#3- A Little Bit of Old School Mixed with the New School

At #3 in the ChipWagon Top 25 I am highlighting my absolute favorite play because it's a great mix of old school and new school football. I wanted to make this #1 but decided to keep my own biases aside.

Today we are going to focus on the Sweep Read play that we run which is an absolutely gorgeous play to watch especially if you are a fan of OL on the move. Here we will highlight several variations of the old Lombardi sweep and the pin and pull outside zone blocking concept. The newer wrinkle is how Chip Kelly often added a read-option and packaged play component to this old school staple running play:

The key guys to focus on on this play from left to right are Celek, Mathis, and Kelce. Celek and Peters' job is to pin their defenders inside. Mathis and Kelce are going to pull:

Celek gets a great pin block and Peters forces his man inside. All other action is to the left and you can see they've left Ryan Kerrigan unblocked on the other side who is Vick's read. At the mesh point, Vick has the option to hand off or keep:

He chooses to hand off to McCoy and we get this stunning picture of execution. Celek has his man pinned, Peters has demolished his man and Mathis has pulled and taken out the outside defender. McCoy now runs behind a pulling Kelce:

Who demolishes his man in the open field:

Let's look at another with an additional twist:

This time the Eagles have an unbalanced line with Jason Peters playing outside Lane Johnson. They will use Peters to pin his man (Kerrigan) inside while Lane Johnson jumps out to grab the edge defender. Kelce is once again pulling to lead block for McCoy.

Again, at the mesh point, instead of leaving the edge defenders on the backside unblocked, Celek pins his man inside and Mathis jump out to take the edge defender Orakpo which opens up a nice hole for Vick should he choose to keep at the mesh point. The dotted yellow line is Vick's read, the blue line is his keeper path and the red line is McCoy's path. You can see the pressure this places on the middle linebacker London Fletchers as it stretches the defense in both directions horizontally:

Peters pins his man inside, Johnson gets the edge block and McCoy has another hole with Kelce once again leading his way with an eye on trailing London Fletcher:

and Kelce once again demolishes him:

But we are not even close to finished yet. You see, as suggested above Chip likes to combine this classic sweep run action play with packaged options. The QB is often given the choice to hand-off, keep, or even pass behind a run blocking call. Here's a look at a few different options other than the runs we highlighted above.

In the week 1 game against the Redskins we called a sweep read in the red zone. Celek will pin his man inside and Kelce and Lane Johnson will pull to the outside:

This time, the Eagles leave DE Stephen Bowen unblocked who is Vick's read. At the mesh point Vick can pull and keep or hand-off:

Bowen chases McCoy and check out the gaping hole for Vick to walk through for the TD:

And note that even with one of the most traditional running plays in all of football and despite the fact that the entire OL is run blocking, Chip is not afraid to package in a passing option as well. Against the Bucs, when Nick sensed a blitzing safety pre-snap and noted Riley Cooper was getting a one-on-one option he chose to throw on the designed sweep play. Pre-snap, Nick noticed the safety creeping to the line of scrimmage. After the snap you see the pulling OL and a nicely designed sweep forming. However Nick pulls noticing that Riley Cooper has single coverage with no safety help over the top:

He gets the ball immediately to Cooper who can break a tackle and goes down the sideline for an exposive 44 yard gain:

This packaged play component on a sweep read was no more prevalent than in the Sunday Night Football game against the Chicago Bears last year. I also broke down this series in my piece in the 2014 Eagles Almanac. Get yours today!

In this one, Chip added an additional wrinkle which was adding Desean Jackson in orbit motion across the field. The play is a called sweep play to the top of the screen.

At the mesh Foles had 3 options based on the unblocked edge defender Julius Peppers reaction. He could hand off to McCoy, keep himself, or pitch out to Desean Jackson. On this play, he decided to hand-off to McCoy who got nice blocks from Kelce and Herremans for a nice gain. Note, much like we described in the screen play design yesterday Jackson's orbit motion was key because the Bears were in man coverage and his defender chased Desean in motion which took away a defender on the playside:

Later in that game, we ran the same play against the Bears but Foles used a different option. This time the Bears were in zone so the defender did not follow Desean in his orbit motion. The OL still pulled and executed a sweep but McCoy didn't have the ball this time. Peppers chased the play down a bit more and prevents Foles from keeping, but this opened up a quick pitch outside to Desean Jackson who is wide open with 2 TEs lead blocking in front of him:

And the Bears still struggled with this play a year later when we played them a few weeks ago in the preseason. Kelce and Herremans will pull and the edge defender in red is left unblocked whom Foles reads:

The edge defender stays back giving the Eagles an additional blocker on the playside:

Sproles gets some great blocks from the pulling linemen Kelce and Herremans:

and great effort from Brad Smith and Jeremy Maclin downfield:

We even executed this play well with our back-ups:

Eventhough David Molk falls down he gets enough of his man and Matthew Tucker rips off a big one:

And the back-ups continued to execute it well against the Steelers last week. The tight end on the bottom pins his man inside with interior OL pulling: