Fadhil’s Film Room — Carolina Panthers’ Shallow/Drive Concept
A deep understanding of a concept in less than five minutes.
Welcome to our first ever film room article! In this segment, we will delve deep into a concept or a play, using screenshots and annotations. The first play we will analyze is the Carolina Panthers’ “Drive-Follow” concept in Week 3 against the Los Angeles Chargers’ Cover-3 Nickel.
First, let’s take a look at the offensive play by the Panthers. We have what we could call a “Drive-Follow” concept, which mainly revolves around the three routes: Shallow-Basic-Follow. The three aforementioned routes would form a triangle in the middle of the field, which will help the quarterback determine where to pass the ball. The “Shallow” route is a route that runs across the field at a shallow depth within four to six yards, hence the name. “Basic” would be a deeper route, roughly 12 yards in distance, that breaks inside, which means changing direction towards the middle of the field. Lastly, the “Follow” route follows the previous routes, also breaking inside at a slight angle.
As we can see in the play, we can see the three routes (Shallow-Basic-Follow) each being run by Robby Anderson (#11), Ian Thomas (#80), and Curtis Samuel (#10). We will take a look at both the “Basic” and the “Follow” routes. Players that run both routes (#80 and #10) start from the right side of the offense at the bottom of the image. After a certain depth, they both break, which would mean that they start to move in another direction, to their respective left, or the middle of the field. The other side would be “breaking outside”, which would be changing direction towards each player’s closest sideline (since they both started off the offensive right, they would break to their right towards the sideline on the bottom of the image). The two other skill players, D.J. Moore (#12) and Mike Davis (#28) ran what we call a “Clear” and an “Out” route. The “Clear” route serves as a decoy that takes defenders with the runner, clearing the area, while the “Out” route would be an out-breaking route from the running back position.
Next, we will look at the defense that the Chargers play, a cover-3 zone defense. This means that we will have four rushers that go after the opposing quarterback and seven coverage players that defend their respective zone. As the name implies, cover-3 means that there are three of “something”. That “something” refers to a zone or area that covers the field’s width. We take a football field, divide it into three zones, ideally with equal widths, and put one player in each zone. As pass defense is designed to take away the big offensive plays first like deeper routes, we put these three coverage zones into the deep areas of the field, usually 15 or more yards from the initial line of scrimmage. We can similarly put the remaining defender as we did with the three deep zones before, we divide the field from the line of scrimmage to 15 yards after it into four zones as there are four defenders left, and we put one player into each zone.
As we can see in the image, the Chargers send four players after the Panthers’ QB. The four in this instance are the four defensive linemen Uchenna Nwosu (#42), Linval Joseph (#95), Jerry Tillery (#99), and Joey Bosa (#97). Manning the deeper zones that we talked about earlier are Michael Davis (#43), Nassir Adderley (#24), and Casey Hayward Jr. (#26) The middle zone out of the three is aptly named “M.O.F” or “Middle of the Field”, while the other two fits into the three deep zones as “Deep 3”. hen there are the underneath zones that are filled with the rest of the Chargers defense, we have the two “Hook” zones, each manned by Rayshawn Jenkins (#23) and Kenneth Murray Jr. (#56), and we have two “Flat” zones, each covered by Kyzir White (#44) and Chris Harris Jr. (#25)
Finally, we can get into how the actual play turned out. Tight end Ian Thomas (#80) ran his “Basic” route in a specific way. He went to the middle of the field and the inside of linebacker Kenneth Murray (#56). By doing this, he got into safety Rayshawn Jenkins’ (#23) zone early and forces Jenkins to cover him. Next, we take a look at running back #28 Mike Davis’ (#28) “Out” route, where his quick move at the snap of the ball forced linebacker Kyzir White (#44) to react and cover him right away, clearing the area right behind where the four defensive linemen initially lined up. Lastly, wide receiver Robby Anderson (#11)ran his “Shallow” route into the vacated space that was created by both Thomas (#80) and Davis (#28). Quarterback Teddy Bridgewater (#5) threw an easy pass to Anderson (#11), which the wide receiver quickly turned into more yards after that.
The whole sequence happened in fifteen seconds and only illustrated 1 out of 100+ plus plays in a game. The play resulted in an 18-yard gain for the Panthers so it could be classified as significant as it extends the drive and puts them in the red zone.
