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It's really been a blast watching the Chip Kelly offense continue to evolve from week to week in his rookie NFL season. One of the things to really watch is how he uses similar looks with different personnel and continues to peel back another layer of his offense. Today, we are going to focus on what's become a staple look in Chip Kelly's offense. He loves to motion WRs and RBs out of the backfield. We've seen this from a 2 back set, as well as a one back set. Chip has already told us that one of the reason he likes to do this is to allow Nick to see if the defense is in man or zone coverage. However, Chip has also seems to use this motion man as a decoy.
Here against the Bucs he motions Desean to the top of the screen. We've covered this play before. The key thing to note is that Desean is being motioned behind 2 WRs who can serve as blockers if Foles chooses to go with a bubble screen-type option:
Instead, with all action going to the top of the screen, he runs a screen to McCoy on the bottom, which is brilliantly executed:
Here we run a 2 back set with McCoy and Brown. Lesean is going to motion to the bottom of the screen behind two blockers again, and we run a read-option where Nick can hand to Bryce or pull back and throw to Lesean in the flat with lead blockers:
Here we motion Brown out of a single back set as a flat option behind two lead blockers. Celek is initially blocking, but he's going to leak out for a screen:
Again, masterfully executed:
Against the Redskins, this was the first time I noticed us motioning a player out of the 2 back set in the flat without 2 WRs in front. This time it's Brad Smith as the motion man:
and Bryce leaks out on the bottom of the screen for another beautifully executed screen:
Last week against the Cards, we added to this look. Desean starts in a 2 back set and motions to the bottom of the screen. This time, it's only behind 1 receiver and it's not a bubble-type screen pass. Instead, Desean is going to effectively run a wheel route. Peterson is following Jackson in man coverage highlighted in red. Check out Foles reading the reaction CB lined up over Riley. He's hoping the CB overreacts to Desean's motion:
He doesn't in this case, but you see the wheel route developing but Peterson has good coverage:
To come full circle, we run this same concept again, but with a twist. Desean is again going to motion from the 2 back set to the top of the screen. Note the single receiver high again. Riley is going to run downfield, Desean is going to run a wheel route. Most notable is Celek running a shallow drag and Avant going deep:
You can guess what is coming. With almost all action going to the top of the screen, and the Cards coming on a blitz, Lesean is going to leak out on a screen pass:
Nick does a great job of holding the ball and drawing the defenders to him, then dumps it off for once again, another beautifully designed screen pass:
Here's a look at the whole play, courtesy of a new contributor, Bob, over at the Chip Wagon:
Small note. Unrelated to the motion of a player out of the backfield, we gave another new look as well which was single back with Desean in the backfield. I am pointing this out to suggest that Desean in the backfield simply is not a decoy. Here we are going to run a mesh concept underneath to attack the man coverage.
Desean runs a wheel route out of the backfield and Peterson is forced to navigate through a mess in the middle of the field created by the Eagles:
Great use of personnel. We've had good success on the wheel route with McCoy and Brown, but putting Desean back there is a nice wrinkle. Patrick Peterson actually recovered on this play pretty well, but he's one of the best and fastest in the NFL. I suspect we'll see this again with the result looking much prettier.
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