If you made it to this article, congrats! That means you either survived the 2,000+ word look at RPOs, or just ignored it entirely. Both paths are defensible.
Today, we continue our series of looking at the 2021 Packers offense by digging into a key play: PA Boot. To properly talk about PA Boot, let’s touch on some basics of the wild world of the Wide Zone run concept.
Though zone blocking can be tracked down to the earliest days of football, the modern day zone blocking scheme is generally attributed to Howard Mudd in Cleveland in the mid-80s. To hear Mudd tell it, the thinking was relatively simplistic. “Let’s cover up their color with our color and then encourage the ballcarrier to run toward the defense and then go where they aren’t going. Hit ‘em where they ain’t, you could say.” [Blood, Sweat & Chalk]
In 1986, Bengals offensive line coach Jim McNally would introduce the world to the drop & bucket steps in zone blocking, where the lineman would take a step back before releasing to block laterally down the line. Here’s how Hall of Fame tackle Anthony Munoz described zone blocking:
If you’re man blocking, you’ve got this guy across from you. Your job is to block him. That’s your man. Zone blocking, you’re on a track, like a railroad track, with your buddy, or all your buddies on the offensive line. If a defensive lineman or a linebacker crosses onto the track, your job is to take him and move him.
It doesn’t matter what the defense is doing. You can use your strength and your power to your advantage. You can say, ‘Let’s not see where the defense wants to move to; let’s dictate where they go by where we move along that track and then use their movement against them to create seams’.
(The above passages were taken from Tim Layden’s excellent book, Blood, Sweat & Chalk.)
Here are the main points in the wide zone rushing attack:
- Offensive line pushes horizontally, blocking a “zone” rather than a man
- The quarterback will release from under center and run to the mesh point for the handoff at a 45 degree angle. To get to the mesh point, the quarterback will usually have to fully extend his arm.
- The running back will release with the flow of the offensive line, aiming at the point where the tackle was initially aligned. He will flow with the line and look for seams, either with the flow or as a cutback.
Typically, I tag run plays by looking at the first couple steps of the offensive line and the initial aiming point of the RB. For Wide Zone, I’m looking for lateral movement by the line and an aiming point at the run-side tackle.
Now we all have a good feel for the wide zone rushing attack. Why did we do that? Because the PA Boot concept plays off of that action. Everything looks exactly like a wide zone rush, right up until the quarterback pulls the ball away from the running back and boots out the other direction.
There are a lot of different things you can do with this, but the most common concept paired with the boot action is Sail. Sail is a three-level flood concept: a shallow route, an intermediate route and a deep route, all to the same side of the field. These are the most common ways the Packers get to those levels:
Deep: Sail/go route from the boot side
Intermediate: Crossing route from the run side
Shallow: Flat route from a slicer under the line
The Packers ran the core PA Boot concept 38 times in 2021 and averaged 6.6 YPA. They had their best luck with it on 1st down, where they averaged 9.7 YPA on 26 calls. It was all downhill from there.
My favorite little twist on the core concept is the addition of the Slam route on the boot side. This is when the TE/WR blocker on the boot side blocks down on the edge, then releases to the flat, behind the initial flat receiver. It’s a nice way to have a receiver work in the defensive void created by…
Read More: Quality Control: PA Boot