Losing Leverage in the Flat
Tight Ends...
Good morning and welcome to another conversation on leverage. This week has been a look at specific leverage principles at play in order to burn them into our minds. You don’t have to read this if you don’t want to do that. But I believe that furthering your understanding of leverage is one of the most important things you can do. The principles of leverage don’t change, however different players athletic abilities can change things. Getting as many reference points into the memory bank is important in order to be able to anticipate movements and see open space.
TE in the Flat Gone Wrong
The play design is exciting with a fake GY Counter TE flat screen, but the issue is once again a leverage issue. This play is tough on the QB because there isn’t much of a read on the play. There is nothing tougher to watch than a play with no answers. Moreover, the WR blocking loses the block (said another way, he loses leverage).
The only way this play works is if the TE gains outside leverage on the flat defender. Let’s delay no longer, watch the play in all its glory:
We can identify two ways that the offense loses leverage. First, the WR blocking the flat defender gets beat over the top. Pre-snap, the WR’s defender-to-block has inside leverage. The play is designed to hit outside, so this should be advantageous leverage for the offense. When the WR goes to block his man, he turns his pads and doesn’t stay square (homage McNally). This allows the defender to bypass any leverage the WR had pre-snap and win over top. This leverage is somewhat different than what we’ve been talking about since we’ve been talking about it more in a schematical way and this is more body-leverage-like. A loss of leverage nonetheless.
Now this defender immediately has outside leverage on the flat which is the second way the offense loses leverage on the play. The QB doesn’t have a lot of time to see this loss in leverage. Pre-snap he might think he’ll have a good chance at the TE’s flat route because of the WR’s angle on the flat defender. Post-snap the flat defender comes down inside even more.
If that first flat defender had either gotten blocked properly or had gone inside too far and allowed the TE to get leverage, it would be interesting to see how the safety from up top would’ve been able to make a play and if the TE had enough leverage. Later in this same game a similar situation occurred…
TE in the Flat Gone Kind of Wrong
So on this play is kind of gone wrong because the TE defeats leverage of the first flat defender, but not the second. It’s a fine play, but it’s not great being that it wasn’t a third or fourth in short. Watch it here:
There is an edge player and an inside linebacker that the TE gains leverage on quickly into the flat. However, a safety gets down fast and makes the tackle. I bring up this play because it shows both the winning of leverage and the losing of leverage (from the offense’s perspective). Once again, there isn’t another obvious answer for the QB. If he didn’t like the look of the safety coming down, he didn’t really have time to hit the comeback with the edge player coming down on him and the crossing route was doubled. Unfortunate.
The Rules of Leverage
These TE in the flat plays are wonderful plays, don’t get me wrong. These two just happened to be not-so-wonderful. When you look at the successful plays where the TE gets in the flat and gets upfield, he has leverage. This outside leverage is a fundamental of the play. It’s a law, if you will, and nobody is too good to break this law.
Every play has these fundamental rules and often they have to do with leverage in some way. The good thing is that leverage carries across all plays. Its rules are constant. The more we teach our QBs to see leverage, the better they’ll become at recognizing its patterns. The plays might change, but the rules of leverage do not.
Until tomorrow,
Emory Wilhite
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