The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Lessons learned from the league's best offenses

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

The best teams in the league can keep their secret sauce secret for only so long. Teams are always hunting for an edge wherever they can find it, and it's never been easier to tap into how other teams are finding success. That's especially true on the offensive side of the ball, where you are holding the pen more often than not. So what can we learn from the best offenses in the league? Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen are joined by Bobby Peters, owner and operator of the Alert the Post Substack, to answer that question on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.Hosts: Robert Mays and Derrik KlassenWith: Bobby PetersExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...⁠Apple⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠YouTube⁠Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.socialFollow Dave on Bluesky: @davehelman.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassFollow Bobby on X: @b_peters12Theme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Really enjoyed today's show. We've done this a couple times over the years. I think it's a really good offseason exercise. Just going back and watching some of the best offenses in the NFL and trying to figure out what lessons, big picture-wise, we can take away from studying those teams. Here to have that discussion with me.

It's our old buddy Derek Classen. And we also invited somebody whose opinion on this, I feel like, is as good as anybody's because of the work that he does. And that's my friend Bobby Peters, who runs the substantiated. alert the post.com and also does a series of yearly manuals about the best offenses in the league. You can go to Amazon. You can find those books. He wrote guys this offseason on the Vikings, on the Lions, on the Bucks, on the Broncos.

So just really deep dive studies every single spring about the offenses he finds most interesting. So I could think a few people better that would have a better perspective on what these offenses are doing and what fuels some of the quality that we've seen around the league. So let's get to that conversation with Bobby and Derek about the lessons that we've learned rewatching the best offenses in football. This is one of my favorite shows that we've done over the last several years. It's just such a good off-season exercise, good off-season study. It's a good time to learn things.

And this is the right time to do it just as we get into training camp. These are the last few days of no football to react to. And so the last few days where we can kind of take a breath and do some more off-seasony content. Derek, have you done this with us before in other off-season? Or is this your first off-season or best lessons podcast? I think this is the first lessons podcast that I've done. Obviously, I listened to all the ones that you had been doing with Nate and all that stuff beforehand, but I don't think I've been on this particular show yet.

I'm excited to have you. And I'm excited to have our guest today because, in my opinion, he's the perfect person to do this with. Bobby Peters, from Alert the Post, a wonderful football substack if you are not subscribed. And a man who has written, I don't know, about 75 guides to the best. offenses in the NFL over the last five years or so. Bobby, how you doing, my friend? Pretty good. Pretty good. Thanks, Robert. It's an absolute joy to be joining you guys for this discussion. How many of these have you done? And when I refer to these, every offseason, you do like deep dive, full game planning guides for the offenses that really just interest

you most, the ones that you found most compelling from the previous season. So this offseason, you did which teams? So the total number I've lost count. But this year, I think I did, as I'm looking up at my stack here, I think I've got eight done. So I did game planning books for the Packers, Rams, 49ers, and Dolphins. And then I did the full complete offensive manuals, which is more of like a concept-based approach for the Buccaneers, the commanders and the Vikings. And then I also just finished up a Broncos game planning book. I wasn't planning on doing that one, but I was really enjoying a lot of the stuff Sean Payton put together last year. So I'm like, I got to take off with this one and just finish this one up before training camp starts.

What makes me so happy about this is that we don't talk about this. We don't talk about which offenses you should be doing. You ask me sometimes, who do I think is doing interesting stuff and we bounce stuff off of each other? But you do this mostly independently. And if I had to pick the offenses that I would want to study in terms of what are they doing, what can we mine, what are the offenses that are building concepts and ideas that other teams should steal from, those are probably like the eight to nine teams I would have

picked. So it seems like you were the perfect person to include in this conversation. Yeah. No, and I think the fascination lies with doing more with less, right? I think initially, I remember a couple years ago, one of my favorite ones I did was I did a complete manual and then a game planning book on Ben Johnson's Lions. And at the time, Jared Gough had just been completely disregarded by, you know, McVeigh and the Rams. And, you know, he seemed to be playing even better with Ben Johnson. So I wanted to see, okay, what are they doing?

How is he, you know, one of the most efficient passers in the NFL? So just that general approach, you know, and not just quarterbacks, too, but even for the rest of the personnel. I think that's having that approach and that mindset, you can find the most interesting stuff scheme-wise if you're looking at it that way. So what we're going to do is you guys are just kind of going to go back and forth with the lessons that you took away when you went back and watched the bats offenses in the NFL from 2024.

Bobby, you are our guest here. We're going to let you kick this off. The first lesson you wanted to chat about as you studied the best offenses in football from 2024. So one detail, like you said, I studied about eight or nine in Extreme D.E. detail. And I think the one element of each offense that seemed to, even more so than previous years, was the elements of the screen game that just both the design of them and then the

technique from each offense just really stood out to me. Do you think that's more about you need a good screen game in order to fuel a good offense? Like the Bucks is the first team that comes to mind from you. We talked about their screen game all throughout last season. And if you look at like the total EPA generated on screens, they were the best team in the league. Like there's true tangible value in that. Or in your mind is this, if you watch an offense that has a well-designed screen game, it's often an indication that the other details on their offense are probably going to be pretty good too. Yeah, I think the latter is very true. I think when it comes to coaching, when it comes to coaching, I think you have to put a ton into the screen game. There's so many

different elements and so many different moving parts that have to be acting as one, right? Sometimes, you know, past protection, you know, not, you know, the offense line doesn't quite know exactly what routes are going on downfield. But when we're calling a screen, all 11 have to be in sync. And I think a lot of the teams throughout the league, sometimes the details just quite aren't there. And you can see it on tape.

And teams that are good in the screen game, it certainly helps the rest of your offense. If you can create easy, explosive big plays in the screen game, I think it makes the rest of your offense seem easier. Derek, did you have a screen specific one? I did. I was going to, it was going to be team specific. And it was going to be the Bucks because the Bucks were far and away

the best screen team in the league. They did it more than anyone else. and they on a yards per play basis were like top three or something like that, which when you're doing it that often is pretty impressive. I mean, they were calling, and I'm talking about specifically running back screens. And I don't know if Bobby, that's exactly what you were talking about too, because some teams were more receiver screen oriented. Like the Broncos are actually, they throw a lot more to the perimeter with their receivers,

even with some of their tight ends, whereas the bucks I felt were more of a, we're getting it out to the back. And really, the Arizona Cardinals were the only other team that I thought was like super high on that list. And what I kind of find fascinating about those two teams, specifically being like the heaviest running back screen teams in the league is there also some of the heaviest gap scheme run games in the league so like they are very used to having these linemen who can get out into space and move and like use these different uh pull techniques that might not look like

a screen at first and then you realize halfway through the play oh god this guy's actually not going out in space to on a run play he's he's leading out the running back on the perimeter so i just thought it was kind of fascinating that if i were to imagine who are the two biggest like gap scheme run games in the NFL right now it's probably tians. teams like the Cardinals and the Bucks and for them to be the teams that were also throwing to their running backs on screens the most, I thought was pretty interesting. Is this really funny that this might be the biggest Canary in the coal mine thing you could have? I'm looking at the numbers right now, she's on NGS.

EPA per dropback on all types of screens. Here are the top seven teams in the NFL from last year. The Cardinals were number one. The Bucks were number two. The Lions were number three. The Bills were number four. The Ravens were number five. The Broncos were sixth and the Rams were seventh.

you can make a very serious argument that those are seven of the best like 12 designed offenses in the league, Bobby. Yeah, definitely. And Derek, I want to build on one of the points you were making about, I didn't even think of that, that the, you know, the gap scheme correlation with, especially running back like slow screens out of the backfield. I think, you know, okay, what do we have on a gap scheme? We have a kickout. What do we have on a gap scheme? We have a lead blocker pulling through the hole.

What do you have on screens, right? We set a landmark. We have the first offensive lineman is usually the kickout player. and then you've got a second offensive lineman leading up through, you know, the sidewalk or the alley, whatever, you know, you want to call it. And then you have a third lineman who's going to peel back in what's often called the rat killer on the screen. And there's a, you know, your lineman being able to move in space, the kickout technique and then the ability to lead up inside of that kickout block. The, like you said, the mechanics of it are pretty similar. Yeah, it's about as close as you can get to like a passing game play easy type of thing to what you would simulate in the run game.

And that's why I think a lot of the teams that are like super heavy zone, outside of maybe the lines, I think they're more of a zone team than people might realize. But outside of them, it's like a lot of the zone teams maybe aren't as good or it's a little bit trickier for them to find the true running back screen stuff, whereas these gap scheme teams, it's like, we just have the linemen for this, man. We're ready for it. As we go through some of these individual teams, Bobby, what sticks out to you about the buck screen game specifically when you go back and study some of the details of it?

The bucks date. So they were definitely really good at running back screens. but some of their tunnel screens were incredible too. Like I just, you know, unique designs and obviously the execution. Like I remember there was one screen they called once against the Raiders and then once against the Panthers in one of their matchups where it was a wide receiver tunnel screen to a trips look. So they're throwing the ball out to the number one, so the outside receiver. And then, you know, the other receivers, usually they'll typically block like, you know,

the most dangerous man or one will go take the linebacker. Well, what they did was, and especially in the Raiders matchup, they saw it was cover zero. So they ran like crossing routes. so they were crossing across the field to take the man coverage defenders away. So all we really needed was one kickout block. I think it was a 30-yard touchdown in that game. And it was one of the easiest walk-in touchdowns I think I saw in tape all season. And that's a creative adjustment.

Usually, you know, some of the Andy Reid guys, they'll use, they'll run like a drive concept paired with a running back slow screen going the other way. But usually on these quick tunnel screens, the receivers at the point of attack are blocking. So that was one of the first times I saw that. And that really jumped out to me as a unique element. And there was a few other ones, too, within, you know, the tunnel screen category. And then some of my favorite screens, the Bucks also ran really well, were what I call filter screens. So they're called, more generically, their gaps screens.

So the offensive line will like kind of gap block away. Okay. So the running back or tight end whoever we're throwing the screen to is going to one 1,000, 2,000 block the in man on the line of scrimmage, shed him and then turn inside. And then the place I tackle will down block away for two or three counts. And then he'll end up being the kickout block. And the Bucks had, I think, a low red zone touchdown against Baltimore that looked, absolute clinic teach tape running that screen.

So they ran a lot of different screens and they executed them all really well, which is something you rarely see. The Chiefs loves doing that with their tight ends too. Like that what you just described where he'll filter out for a second, kind of block, kind of block. Ah, he's actually the screen player. They love doing that. And then Washington was also a team that used a ton of screens.

And for them, it was a lot of wide receiver screens. And, you know, this is an offense that, again, you talk about doing more with less. I think that's why what Cliff and Bobby Johnson and that entire staff did last year, stuck out to everybody just because we went into the season not really having a high opinion of the overall talent level on that offense. And we're talking like a top five or six offense according to a lot of metrics. And when you watch that screen game from last year, Bobby, in Washington, and you try to project it moving forward, what sort of role do you think that element has and what

that Washington offense was and what they want to be? So I can't wait to see how this expands next season, especially with Debo coming into the fold now, too. So last year, they ran, why does you were tunnel? screens, I believe it was 37 times an average like five and a half yards per play on them. And, you know, looking at the tape, I'm like, they left a lot of meat on the bone here. There was a lot of times where, you know, the kickout block quite didn't just make it. You know, the receiver didn't work inside the landmark as far as he should have.

Or, you know, little things like that, like, oh, man, if they just, if they were like a step quicker on this, they could have really busted something here and really gotten explosive. They, I mean, Cliff is insanely creative with his backfield actions and his alignments to get to these types of screens. but the different actions from the offensive line really stuck out to me. So one of the main ways to run these quick tunnel screens is you'll have your playside tackle and your play side guard pass set for like a quick one count. Okay, let the defender get upfield and then shed them and then they'll be the kickout

and lead players, right? That's one way to do it. Another way to get to these quick tunnel screens is have the offensive line block outside zone away for three hard steps. And then the same thing, playside tackle and play side guard will end up leading out. And you can get some big plays there if you're playing a defense where their linebackers are fast flowing to zone action, right? And you don't necessarily have a, you know,

a quarterback that you really want to, you know, get on the move going back the other way on a keeper for whatever reason. Those two, and then they got to them off gap, like gap run actions too. Like they would fake trap going the other way or fake power going the other way and then use the center as the first kickout block. And then the backside guard would be the lead guy. And then they would even fake some of the more beautiful ones. There was one against Baltimore that I loved in the red zone that they called off GT counter.

So their backside guard, so the guard and tackle to the same. side of the screen would pull. So now our center and backside guard are the ones kicking out and leading coming all the way across the field. That was a really, a really fun one to see. So they block them and they dress them up really well. And I think if they nail down the details a little bit more this year, I think we can

see a huge explosion and their efficiency on them. All right, Derek, let's get to your first one. The number one lesson you took away rewatching the best offenses in the league from last year. Well, I think we can kind of keep on the theme of Washington. But I had two teams here for what I'm going to say. And like, to me it is, and Robert, we talked about this. a million times during the season.

The value of protecting your offensive line. Like there are some teams where they don't have to protect the offensive line. The offensive line allows them to do other things. Whereas like the 2023 lions come to mind. The Eagles for however long. It's like their offensive line allows them to do things. But when I watch teams like Denver and Washington for different reasons, they do a very good job of insulating their offense from mistakes.

Their offensive line from mistakes, by the way that they're mixing up their protections, using chips and stuff like that. there's a stretch that I was rewatching to try to, I was trying to find like a very good like example that I could use for this specifically, even though we saw this all throughout the season, in one of the games that Washington played against the Giants, I think it was maybe week nine. There's a little stretch there where one play they have both tight ends to the left side.

And they slide the entire line to that left side so that the two tight ends just take the end. Everybody else squeezes everyone else. And then they let the running back be, take the edge player on the right side. So you've just got like, you kind of wad up the middle of the offensive line. So they're not having to think as much about like, where are the twists coming from? Where are the backers? Like there's just no space for those guys to even get in.

Like it just doesn't matter. And Jaden Daniels was able to rip. I think you threw like a 12 yard come back to the field. It was a really nice throw. Shortly after that, they go under center and they run play action with like G, H counter, like with the tight end. And they use that as like a way to just get, instead of having your tight end to the left. side, they like obviously pull him and make it look like counter. And so now they've got more of their protection help to the right side. And it's just one of those little things that I think stuff

like that, they did a really good job with consistently mixing up where their help was coming from. Because like it's one thing to say, oh, we use a lot of six and seven man protections. But if you're not mixing up who is blocking where, then like teams can just manipulate you. And it happened to them one or two games this season. But for the most part, they did their menu of different protections was awesome. This dovetails very nicely with something I knew Bobby wanted to talk about. Bobby, you had like an idea of percolating. There was kind of like a half-baked lesson that you wanted to study a little bit more

that was going to touch on kind of a similar idea, just what these really buttoned up past protection groups look like and just how almost non-negotiable it is in fueling a good offense. And I think one of the things that's interesting to me when you and I were talking about this earlier today is just it's not necessarily about the rules of your past protection unit, you know, being strict or anything like that. It's almost about being flexible and dynamic enough to give you options in past protection. I think Derek has alluded to that a little bit, but there are also more layers to how you can

have that flexibility and wield it when you're trying to just build your past protection plan overall. Definitely. And obviously, the rules are important, but like we were talking about, I think, you know, there's only maybe like three or four different ways you can build those rules. I think some of that is relatively common throughout the NFL and some family, you know, coaching trees kind of, you know, will bucket those rules, you know, in their own way. But I think like kind of what Derek was getting at, I think having diversity in your protection, having a deep bag of protections you can call kind of dissuades defensive coordinator from bringing certain looks. Like if you know, I mean, shoot, I could think of some teams that I've watched over the years where you, okay, they run their typical, you know, six man, you know, two, three jet protections, which is like the running back in the backfield, you know, your typical six man protection. like a SCAP protection where, you know, the running back's free releasing or you're an empty. And those are like their two main protections.

And they run those, you know, like 80, 90% of the time. If you're a defensive coordinator and you know that, you can game up either a simulated pressure or an actual pressure to get to the quarterback or to, you know, eat up the running back and pass protection. But if you're, if you're able to mix in, you know, other types of seven man pass protections or, you know, obviously, you know, we're talking about the lions. Like, I mean, they run so many different play action protections that, you know, they're really keeping defenses, you know, you know, guessing on that side of it. If you have a deep bag of all those different assortments of protections and you run them well and your sound on, you know, assignment-wise, you're sound on who's blocking who, I think you can really dissuade a lot of those blitzes because if the defensive coordinator, hey, if I don't know, I'm getting a guy free on the quarterback and I'm

bringing an extra guy or two, I'm exposing my secondary and I don't want to do that if I, if I don't know for a fact, I can get a guy free on the quarterback. One of the only things you can do as a defensive coordinator to dictate how the game will go to an offense is trying to manipulate protections. It's one of the only front foot things you have as a defensive coach. And I think as an offense, trying to do everything you can to make sure that defenses aren't dictating to you in that area of the game is hugely important. And Bobby, you talk about diversity of protections is one way to do that. But there's also an element of, are we making sure that even if we're having to keep an extra body in protection, are we getting four and five

guys out into the route? What does that look like to you and who are some of the best teams at making sure they're kind of having their cake and eating it too in this area. So the Vikings and the Lions are the first two that come to mind. Matt LaFleur up in Green Bay also does a pretty good job with this, especially when I studied them in 23. I thought a lot of the stuff they were doing there was real good. So specific to, you know, when we call play action concepts, typically, you know, historically, you know, there's seven man pass pro.

You're only getting one or two routes out. And we're not getting a ton of route distribution across the whole field. That's changed the last couple years in the NFL. And these offenses that are really efficient off play action, like I was saying, especially the Vikings and the Lions, they're really good at getting four and five receivers out. And if you're able to design your protection such that you can do that without like, you know, leaving, you know, an edge free for a nickel to run through or something to that sort, you're creating the same reach you would in the dropback game, but just with play action, right? So say, you know, the defense recognizes its play action. All right, they're dropping their linebackers into these dig windows.

You know, they're getting flat defenders under these deep bench routes on the outside. if you're a quarterback and your checkdowns are eating up, you know, in pass pro, you've got nothing to do with the football, right? So now if we're getting these guys into the checkdowns to kind of, you know, replace these defenders that are getting depth. Now we really created a full play for our quarterback to read. And it's a play that has answers for these guys. The Lions always jumps out to me. And you and I've talked about this for the last couple of years where they'll just have these designs where Leporto just be one, two beats and then just release out into the flat as a checkdown. And the timing of it marries up perfectly.

right so you think about just the timing and the mechanics of a play action pass play action fake you're turning your head as a quarterback you're looking at the downfield rock concepts that are unfolding if those aren't there then your tight end is releasing on that exact same timing as soon as your eyes are coming off of those downfield concepts and now you have an outlet for those plays the lions were doing that a couple years ago in a way that i just hadn't seen a lot of teams do that effectively and that's just one of the examples when we talk about how many options and how many safeguards is your play call are building in a way that you're building in a way that's just one of the examples when we talk about how many options and how many safeguards is your play call are building in into the offense for your quarterback. Those are the types of things that we're talking about. And I think the Lions have done as good a job as anybody over the last couple years of consistently building in those fail safes. And again, when we start talking about why is Ben Johnson the right sort of clay caller and architect for a quarterback and trying to teach him where his safe outlets are and trying to give him answers?

Those are some of the specific examples that we're talking about. And I think the last thing I would want to say is like the quarterback can also inform how versatile you can be in some of your past protection stuff. Specifically to me with like how much can they handle not having any extra help and just being in five man protections, how much of that can they handle? Like that's why the Bengals can play the way that they play. It's like they can handle Joe Burrow being in pure five man protections more than most quarterbacks because you know that he's going to get the ball out on time and he's very

quick to check down. And when he does it, it's not a wasted play. It's usually a very good play. And so I think your quarterback can kind of help inform that. And I think it's a thing that young quarterbacks often have to learn, which I think is kind of what makes Jaden Daniels pretty impressive, is that that's not something that he had to learn. He obviously we just talked about how much the Washington did to help their offensive line

with six and seven man protections. But they also did do a decent amount of five-man stuff because in the event that they did that, Daniels was very good at either one getting outside of the pocket immediately or he was just quick to check down and be like, okay, I know there's pressure, boom, we're just going to let it out. And it wasn't an issue. So I think the fact that he did that was impressive. and I think the biggest example of like how you saw this develop over a quarterback's career is go look at what Josh Allen could handle in like year two in terms of being able to handle the five man protection get the ball out versus what he does now. Like he's probably one of the best empty protection quarterbacks in the league right now because it's very easy for him to just operate the check down and do stuff like that.

We don't often think about that being a byproduct of like quick processing ability is what you're able to do with the protections that you're using not just how long the quarterback is holding on to the ball. and I actually think that's a very good thing to point out. Bobby, the only team we didn't really mention specifically with the protection stuff that I do think is worth mentioning. Derek alluded to them, but you've studied the Broncos a little bit. And I just feel like their, you know, their offensive line is full of good players. They've spent on that offensive line. Bowles is on a third contract.

They paid powers in McGlinchian free agency. I mean, obviously they've used some resources. Quinn Miners is now one of the highest paid guards in the league, even if he was cheap, you know, as of last year. But in terms of, like, all pro-level players, we didn't really believe that. about the Broncos heading into last season, and they had one of the best pass protection groups in the league. So what are some things just mechanically that that team is doing that you think is helping out that group and their quarterback as an extension?

So the short answer to your question is full slide protection. We don't see a ton of this in the NFL. So it's seven-man protection and drop-back pass protection. And I think coaches tend to stray away from it because I think sometimes it locks up guys in pass pro and they're afraid to do that and you'll leave an extra, you know, removing some of those checkdowns down the field. But one game that particularly comes to mind, just because I wrote about it for Alert the Post recently,

was their week three game against Tampa Bay, right? Todd Bulls loves to bring blitzes. He brings nickels. He brings safeties. So how do we account for this best while still, you know, making sure our young quarterback, you know, Bo Nix and his third start, how do we account for this for a young quarterback?

And full slide protection is probably the best answer when we're in drop-back situation. So what that means is, you know, say you got your tight end and you're running back to the right side in shotgun. The offensive line is going to slide to the left. So the open side of the formation, right? We're going to leave our, so they're going to slide to the widest defender, right? So our tight end is going to stay one-on-one with the defensive end or end man on the line of scrimmage.

And our running back is going to fit off of that, right? So he's going to work inside out from there. And if nobody comes, then he can run a checkdown over the ball. So what the Brock was like to do is Sean Payton over the years has been a huge, you know, choice concept, looky concept guy. And normally he'd run it from like empty protections. Well, when you got a quarterback in his third start and you got a blitz-heavy coach, but you want to get to some of this stuff on third downs, you know, let's full slide it.

And we'll give the quarterback an answer to the single receiver. If we get a one-on-one pressure look there, if we got a too high look, let's take advantage and run the choice concept to the other side. And they had some success with it in that game and then throughout the season, too. They ended up sticking with it, you know, as Nick's gained some more experience. So not being afraid to use those different answers, you know, some of those old school, you know, Sean Payton's got a deep bag of protections. But this was, you know, just one example of, you know,

protection that they made great use of for their young quarterback. And even kind of to that same point really quickly, the Broncos sprinted out a lot, like a lot more than other teams, which is like a little bit in the full slide family kind of, but they would just sprint out and be like the offensive line is not even going to be a part of this play, which is a very easy way to give them a playoff where, again, if a team is dropping back on average,

I don't know, 30 times a game. And you can immediately say three or four of those plays, you're not even involved because we're just sprinting out. That is a way to kind of like just mitigate the chances that you're offensive line even has a chance to ruin the play for you. Bobby, a lot of the teams that we're talking about here, you know, and we've talked about this before, just as a general idea, like you watch the, the dolphins, for example, and I think it would be easy for me to talk to my wife and explain to her why the dolphin's offense is well designed, right? It's overt.

It's very obvious. It's flashy in a way that you can kind of instantly understand and appreciate. The Broncos, I don't feel that way. Like the details and the quality of the Broncos' offense is much quieter, but no less important. And I don't know how much they'll come up in the rest of this conversation. So I wanted to drill down on them just a little bit. Like when you were trying to figure out and decide, I want to study the Broncos offense next. As an offense that maybe is a little bit less flashy, there's less motion. There's less of this like running a guy in motion through a bunch than there is in Tampa or

L.A. or some of these other offenses. What do you think kind of explains the quality of the Broncos offense, even if some of those aspects are a little subtler. Yeah, Robert, that's a great point and that's pretty spot on. I think the biggest thing is they're just so well coached in the details. They run a lot of old school classic concepts, right? Four verticals, scissors. We talk about the choice stuff. Some of their quick game stuff is, you know, we can trace back all the way to the origins of the West Coast offense. And yeah, they run this stuff and they believe in it. And you can tell they coach it up. You know, the ball always goes to the right place on time too. Their quarterback is well coached

and his what he needs to do. And the other thing, too, too is whenever they call a lot of these plays, like a lot of these downfield shot plays, like they always get the look they want for them too, right? So whether they're checks at the line of scrimmage or they're just game playing the heck out of them, they do a really good job of that. And like one of the ones that sticks out to me is that opening drive touchdown against Buffalo in the playoffs, where they call that scissors concept and they free up the outside number one receiver on a post route against quarters. And it's like, well, that's, you know, they just game planned up a touchdown, right?

That's the look they wanted, the concept they want. I mean, that's just as classic as it gets, you know, for beating quarters coverage over the top. So that's one of the, probably the best way I could explain it. And then what it made their offense fun for me this year was, obviously, we just talked about some of their full slide max pro tweaks that they incorporated with some concepts they don't usually, right, to kind of create, you know, to make the offense fit of rookie quarterback. And then they also mixed in a lot of other stuff too, like some of the stuff that stuck out to me were some of their pinpole RPOs, right? So they're pulling a couple offensive linemen with the run play going one way. You know, we're locking the backside tackle on the defense events or our quarterback doesn't get smoked.

And then we're running you, whether it be a bubble screen, or some sort of quick game concept to the other side of the field to take advantage if we get a look we don't want for the run play or even if we get a look that we want to throw the quick game. I think mixing all that together, it was a nice infusion of his old school classic stuff with some modern twist to fit it to a rookie quarterback and then also to kind of grow and evolve his offense further to. A rookie quarterback that did a shitload of that stuff in college. Like just little things that you're little tiny ways to make your quarterback comfortable. Either that's with well-designed classic stuff or. stuff that he's used to. And again, it's, it's not an offense where it feels as overt as some of these others, but it's just so clean and so kind of airtight that when you try to figure out,

why does this feel or look easy for some of these teams? With some teams, it's easy to do that. And with the Broncos, I think it's a little bit harder, but no less important. And Bobby, I think kind of to the point of like the details and, you know, catering to your quarterback, especially a young one, which I think all the best offenses do. It's something I noticed watching Denver and I wanted to get your thoughts on, was a lot of teams, especially from like the Sean McVeigh, you know, Matt Lafleur style of tree, they'll use the dig route as like a backside cutter. And so, you know, quarterback will go one to two and then he'll finally come back to the

backside dig and it'll be a little bit later almost on, you know, if it comes from the left side or they'll hit it on the right hash, almost something like that. The Broncos used the dig route a lot as like the first read into progression and he'll hit it almost immediately out of the break. And I just kind of thought it was fascinating that they used that route in particular differently than almost every other team does. And I wanted to know if you saw some of that as well. Yeah.

So I think to your point, so when they would call dig routes, it would be, like you said, it would be the front side, right? So a lot of their teams, they'll call, so like the way they got to it was through the dagger concept. And a lot of teams will still run dagger. But I think, like, to your point, I think with the Broncos, they never threw or completed a ton of true backside digs. It was more that front side dig with dagger.

So what dagger is, is the outside receiver is going to run that deep dig cut, like that 15, 18 yard end breaker coming from the outside. And, you know, you've got a clear out coming from the inside and then some form of hook control underneath, whether we're running a grab route from a tight end who's going to work out, you know, between the hash and the numbers or we're running a shallow from the other side of the field. And, you know, one of my favorite parts about studying Sean Payton's offense is dagger's always been a big part of his offense, but I don't ever remember him running it nearly as much as he ran last year. And there are some sweet variations that he got to. Like one, particularly against New Orleans, I think it was week seven, where they run it kind of out of like a cluster look. So not quite a bunch, not quite spread out. and they brought, so the number two receiver ran the dig, so the middle receiver,

and then inside receiver, the number three receiver, he ran the clearout. Well, what did the number one receiver do? He ran the bender or the crosser from that side. So now we're running just typical three by one dagger with the shallow coming from the other side, but now we're beefing up the concept against man. Now that man defender, that corner has to fight through all that traffic if he's going to chase that guy across the field. It was just such a simple adjustment to the concept where, hey, if we get pre-snap

indication, it's man. Like this good luck, good luck covering that bender. out working all the way across, right? But if we get zone, hey, it's just our, it's our traditional dagger concept, our high, low, read on the hook on the hook zone. This is extremely anecdotal, and I don't have numbers on this, but would really like to see them. The same way we talked about screens being like a strong signal of quality of your offense, I have a sneaking of like a sneaking suspicion that the best dagger teams in football are the best offense teams in football. I think about the lions. I think about the Vikings. I think about the Packers.

why I think this is actually directionally accurate and more than just like a joke is that dagger is a really effective way to create explosives in a too high world as it's gotten more difficult to do. So the teams that are really good at figuring out how to manufacture explosive off of that concept specifically, I don't think it's an accident that most of those are the best offenses in the league. Yeah, no, you're exactly right. I think dagger might be my favorite dropback pass concept.

It's to your point, like dagger, it's good against everything, right? It's got, you can, you can, you can, you can, you can, you can run it against basically anything and you're not, you're not in trouble. And at the same time, like that tweak I just mentioned, okay, it might not be great against man, but hey, let's add this little tweak here or there. It's so adaptable. Like, you can get to it so many different ways. You can run it from drop back, you know, in the seven step world. You can get to it in play action. And then a lot of teams, too, like, you know, like you said, the best teams that run it, they'll run like a mini dagger as well.

So it'll be like a five step version of it. So they're not pushed that receiver is not pushing up to, you know, 15, 18 yards. He's running like more of like, it looks like a. basic cut, right? A basic dig. So at 10, but he's not square cutting it. He's still, you know, speed cutting it. But there's just so many different ways you can get to the concept and adapt it and kind of play off of it too. So yeah, I definitely agree with your point as a lover of dagger. That's such a great point because like if, you know, if you just want to run it as like a two-man play action concept, you're going to end up pulling the backers by virtue of it being a run

concept. And so they're going to step down and you're going to have that dig window behind them. But a lot of teams, too, to your point, if they want to run it out of trips, you know, the two outside receivers will be running that dagger concept. And then the inside guy will just run like a little hitch, you know, pivot route under it to create like what I've seen called like spin concept. And it just creates this high low. And that gets the backer out of there. So there's so many different ways to like, all right, how do we get this safety out of the way?

How do we get him deep? And then how do we get this backer to step two steps up so he's out of the way? And you just create this, this void that again, all the best offenses are really good at throwing into now. The Vikings are the first thing that comes to mind with that is the Vikings running those dagger and like mini dagger concepts out of those like trips and bunch looks. did so often last year. We're going to talk about the Vikings a little bit more here in a second as we discuss how to create explosive past concepts. But first, we're going to take our first quick break.

All right, Bobby, what's your next one here? Your next big picture lesson as we're talking about what we can learn studying the best offenses in the NFL. So every week, offensive coordinators, head coaches, they're looking to create explosive plays. They're trying to, you know, watch college tape. They're watching their own tape. You know, maybe not so much college tape during the season, but they're watching tape across the league. Okay, who's creating the most explosives and how are they get into it? And the Vikings were head and shoulders above the rest of the NFL with regard to this. They do such a good job of tweaking base concepts that are pretty common in like the Shanahan-McVeigh-World to get to these explosives. Yeah, so the Vikings last season,

they had 35 completions of 20 plus air yards, which was the most in the NFL. The league average was 22. So just think about that for a second. Essentially, the Vikings are getting one more of those plays a game than the league average team. That's unbelievably important. It's two first downs that they're just like creating out of thin air more than anyone else. And if you look at the percentage, the percentages of scoring on a drive where you get an explosive, if you have six drives a game and you're averaging one more 20 air yard completion per game than the average offense in the NFL, just think about what that means stacked up

over the course of an entire year. So they just did such a great job of finding these plays and pushing the ball down the field. And, you know, I think, Bobby, one of the things I found really interesting when you and I have been talking about this in the past is that they just don't accept what the general conventional wisdom is about how you create explosive off some of these concepts. So they'll run like a smash concept where there's like a hitch route or some sort of like return route underneath and then a corner from the inside receiver on that side behind it. So you're trying to find the corner route on that play for an explosive. But if you watch the Vikings, they've got like 15,

variations of that concept. So inherently, it's a decent way to seek out those plays, but then they've got five, six different layers to that in terms of how they're trying to kind of riff on that idea in a way that maybe other teams aren't quite as creative in that space. Yeah, no, in that example specifically, right? So we got that corner route. They do such a great job of creating the double moves off that stem.

So a lot of times, you know, Justin Jefferson sees so much too high coverage, so much help over the top. It's hard to create opportunities for him down the field. this was one way they would do it with that concept. So they would tag him on either what I call a cop route, which is a corner post, and he'd work back across the safety space, or he'd run what I call a POCO, which is a post corner. The POCO example, one of the best ones we could see is from week one to hit an explosive to him in that game. And then an example of a cop route would have been, I believe week five against the Jets,

I believe that was the London game. So if you wanted to go back and look for those explosives. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it's absolutely incredible. The amount of two high looks that they see because of Justin Jefferson, and they're still finding ways to push the ball. down the field to him. I mean, if you're a coach of any level, you need to be studying this on how to find ways to get your number one receiver the football down the field. Do you have any explosive play creation ones there? Am I stepping on any of the points that you wanted to make? Not really. A lot of mine were a little bit more, yeah, not specifically geared toward

explosive plays. But I do think, like, obviously the Vikings are one of the best example. And I think to me, it's more just not just that they're really good at creating explosives, but I think they are one of the teams that are very, because of Justin Jefferson's skill set, have realized that they're very comfortable letting their best receiver play from the slot, which that's a thing that's been happening for like five, six years now, but they probably weaponize that better than almost any other team in the NFL right now. So it's funny that you say that because when I was going back and rewatching all of the Vikings explosives to prepare for this, one of the things that jumped out to me is how many explosives they were getting. For me, they're a slot alignment or a tight alignment. So it's your number one receiver, but he's in more of a cut split. So if you look at it, Minnesota was second in the NFL in total EPA generated on vertical throw, so 20 plus air yards out of the slot, or a slot or tight formations, and they were

incredibly efficient at it. And so you take that kind of one step further, I feel like teams that are using these bunch formations effectively, and you can do it in a bunch of different ways and we can talk about that, those also are some of the best offenses in the NFL. So just looking at bunch formation percentages, period, last season in the league, here are some teams in the top 10 for their usage of bunch in terms of overall percentage of plays. The bills are number one at 21.6%.

The Rams are number three at about 20%. The Vikings were number five at about 19%. The bucks were number seven and the Packers were number nine. So those are five offenses that we think consistently are going to come up here in the top nine. The Ravens and the Lions were tied for the league lead in yards, per play out of bunch formations. So the best offenses in the NFL are either the ones using these bunch formations the most,

Bobby, or using these bunch formations more effectively than any other teams in the league. Yeah, and something, one thing I did want to talk about was it's kind of like a twist to the bunch thing. So something recently in the NFL, the last year or two, especially, and the Vikings are probably the best example of this last year is their use of what I call cluster formations. So a cluster is, and it probably gets in these stats, that you're pulling. They probably get fit into this category, too. So the category of bunch, that is. So a cluster, how I define a cluster is it's a loose bunch. So it's not completely spread out

and we're not completely tight to each other either. We're probably, you know, each receiver probably has about four or five, you know, maybe like four or five yards of separation from each other. And what these things do is they create some hesitation from the defense, right? So if the defense wants to stay in man coverage, say they have man coverage called, they're not necessarily going to check out of it because it's not a true bunch. And they could, they could still play man to it. But all right, good luck, you know, with these quick rubs and stuff that are going to happen right away. And at the same time, the Vikings fast motion to this stuff all the time. So they'll bring a receiver from the other side of the field and fast motion him. And they could snap the ball with him

as the number three receiver, the number two or number one, or even stacked behind somebody when they snap some of these. And, you know, if you're, if you're the defense on the side of the cluster and this guy's screaming across, how do you, and you're playing a pattern match coverage, how do you identify who's number two, who's number three, right? Who is the nickel relate to, right? All this stuff you have to kind of react to post-snap. So, you know, it has benefits against man. It has benefit against pattern-match coverages. And from zones, we can create leverage for routes this way, too, right?

If we want an in-breaker, say we're running dagger. All right, you call it from a cluster. All right, your number one receiver, he's going to spray outside. He's going to outside release. That corner has to, he's going to be outside naturally. So by nature of alignment, we have won inside leverage for our dig routes. So the Vikings, and then the dolphins a couple years ago, I think it was like 22 and 23. and Mike McDaniel's early tenure, they really pioneered some of this.

And I bet I think Kevin O'Connell just kind of took it to the next level with how they were backing with it. I'm so glad you brought that up with the bunch formation and some of the motions because that was actually going to be the next thing I wanted to talk about was like teams, the ways that they get defenses to not call man coverage. Because honestly, I think if teams align, if offense is aligned a little bit more static, it's not that defenses don't have the corners to just run with and play man coverage. Like the average wide receiver two in the NFL probably is better than the average corner number two.

But you could get away with playing like a decent amount of man coverage if teams were more static. But because of by nature of some of these tight formations, whether it's just the cut splits that you were talking about, Robert, or even some of these bunch formations, when you're tighter the formation, it's harder to play man. Because when the play snaps, you are that much closer to just running straight into a linebacker or there's just so much more traffic that man coverage becomes difficult. And then when we talk about some of these motions, especially with like the three. motions into the bunch, like the team, the Falcons did a lot of this, the Rams do a lot of this, the Bucks do a lot of this. It's all the McVeigh teams, by the way. It's all of the McVeigh teams, specifically. Like the Shanahan guys actually do this a little bit less, I noticed. It's mostly the McVeigh guys. And even like the Bengals were doing more of this last year with Jamar Chase.

Like it really is like the McVeigh guys started to love this. And again, that through motion into the bunch creates immediate traffic. And I think the hesitation NFL teams have with man coverage is is less that, oh, we don't think our corner two can run with their receiver two. It's like, no, it's sorting out these bunches at the snap of the ball when there's a motion going immediately. I think they have trouble with that. And that's why, you know, to flip it to the other side of the ball really quickly, I think that's why the lions were able to get away with playing so much man coverage is the way

they taught sorting out bunches and having a player like Carlton Davis. It was like, they were just kind of uniquely equipped to deal with that in a way that almost every other offense in the league just wasn't. I love this as a general point. And it's because there are some of these, like, quiet. ways where it happens. And I'm trying to think of the game. Bobby, you might remember it, but the Vikings last year had an explosive play that they created. And it wasn't a bunch formation. It was actually just a two-by-two formation with a tight end. And then the number one receiver was

in a cut split to the right. And the number one receiver ran like a big crossing route. I think it was Jordan Addison. And the corner to that side ran right into the linebacker because they created a pick with the tight end. So that's not a bunch. I mean, that's, but at the same time, you're still making it difficult to play man coverage because you're just cutting that split a little bit in order to get him closer to the tight end. So I think these really good offenses, whether it's creating leverage, creating traffic, they're just making things an ounce more difficult for the defense, even if what they're doing doesn't seem that hard to deal with. All right, Bobby, let's get to your third one here. Your next lesson that you learned rewatching some of the best offenses in the NFL is what? Let's go with working a concept to get all the receivers involved in the progression, the ball.

I think some of the best example of this are the bucks and the lions. The Vikings kind of fit into this. But I had just finished cutting up the entire lion season maybe a month or two ago. And there was one example of them running a dagger rail concept. So it's a variation of dagger where I made kind of a super cut of it where it's like a minute long. and it's every wide angle of Jared Gough hitting every single receiver in the progression. And it stood out to me when I was breaking them down because, like, you know, teams run concepts throughout the year, but you might not see a quarterback get to every single read in the progression.

You know, maybe just he doesn't, you know, he doesn't trust it. He's taken off before, you know, the pocket might not be clean. But to see that, you know, I'm sure it happens more often. But it just really stuck out to me. And what that does is, you know, if your coach creates a concept that that is all purpose, you know, in the truest sense of it, you should be hitting all these guys throughout the season, right? And that was just something that really stuck out to me. And that was probably the best example, but all the other offenses kind of have a form of that as well.

Bobby, I actually have a question. Would you say that the offenses that are the best at that also have the quarterbacks who have been around for the longest? Because that to me feels like something that the quarterbacks who understand where the answers are, the offensive coordinator would be a little bit more inclined to put in plays that, like, you can get to that. And like, that's why kind of why Jared Goff comes to mind. You know, he's been around for, I mean, what, he was drafted in 2016. He's, he's now played in multiple different offenses. And that was something in my opinion, he couldn't do when he was two, three years into the league. I think McVeigh had to hold his

hand a little bit more. But now that he has played for eight years and he's seen a bunch of different offenses, he worked with Ben Johnson for a lot longer. It's a little bit easier for him to feel more comfortable getting to the fourth and fifth read in a progression in a way that, you know, I don't know, maybe, you know, C.J. Stroud was great last year, but maybe he wouldn't have been as comfortable doing. Yeah, I think, I think, you know, generally speaking, that's probably true. One example that came to my mind of a young guy doing it really well was Jordan Love in 23. He, you know, whether it be the play action stuff or they're getting four or five out or some of their drop back stuff, he was working. You know, there's one specific concept that that

they ran that now that you asked me that, where, you know, they're running kind of that spin concept to the weak side of the formation out of empty. And they've got like a version of slot fade to the field. I want to say they hit the dig route on the spin, the underneath route on the spin, and the slot fade, and then the kind of the corner control route for the slot fade, like a little hitch route out there at one point, too. So it's like, that's an example of a young guy getting through it and working every receiver within a concept too. So I do think your point is generally true, though, because you gain more experience, you gain more trust. I think this is something Robert and I have talked about too. Like if the play caller and quarterback are on the same page and they're in sync and the quarterback trusts the concept.

He trusts the play caller. he's going to be more inclined to step up in the pocket and kind of move along kind of like how it's drawn up on the piece of paper. And so I think that's where my mind goes, Derek, is that I think the quarterback has something to do with it, but the Packers are a good example of this. And the Lions are good example of this. I think about the Vikings last year. For me, it's my view on this is based on conversations I've had with quarterbacks. And two guys that really come to mind are Jared Goff and Sam Donald, talking to Jared last summer, talking to Sam Donald before the season last summer. and just this idea of having a play caller or an offensive architect, whoever's in charge of dictating and articulating the offense to you, that can cleanly explain to you, okay, here's how we're going to try to manipulate the number one receiver to be open. If he is not open, here is your second, third, and fourth option, and here's why you would be going to those.

And here's the pace at which you should be going to those. That dialogue, that to me is like a non-negotiable part of being a good offense in the NFL. you feel when that dialogue is clean and healthy between the offensive coordinator and the quarterback. And there's going to be so many moments on this show that are just me like trying to build hope and optimism for what the bears are going to be. But when I think about the transition from the type of offense the bears had last year to the type of offense that the lions are, Bobby, that's the first place my mind goes, is just seeing how clean that dialogue seemed to be for the lions over the last couple years and how disgusting and muddy it clearly was for the bears last year. that's the biggest switch you can flip, in my opinion,

for going from an offense that feels disjointed to an offense that feels like it's clicking in clean. Yeah, no doubt. And I think even more so, and especially with Ben Johnson, so this is something that we can get excited on as Bears fans is the number one job of an offensive coach, the coaching staff, the play caller, is to get the number one receiver in the progression open, right?

So obviously we just got done saying we want to be able to work the whole progression as needed, but it's the coach's job to try to game play land that first guy in the progression open. And the Vikings are a really good example of this, too, where if we can build that trust and confidence in our quarterback that, okay, you know, seven, eight times out of 10 when you drop back, when that back foot hits the ground, you can let this ball go to your number one receiver. And you don't have to read the full field. You don't have to, you know, slide up. Our offensive line doesn't have to protect for an extra second or two.

So the coaches, conversely, the teams that do, you know, work the whole progressions well. At the same time, they're hitting that first reading the progression often as well. And that's something that just really sticks out. I mean, how many times we remember Jared golf over the last couple of years, that back foot hits the ground, that ball's coming out. I mean, God's and darn. Some of those in breakers, those guys throws, they're not thinking. And I mean that in the best way possible. Like, they are just, Ryan Tannahill obviously was like this at his peak where it's like,

there's no thought to whether or not that 16-yard dig is open. They just knew it was supposed to be pre-snap and they're very willing to make that throw. Bobby, when you're thinking about how to build the backside of concepts in order to make this easier for your quarterback and easier, make it easier for him to get to the third and fourth read and the progression. how do you conceive of the right ways to build those backside concepts? Like, are there teams that you've studied that you feel like,

whether there are certain routes that they're putting in, certain details on those routes, that just by virtue of design, make this concept a little bit easier on their quarterbacks? Yeah, so I think generally speaking, when we start to build a full field pass concept, right, we got like a two-man concept to our front side, right? So say we want to throw a choice route to Justin Jeffers,

All right. So say, you know, we think based on down and distance he's going to get a one-on-one. All right, so let's call the play. Oh, shoot, the defense brackets in. They rotate a safety down. They push, you know, a linebacker out of the box or whatever they do. They get two, they double team Justin Jefferson. All right. How are we building our backside concepts to work into our quarterback's vision to replace these defenders that have left to, you know, basically get a three over two on that front side? And, you know, we kind of start with a backside dig, you know, as like one of the more common ways. And then how you control the underneath defenders. There's a bunch of different ways you can do that.

Another common way, the Vikings and Bucks, you know, obviously McVeigh over the years too, has used what I call like a jerk route underneath. So like they'll run, you know, they'll make it look like a snag concept. So that receiver will sit down at four yards, stop. He'll kind of, you know, maybe kind of feel for a soft spot in the zone. If nothing's there, then he'll break in. So if, say, a hook defender gets under like a dig window on the front side, like a dagger or say like, you know, they squeeze a choice route,

okay, now we're working a receiver, you know, underneath into the quarterback's vision there. And then obviously the Shanahan guys over the years, you know, specialize in what I call that return route, right? So we're selling flat, you know, we're selling a flat route for like four or six hard steps and then we're working back inside from there. So there's a lot of different ways you can get to it. But basically the teams that are good at it understand that they're replacing space and working back into the quarterback's vision.

Derek, what's your next one here? Your next big picture lesson that you wanted to hit from studying the best offenses in football. Yeah, mine is a little bit more abstract and a little bit less pointed than some of the discussions we've been having so far. But mine to me is like, I think if you look at a lot of, lot of the best offenses in the league. There's a lot of value to having a unique pitch. And what I mean by that is like the handful of teams that I thought of when I got to

this was the bills leaning so far into six offensive linemen last year where they get their sick tackle into the game and they're just like, we're going to run the piss out of the ball. Like we're going to really lean into all that stuff. Get under center. Be kind of a bully ball team. That was kind of valuable in itself, but also pretty interesting in the fact that they could also like I said earlier get into just pure spread five.

man protections. Like the fact that they could oscillate so much and live in both worlds, I thought was super valuable. Obviously with the Eagles, it's something like the Tush Push. The Lions probably ran more trick plays than anybody else, which again is kind of hard to like, you know, it's not like, oh, this one concept that they do that they lean into, but they, it felt like once or twice a game. It was something that you had never seen before.

And then in a little bit more of like a repeatable way, Baltimore being the heaviest 12 personnel team in the league. Like just the fact that, I mean, and those are all of what the some of the five, six best offenses in the league. The fact that they all very clearly had one thing that if you were to game plan for 31 other teams in the NFL, you wouldn't have to deal with, but you show up to them on Tuesday meetings and it's like, oh my God, what do we got to put in this week to deal with that? I do think there's a lot of value in something like that. Another great example that comes to my, maybe not from last year, but from the last few years

is like all the 21 personnel you have to deal with when you play the Niners. So it's just like a page on your game and your playbook that you have to go to that you just don't really utilize for 15 of the other weeks of the year unless you're also playing the dolphins. And so it's a great point. It's just one unique thing that is not typically a problem for you that you have to tap into that week. And it almost inherently puts the offense at an advantage. And I will say, like, some of it is, it's a little bit of like a self-fulfilling cycle, right? It's like the bills can kind of get away with spending extra time being a six-offensive lineman team because they were already a good offense. But that's them building a little

extra thing to go from good to great. With the lions and being able to invest a little bit more in trick plays, well, you've had the same coordinator for three years and you're already a well-run machine on the down-to-down stuff. We have a little bit more flexibility in time to do something like that. With the Eagles, you obviously just have a very particular pairing with Jason Kelsey and your guards. Obviously now it's not Kelsey, but when they started it, it was.

And then with the Ravens, just for so long, they just drafted so many tight ends because that's what Greg Roman wanted. And now they live in this world where they can be more of like a pure past team. but they still have two or three really good tight ends that they can put on the field and be a very different offense. So sometimes you kind of stumble into it by already being good. But I think to that point, that's kind of how the good offenses stay really good year to year, as opposed to just kind of being these flashes in the pan that you inevitably get once or twice. Let's take one more quick break. And then I want to get back with the question for Bobby and then we'll hit a couple more

lessons before we move before we get out of here. So I mentioned the dolphins, Bobby. And I wanted to fit a conversation about the dolphins in here somewhere because you've shown a lot of interest in the Dolphins offense over the last few years. And it is a really well-coached offense. And they really do evolve from year to year in compelling ways, but that doesn't always include them papering over their weaknesses. So you'll see them kind of change from year to year, but some of the inherent flaws to the offense haven't been fixed, which I can't really say that about any other team where it's like, I appreciate what they're doing. but the problem still haven't been fixed yet.

It's like if you rebuilt the Death Star and you put like 20 more guns on there, but the same port problem was still there. Like that's what the dolphins are every single season. So like last year, they go from being this team that hits a ton of these chunk plays where they're pushing the ball down the field on some of these intermediate routes off play action to last season becoming one of the better like screen and space teams in the NFL in manufacturing yak for all of their best players. So they're doing stuff they've never done before, but again, they're not necessarily addressing what's wrong with the offense.

So when you think about how the dolphins have been built and how it compares to some of these other teams, what do you find most interesting about the overall trajectory from Mike McDaniel in that group? Yeah, like you said, over the last three years, they've been absolutely fascinating because like you said, every year they double down on what they're good at and they kind of build around it and kind of build like auxiliary stuff to complement those things. things, right? You know, like you said, you talked about, like those, those bang, those drift routes, those mini digs, those seven step cuts coming in. The deep benches, the deep digs off play action, that's stuff that they've found ways to protect over the years. And then my favorite examples are in the run game where they're running what a lot of coaches call full flow outside

zone. So think like eye formation, you know, think like with the 49ers, right, you got use check and kiddle both working playside, you know, the eye, you know, tight end and fullback working towards the play side. There's like 20 different ways you can do it, you know, and they do them based on game plan, but that's just the general idea. The dolphins do a tremendous job every week of finding new ways to get to those and finding ways to create double teams against the fronts they're seeing. And then their perimeter run game with like crack toss concepts and crack seal. Like defenses know these concepts are coming because they see them every week on dolphins tape

and they know they're coming. And yet Miami still finds ways to create leverage and space with them. So, you know, myself as a coach, right, like, okay, if I'm good at something and, you know, I want to keep being good at this, the dolphins are a great team to study from that standpoint. So I'll continue to study them just because, you know, I find that insanely interesting. But like you said, there have been holes in their offense that they haven't quite addressed. When you think about their coaching staff this year and the makeup of it and Bobby Slowick coming in to be like an added voice in that room, what sort of influence based on what he did in Houston.

Obviously, the Houston offense had tons of flaws. But we do this way too often where we look at an offense that has failed or an offense that has struggled and the coach that was in charge of that. And then he goes to get a very different job where he is just adding ideas and being another voice in the room as they build that offense. And they're like, oh, he's a terrible coach. Like, how can that work in any way? Which is not the right way to think about this. It's just a very different role. So as you think about some of the strengths of what Houston was in the passing game and some of the relative weaknesses about what the dolphins have been, how do you feel like his influence can kind of shape what we should expect from the dolphins dropback game this year?

So this is, this is by far my, my most interesting non-play calling higher on the offensive side of the football in the NFL this year. You know, maybe outside of, you know, some offensive line coach. I think what Bobby Sloa can bring to the table with Miami, if they, what he did well in Houston, marries really well with what Miami needs in their past game. And specifically, this is with like, you know, different types of five and seven step drop back past concepts in passing situations, right? We remember CJ Stratt, I'm sure you guys are, you guys are the numbers, guys, so you give me numbers on this. but when I studied the Texans in 23, a lot of their, they were, they felt like they were insanely efficient on third downs.

And a lot of that is just C.J. Straub dropping back, you know, five step, seven step concepts, reading out the coverage and finding the open guy. And, you know, Sloick and the staff did a really good job of designing receivers open within that progression for him. And that's something that's that Miami hasn't really done that well, you know, in passing situations, you know, like third mediums type of situations with Mike McDaniel. So I think if you can kind of infuse some of that design. within what they already do well.

I think we're really talking about an offense that could potentially take another step for an offense that hasn't taken that next step, you know, step, you know, the last couple of years. All right. We got one more here from you, Derek. Your last lesson that you learn going back and rewatching the best offenses in the league. Again, this is a little bit more abstract. But it actually is pointed to a particular team, or at least the best example of it, I think, that we saw last year.

But I think the best offenses are not afraid to be something different from week to week or even month to month as the season goes on. And I think the best example that we got of that was Matt Lafleur. Like, Matt, I think, I think Matt LaFleur. So if here's the way that I'm going to phrase some of the best play callers in the league, I think if I needed to get through an entire season who would be my best play caller, to me, it's probably like Sean McVeigh. If I had three of my starters missing and needed someone to put together the best play, uh, the game plan, I'm probably calling up Matt LaFleur. And I think what you saw from that last year was like, obviously in the Malika Willis games.

They did a lot of stuff with like almost turning into a triple option offense. But I think some of the most interesting little tweaks that they did throughout it was they got into a lot more like two back stuff, but not with another running back. They put Jade and Reed in the back field a lot. And they would do a lot of these split back concepts where they're either, you know, faking the behind the back give to Reed and then they're actually giving the ball to the running back or they're faking it to the running back and then they're throwing a swing to Jade and Reed.

And I thought they did a really thoughtful job of stuff like that. But then even as the year went on, I think. I think Matt Lafleur took that and went, okay, on some of those concepts, the fake to read is Jordan Love is completely turning his back from the defense and giving, you know, faking read the ball. And the Niners had done some of this when they had to put Debo Samuel in the game a handful of years ago. But then when they started doing as the year went on, is that instead of, you know, you've got run to the right, whatever the concept is. The quarterback just typically opens to that side and is going to hand the running back the ball. they did a lot of like if the run is to the right Jordan love is opening to his left and full spinning around and it was just one of these little tweaks that they did that you could constantly see second level defenders kind of pausing and hesitating

and I just kind of thought the fact that like Matt Lafleur was so confident just to be like oh this kind of worked a little bit in like week two and week three let's just sprinkle this into the offense for the rest of the year I just think having some of that like let's lean into this type of thing is I think a lot of the best play callers have a humility of like stumbling into stuff and just being like wait This is actually good. Let's keep rolling with it. Bobby, you wanted to talk about something that I think is a little bit connected to this when it comes to your last lesson. And that was just the idea of like these auxiliary runs that are kind of changeups within your offense. And Derek, I think that kind of stuff from the Packers in those Malik Willis moments

applies to that. And the Packers are one of these teams. The Packers are one of these teams that consistently has some of these really effective auxiliary run changeups. And I think you could say the same thing about most of the best offenses in the NFL. Yeah, no, and I wanted to bring this up because, you know, obviously auxiliary runs have been around for a long time in the NFL, but it just seemed like teams that were the best at running the football this year really leaned into these more. So taking a step back, like an auxiliary run is a run that we don't see every week in the NFL. It's not a huge part of the game.

It's not a huge part of the playbook, right? So like, when we think of NFL run game, we think of inside zone, outside zone, duo is probably the big three, right? And then power encounter kind of somewhere behind them, right? Those are kind of like the big five families of main run concepts. So like auxiliary run examples are like, you know, even like pinpole can fit into this, right? Your WAM schemes, your trap schemes, those are just some examples, you know, that of them. And, you know, they're so critical for these teams because, you know, defenses in OTAs in training camp see power. They see duo.

They see outside zone over and over. And they rep and they find different ways to stop them. But when you're in a week, like Derek, like you're talking about, when you've got a week to prepare, right? and you're going up against one of these defenses, okay, we can get really specific with some of these these different run calls that we can put into the game plan. And, you know, yeah, we only call these a couple, a handful of times, but these are the ones that usually end up being the explosives, right? Like, you know, we usually, you know, get a nice, you know, we could have a good average

or a good clip for outside zone or duo or whatever, but you're going to get your explosives on these auxiliary runs. And the best running schemes in the NFL made great use of this in 2024. Give me some examples. Like, what were your favorite auxiliary runs in the NFL? fell last year and who were the teams that deployed them the best? So a couple of examples. So first are the Lions.

You know, I'm sure everybody's talked about, you know, the Lions run game on third downs, right? So if we're seeing, you know, like a wide front, you know, where we've got two wide three techniques, two wide nine techniques, that's a great time to run the ball, right? And if we call a short trap into that, we can easily pick up a first down. And Ben Johnson, the Lions did a ton of that. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers with Liam Cohen, the different ways that they designed jet sweeps to get the ball on the perimeter were just a ton of fun to study.

So what they would do, too, is to get an extra blocker on the perimeter, to get to get a hat for a hat on the play side, you know, to account for like two high safeties, like a safety rotating down, what they would do is most of the time when they would run their jet sweeps is they would leave the playside defensive end unblocked. So when you're doing that, right, you have to make sure he's not going to blow up the play. And, you know, through the various designs that they got to it. It was a fun of ton to, it was a lot of fun to study. And the bucks had a pretty good average, average yards per carry on jet sweeps as well. And then another explosive example of this is over the years, we can all remember all the different explosives the dolphins have gotten off of like their end rounds and their reverses.

You know, on alert the post, the last couple of years I've posted cutups of, you know, full season clips of this stuff. And it's just absolute clinic teach tape for these end around. So, you know, when we say an end around, right, we're either we're faking a zone run one way or we're faking like counter one way. And then the receiver ends up carrying the ball after the play fake going back the other way. And there's a lot of different ways you can block them. And Miami utilizes a lot of different ways, you know, based on the different fronts and the different secondary contours they're seeing.

And, you know, all those teams I mentioned. And obviously, you know, the Packers kind of dove into this a little bit more too. You know, usually, you know, when I've studied them in the past, they're just straight, straight inside zone, straight inside zone, and straight duo. And like in 2020, that was their whole run game, right? Matt LaFleur last year got really game planning with a lot of different auxiliary runs that he was including in their game plan. So these were a ton of fun to study throughout the league last year. And I love this point because I think for the longest time, at least as long as I've been doing this job, we always conceive of like a lot of run game stuff is in service of setting up like play actions. And that's how you can get some of your explosives. But I think what you're talking about, Bobby, where like you can also use some of your base run concepts to get into the same formations and all this stuff to set up some of these weird or auxiliary runs that maybe it's just it's a different polar. It's your garden center instead of your center. Whatever the little tweak is, you are effectively setting up and calling this particular tool. tweak in service of trying to get an explosive.

It's not one of your base runs on purpose. And of course, some of that is because some of the angles you're trying to get to, to your point are like based on certain fronts and maybe you wouldn't want to run it into whatever this defense's base, you know, nickel set is going to be. But again, on some of these, you know, maybe it's second and 12 and they're in like a dime and, you know, weird formation. It's like, okay, well, that's a perfect time for us to do something weird. And so I really do think that this should be thought of almost in the same way that we

think of like trying to generate play actions through explosive. it passes. Well, and it's become harder to generate explosives off of play action because of the way that the defenses are playing, right? I mean, part of the move to like this Fangio-tinged world where we're playing a lot of shell coverage is that you're dropping guys down into a lot of those play action windows that should lead to explosives. And so I think a lot of these things that we've talked about, these are lessons about how you try to find explosive plays and explosive offense within the world we now live in in NFL defenses, double moves off of some of these play action. off of some of these concepts, Bobby Ware.

All right, it's something traditional, but if you're throwing three different versions of that corner out of people, that's a way to find explosives in this world. All these dagger concepts are ways to find explosives in this world. Auxiliary runs are a way to find explosives that have taken advantage of the way the defenses are playing. So in this current iteration of NFL defenses, how are we manufacturing ways to find explosive plays? I think almost every single one of the things that we have hit on today answers.

that question or serves that idea in some way. All right. That is all we've got for today. Bobby, sincerely appreciate you taking the time to join us today. Please let people know where they can check out all of the work that we have referenced on the show today. Yeah, the best place to start is my website substack that I started a couple years ago, alert the post.com up there at the top banner. I've got links to my cut up library and then, you know, like we talked about a lot. Like I've written a lot of books. Like I was counting up the pages earlier. I think I've written over 2,000 pages this offseason on the different offenses. So I think I'm going to take a couple weeks off here before the season starts.

But regardless, all my books are all linked. There's a banner at the top where you can click the book link and you'll take you to my Amazon author page. But also, if you just Google my name, I think my book author page on Amazon comes up pretty quickly on there too. And then I'm pretty active on Twitter. I like posting a lot of stuff. And I love discussing this kind of stuff on Twitter that anybody that wants to. So my handle on Twitter is at B underscore Peters 12. And yeah.

People always ask me, what resources should I use to learn more about football? If you were trying to find stuff where I can just learn more about the game that's adjacent to the conversations you guys have on the show, where would you point me? Bobby stuff is one of the first things that I mentioned. Go check out those books. Go check out Bobby's work on his website. So highly encourage you guys to get yourself a subscription. And again, Bobby sincerely appreciate the time.

Derek, I'm not thanking you for anything. You get paid to be here. You have to be here. I'm paid to be here. All right. We will be back tomorrow. For now, that's all we got. Appreciate you guys listening.

We'll talk to you soon.