Defending Pistol Spread RPO from 2 High

A popular topic this off-season has been the 2019 LSU Offense and the challenges it gave Defenses trying to defend it from a 2 High structure.  Defenses in recent years have defended the RPO (Run-Pass Option) game by bringing a defender into the box opposite of the Back to play the Run and having the defender to the opposite side play the Pass.

It has been said that the Will, Mike, and $ are connected by a rope or a chain.  I like to think of them as being defenders in Foosball:

You can see the connection—either the they all go Left or they all go Right.  There is no independent functioning with all three defenders connected to the rod.  This is how defenders must communicate and work to defend the RPO game from 2 High.  Here it is drawn up below:

This Defense had worked schematically vs. teams who offset their Back but not against Pistol teams that lined up the Back directly behind the QB.  Also, the problem that Defenses had this year was when Offenses starting having their QBs to read the RPO to the side opposite of the Back.  Alabama was the first team I had seen do it in 2018 and other teams started doing it and had big success in 2019.  Using the above diagram, what teams did was to put their Back to the Field to get the Will to come into the box and then have their QB read the RPO to the vacated side of the X and H WR.  The 2019 LSU Offense made a lot of Defenses look bad by using their Quarters rules against them.

The solution: teams will have to make a Post-Snap read of the QB's eyes and adjust who will be in or out of the box.  Let's take a look, starting with 2x2.

Now by reading the eyes of the QB, the same scenario I just described is easily handled.  The Will sees the QB looking his way and he will play the Pass.  The $ sees the QB looking opposite, so he will add into the box to play the Run.  The Mike is a two-gap player pre-snap and he will also read the eyes of the QB to determine which gap to fit to.

The one clip shows another example of how teams made mistakes defending the RPO game.  LSU had probably the best Offense I have ever seen at any level this past season, but 2019 UCF is actually a better team to study how to manipulate Defenses with the RPO game (h/t Bryan Freeman).

Let's now look at 3x1.  This first clip was posted on Twitter by my friend Kyle Cogan, who was the one who helped me to teach me the difficulty of defending RPOS from 2 High.  He is a tremendous Coach to follow on Twitter and I have learned so much from his clinics and podcasts.  Speaking of podcasts, make sure to check out the Make Defense Great Again podcast and my man Coach Vass, who helped me with the Solid rules for the Weak Safety here in this article.  Playing Solid to the Away Side vs 3x1 gives you the flexibility needed to add the Weak Safety to the run fit or to double the single WR.

This first three clips show Joe Burrow taking advantage of the Weak Safety by throwing the Glance Post over his head.  The Weak Safety gets it right in the 4th clip, but the Mike LB does not follow the eyes of the QB to get into his correct gap and Clyde Edwards-Helaire takes it to the house.

The first cut-up has Florida defending the RPO perfectly and Joe Burrow almost gets killed.  I don't believe Florida wasn't reading the QB's eyes post-snap, it looks as if they had already called for the WS to be in the box with the Mike being cheated over to the gap away from the WS pre-snap.  The second cut-up also shows the Weak Safety coming down into the box to defend the run, but the Will LB walked out (I like to walk out my Will LB to keep my Mike in the box) is wrong.  He should hold for the RPO and the QB should have thrown the ball on this read.

Teams can also use this Quarters rules to defend 2 Back sets, although the Play-Action Pop Pass to the H-Back or Fullback has made it very difficult to defend in this coverage.  Here are some clips of how you could do it.

These three clips have the Weak Safety down in the box when he should be back deep to help the Corner.

The first clip shows the Weak Safety from Temple come down to make a tackle for a very short gain.  The second clip shows great team Defense by TCU.  The QB pulls the ball for the RPO and the $ is playing Pass until the QB starts to run and then he comes off and the FS comes up to smoke the #2 WR, ending in a TFL.  The last clip shows Trap coverage to the Away Side and the CB comes up as the extra defender.  If you call a Pirate stunt here, you can spill the ball outside to the Trap Corner to help defend the run.

Lock
If you don't want to try to read the QB's eyes post-snap, you can pre-determine who the extra box player will be.  You simply have to man-up to one side and sling or push the fits opposite.  Here are a couple of ways to man-up to the Away Side and sling the fits to the Field.

Here are two ways you can man-up to the Read Side and sling the run fits to the Boundary.

The first two clips are of Alabama locking the $ up on the #2 WR and bringing the FS into the box as the extra defender vs. the run.  The last cut-up shows what you can do with the "Lock" call as a check vs. an extra wide split by the #2 WR.  The $ would be in no-man's land trying to apex the OT and #2, so you could make this a check and bring the FS down in the box.

Finally, the last option is...1 High.  When all else fails, 1 High coverage eliminates the run-pass conflict and leaves no WRs uncovered.  Kyle Cogan told me, "In my opinion, Two High as an everydown call died the day the RPO was created."  Let's look at playing 1 High from man and zone.

Playing 1 High is great vs. the Run, but it can leave both your Corners on an island without help.  2 High is great in providing Safety help over the top, but it can be vulnerable vs the Run-Pass Option.  A combination of the two and smart game-planning is likely the best option in defending the modern-day triple option from the RPO.

If you have questions or thoughts to add, leave a comment or hit me up on Twitter at @BarryHoover.  I added some new film to the FILM (2019) folder on the top left of the page for free download.

Defense 2