If your quarterback is mobile, you’re running some spread read-option schemes, even in the NFL. It’s a great change up for defenses and it forces them to spend extra time preparing for a play you might run two to five times a game. It’s worth keeping in the playbook if the quarterback can run at all.
What makes Cam Newton and the zone read unstoppable?
Retired NFL offensive lineman Geoff Schwartz breaks down one of the most effective plays in football.
Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images
I consider myself fortunate to have been part of the spread option explosion in college football with Chip Kelly. There were spread offenses floating around college football before, like Urban Meyer’s, but nothing with the tempo and the different read options for the quarterback. Kelly made that mainstream, and I was there at the start in 2007.
Kelly’s offense wasn’t complicated, but it sure seemed that way with all the formations and the tempo. The base run for that offense was inside zone with a read from shotgun, nicknamed the zone read. The quarterback is reading the backside defensive end. If that end rushes towards him or doesn’t move at all, the quarterback hands the ball off to the back. If the end closes hard towards the line of scrimmage, the quarterback pulls the ball and takes off. The offensive line blocks their guys, no matter where they move.
This play clearly allows the offense to dictate the terms of the play. They are reacting to the defense and finding a weakness in that movement.
Naturally, defenses have tried to come up with ways to defend the zone read by dictating the terms of the play. Defenses realized they could force the quarterback into making certain reads and thus taking advantage of knowing exactly how an offense would react to their movement.
Defenses started running gap exchanges on the backside of zone reads to force the quarterback to pull the ball. A gap exchange is when the defensive end clearly crashes down and the linebacker scrapes outside, thus exchanging gap assignment.
This is a smart move for the defense because: A) They’d clearly know where the quarterback would be running after he kept it, and B) this allowed a defense to hit the quarterback more often.
In the video below, I show how the gap exchange works and how offenses can defeat such a maneuver, with a focus on how the Vikings tried to defend Cam Newton and the Panthers last week.
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