Riding Escort Screens to Glory
Football is full of little innovations and tweaks. Things that may not ever truly change the game, but can make a standard play just a little more effective. The beauty of football, then, is the ability to iterate off that little tweak. Because once you’ve established it as a tendency, you can look to break that tendency for a big gain.
Today, we’re talking about Escort Screens. At least, that’s what I’ve seen them called, even though it’s not actually a true screen. It’s more of a super-charged checkdown, and they’ve really taken off over the last couple of years. Let’s look at a play from this past weekend and see what we’re talking about.
There is 9:41 remaining in the 3rd quarter and the Packers are running a Dagger concept in the middle of the field (with a bit of muddled spacing) and an Escort Screen on the right. The “Escort Screen” is really Josh Jacobs [8] on a checkdown, with Ben Sims [89] working as a kind of lead blocker after a chip-and-release off the right side of the line.
On this play, Jordan Love [10] is looking to Dagger in the middle, but, again, the spacing is muddled so there’s really nothing there. When it’s clear it’s not opening up, Love moves to the right, where he hits Jacobs.
With Sims there to get in the way of the first man, Jacobs has a nice area of field to work with, cutting inside the block, getting in the open field, then actually asking to get hit.
You heard the man pic.twitter.com/PWDCtlZsrr
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) November 18, 2024
Pretty simple, right? Get a blocker out in front of your checkdown. Fun little tweak. But now it’s a tendency, so how can we break it?
I found a fun variation to this while watching a Coastal Carolina game (though they’re not the only team doing things like this). Instead of making this the checkdown option, they’ve made a shot off of this the primary goal.
It looks familiar at the bottom of the screen: we’ve got a vertical route from the outside receiver and the block/checkdown look behind it. Show that look, get the defense thinking about beating the block to get to the receiver behind it, then release the blocker vertically up the sideline.
The Packers have been expanding their stalk-and-release package of plays this season, so let’s throw this one into the hat while we’re at it.
Albums listened to: Band of Horses – Cease to Begin