By ‘MightyRx’ Max Paul
Welcome to the second installment of the “I SPY” series. This week will feature the Queen City Corsairs and the Baltimore Vultures. We’ll be looking at how the Vultures set up their game breaking play.
Week 3 vs Queen City Corsairs
Here we see Baltimore in a trips set to the right side of the field. It’s a 3-step drop, meaning the receivers also have to run shorter routes to get open quickly before the protection breaks down for their quarterback. With the outermost slot receiver running a quick slant, quarterback Mike Dazzo darts a pass under the dropping linebacker’s grasp. With the Z receiver running a fly pattern and the innermost slot receiver running an out route, the defense decides to focus on the deep pattern and covering the out routes. This was Baltimore’s 1st time using this play. 1st down B-More.
Here, we see the same trips formation. Queen City does a great job of covering the sidelines, the fly pattern and the slant. Dazzo dumps it off to his running back, T-Roy Gaines, who’s immediately met with resistance. Great job Queen City.
Late in the 3rd quarter, The Vultures decide to test the waters with this play again. Queen City, having seen this twice already, is well prepared to stop it. T-Roy does a great job of turning upfield upon receiving the pass from Dazzo. Neither team won or lost this down.
This is when this gets interesting. With the score tied, inside 2 minutes and with the ball inside their own 5 yard line, Baltimore dials up the infamous play. This time, Queen City is looking to prevent the big play and has it’s defenders bail at the snap of the ball. Dazzo seeing this, flips it to T-Roy who gets a quick 6 yards.
Baltimore is now in the hurry up, no huddle offense. Queen City’s still looking to prevent the deep ball. Another quick toss to T-Roy. Queen City does a great job of rallying to the ball.
With the clock winding down, and the Vultures still in the midsts of runnning their hurry up offense, they call the play one final time, hoping to catch Queen City scrambling. T-Roy swing route. The tight end runs a quick out. The innermost receiver runs a quick out. The outermost receiver runs a quick slant. The Queen City defenders do a great job of defending those routes. But the one job of a deep safety is to be deeper than the deepest offensive player. With Z receiver Garren Malone running a streak, Queen City’s Nacho Sicario missteps and allows Malone to get behind him for the play that Baltimore spent the major part of the game setting up.
Football is a game of chess. You move a piece. Your opponent counters, and vice versa. That’s why I love it. I hope you enjoyed this piece. It’s lengthy but meticulously details how 1 play can attack multiple layers of a defense.
Be on the lookout for more plays that ‘I SPY’ on!
