Watson carry out a run fake. Ellington cuts
back toward his original side of the field on a swing route. Watson carries out a run fake
with his running back and then fakes a pass to Ellington on the swing route. All of that?
Window dressing for the Yankee Concept. Fuller runs the deep post, Hopkins runs the over
route. Watch as linebacker K.J. Wright (#50) gets caught up looking at the window
dressing before scrambling to cover Hopkins, who runs right past him:

The end zone camera has a great look at how the fakes in the backfield slow the defense at
the second- and third-levels:

But stripping away the eye candy, motion and play-action fakes, you have a route designed
to high-low the free safety in the middle of the field.
Now we can drop this down a level. We have examined putting cornerbacks and safeties
into conflict with a high-low design, so now we can look at how offenses stress linebackers
with similar concepts. Skip Holtz is the head coach at Louisiana Tech, and back in 2015 he
gave a presentation titled “Red Zone Production.” In that presentation he broke down this
play, which he simply titled “High-Low Linebacker:”

As Holtz broke it down:

We threw eight touchdowns on this route in the red zone. We align in a trips set. The
number-1 and number-2 receivers give the illusion they are going vertical. At 8-10 yards
they plant and come under the coverage. The number-3 receiver comes inside the strong
safety and runs up the middle of the goal post.
We high-low the Mike linebacker. He is the only one that can stop the post cut. If he reacts
back and gets under the post, we throw to the number-2 receiver breaking to the inside.
Most of the time the Mike stayed inside to cover the hook zone. The number-3 receiver has
inside leverage on the strong safety. 2015 Nike Coaches’ Clinic Manual pg. 133
Noel Mazzone, currently the offensive coordinator at Texas A&M and an offensive mind
typically associated with Air Raid concepts, gave a presentation in 2004 on “Scats and
Screens in the Passing Game.” One of the topics he discussed, Z-Shallow, attacked the
Mike linebacker again with a high-low concept:

The last thing that fits in the picture is the shallow routes. We have run our two-man and
three-man scat routes. We ran the mesh routes, and now we are going to look at the
shallow routes. The shallow routes are all run from 50 protection. Now we are working on a
high-low game on the Mike backer.
The Z receiver is going to run the crossing route, and he is never going to stop. It is
mandatory that he goes under the Mike linebacker. The Y receiver is running the stretch
route. He runs an outside release, and against man coverage, he works for a rub with the Z
receiver. Our X receiver runs the fade route. The backs run the free release swing. He is hot
off the linebacker to his side. The H back runs the hunt route. The read is easy for the
quarterback. All he has to do is read the Mike linebacker. As the Mike linebacker looks to
wall off the shallow route by the Z receiver, the H back hunts for the route. If the Mike
linebacker drops, he fills the void and looks for the football. If he blitzes, he is filling the void
and looking for the football. Coaching the Passing Game: By the Experts pg. 187
Now this has been a lengthy buildup, I know. But we have traced the ideas of putting
defenders at multiple levels into conflict using high-low concepts over the years in football,
and through various offensive systems.
Here we can discuss the next step in the evolution of this concept, and that is where RPO
plays come into the picture. In my view, RPOs are simply the natural next step in how
teams put defenders into conflict using the idea of a high-low design.
In 2016, Clay Helton, the head coach at the University of Southern California, gave a
presentation on “Coaching Vigilance and Run/Pass Option Concepts.” His discussion of the
benefits of RPO plays struck me:
We have been fortunate for the last two years at USC in that we had a young man by the
name of Cody Kesslerwho has been a tremendous quarterback for us. In fact, over the
past two years he has been the second most efficient quarterback in the country. When we
went back and looked at our 2014 season, his efficiency rating was 3rd in the country. What
I really liked was his touchdown to interception ratio was 395 which is key for us as far as
the success of our team. He had almost a 70% completion ratio. He was 75.4% scoring
touchdowns in the red zone.
We looked at it and asked, how is this happening? What we came to find out when we
broke it all down was we made the addition of RPO’s. With the run/pass option we were
putting Cody in great situations where he could decide to take the run or to take what we
call an advantaged throw to a very easy route.
When we looked at 2015 we called over 200 RPO’s, and 98 of them ended up as perimeter
throws, just under half. On those we had an 86% completion ration and averaged 8 yards
per completion. We had zero sacks and zero interceptions on those plays. We consider this
as part of our run game.
Anytime we put anything together as a staff we always ask ourselves, why are we doing
this? With the RPO’s we came up with this.
1. The ability to take what a defense gives us. Gives a non-running quarterback multiple
options.
2. Gets the ball out of the quarterback’s hands quickly. Should have limited sacks
3. Very efficient throws with high completion ratios.
4. Because the quarterback takes the throw only if given, and there is very little chance for
interceptions.
5. Allows us to put some of our best athletes in space.
2016 Nike Coaches’ Clinic Manual, pp. 118-119
Now, the numbers are impressive, but when you strip them away you see some of the
concepts already discussed with high-low concepts: Simplified reads, efficient throws,
eliminating decisions and mistakes.
Helton went on to break down some of their passing concepts. One was the “Slants Tag:”

He described it this way:

We are not reading off the alley player. We are reading off the interior backer. Why? What is
the alley player taught? He is taught to play outside of #2, and to make sure he carries him
or buzz him to the flat. We are going to beat you by the leverage of the defender and
throwing the slant route. We have an outside zone play called with a slant tag on the
outside.
All the quarterback is doing is reading the interior backer. When he flows because of the
zone action, let’s go capture the grass that he has just left. We have beaten the alley player
by the leverage, and we have beaten the linebacker by the read. This is a very simple read
off the interior backer. Id. at 122.
What is the quarterback reading? The linebacker, who is put into conflict by a potential
running play – low – and a potential passing play – high.
Here’s another play Helton drew up, the “Hitch Tag:”
Once more we see the same concept: Putting a defender into conflict with a high-low
combination. Only the concepts that put him into conflict are not a combination of passing
routes, but one route, and one potential run.
That is the point I want to stress. We hear often that RPOs cannot be successful at the NFL
level, and that they are a passing phase, and that quarterbacks who run these concepts in
college cannot translate to the NFL game. But when you strip away the bells and whistles
from them, all RPO designs are is the next step in the progression of an idea that has been
a focus of offensive football since its inception: Identifying a defender, putting him into
conflict, reading his reaction and working off it it. Whether it’s Tommie Frazier reading a
defender on an option play, Danny Wuerffelreading a free safety on the Mills concept, Tom
Brady reading a corner on a smash concept, or Baker Mayfield reading the linebacker on
an RPO, the concept and idea is the same.
“Okay Mark, that’s fine. But you’re talking about a limited aspect of the playbook that attacks
linebackers. Not exactly a paradigm shift.”
Let’s not forget. RPOs can be used on the third level as well, to attack safeties. Again what
you are setting up is a high-low structure with a run as the low and a pass as the high. Let’s
return to Helton and his discussion of the “Pole Route,” a red zone concept where they
attack the safety:

On the field side we tag some type of man beater with the two receivers. In this case we
have a pick/wheel. The quarterback pre-snap reads for man-coverage or zone to the field
side. If it is zone coverage or three over two, those two guys are dead to him now. He will
not look at them again. They are done. They were only live pre-snap.
His whole read now is based off the front side safety. We have a one-back power called
with a pole route to the boundary. The pole route is based off a MDM block; “Most
Dangerous Man.” In this case it is a crack-and-go to the goal pole or goal post. He acts as if
he is coming down hard on the safety and cracks him If the safety triggers to the run, he
runs to the pole.
The quarterback has a very simple read. He has a pre-snap read to the field. If it is dead, he
has a post-snap read of the safety. If he triggers to the run, the quarterback hits the receiver
on the pole route. He takes the area the safety just left. Id.
The central component of this play? Keying the safety, putting him in conflict with a high-low
structure, and then reacting to the safety’s decision.
Can this work in the NFL you ask? Let’s check with Dak Prescott from last year (a pre-
season game, to be sure, but still):

For more on this notion you can read this insightful piece from Chris Brown.
Football has seen fads come and go. The Run-and-shoot. The Wildcat (which lingers but is
not as prevalent as it was a few years ago). But some evolutions stick. Those that do often
harken back to the core principles of offensive football, such as putting a defender into
conflict with a high-low structure. That’s what RPOs do. They stress a defender while
simplifying the read process for a quarterback. So these are not simply some passing phase
of the game, but designs that incorporate basic tenets of the sport in a new manner. Rather
than using two routes to put a defender into conflict, you have the run as the “low,” the route
as the “high,” and a quarterback simply going through a progression off of that key
defender.
We can end where we began. When Mick McCall opined about the Smash Concept what
did he say? It eliminates choices for the quarterback. A high-low concept that identified the
cornerback, keyed off of him and eliminated choices for the quarterback. That’s all an RPO
really is at its core, and that’s why these designs are part of the evolution of the game.