Play Breakdown: Chiefs Screen to Knile Davis Was Beautiful
In the third week of the preseason, you rarely see really well-designed, complex plays if only because offensive coordinators want to hide it. If not, then they want to evaluate their players in an environment that makes it easy; a simple play is easy to break down in that regard. Andy Reid didn’t do that because he enjoys fun.
The Chiefs ran a play-action, fake reverse screen to Knile Davis and moved three or four Vikings out of the play entirely, and created some awkward blocking angles to do it. At the same time, they still gave themselves options if the screen wasn’t there for them or pressure arrived too early. At a glance, the play looks like this:
That’s a lot of lines, which doesn’t help anyone, but there you go. The loop in the “F” route designates that the fullback looked back for the pass, in case the pressure arrived too early on the screen or the left tackle couldn’t bat the defensive end inside. The “Z” on the fake end-around is an available receiver if the Vikings don’t bite on it and they crowd Davis at the point of attack. But the first option was the one that worked out for them in the end.
Incidentally, the “Y” has what looks like an insanely difficult block on Anthony Barr, but it’s actually far easier because Barr is expected to move to contain the end-around. Here’s a video poorly diagramming the play, and how the Chiefs got a few more yards than they should have, even with its excellent play design:
For a more complete recap of the game, head over to Vikings Journal, where I wrote about the Vikings offense and defense at length.
You must be logged in to post a comment.