Power Pass!
One of the best ways to help protect Power is to use the POWER PASS
or as Coach Gruden calls it, “Spider 2 Y Banana”
This is a great answer as teams load the box, or crash down hard in an attempt to take away Power. This play gets better and better with the more players the defense aligns on the LOS. More guys on LOS, less guys who can cover. We even got some teams into an alignment where their end man had to take on FB as well as cover him man to man… that is like stealing, if he can stuff our FB he can’t cover him, if he can cover him, we are getting easy kick outs. Either way we win.
The route concept is a standard flood play. WR clearing out. a TE (or slot to twins side) running the medium route in the flood, and the FB chipping the DE on his way to the flat.
You can read this deep to short, or short to deep. I have done it, and seen it done both ways successfully.
In my opinion what really makes it work is making it look identical to power. So we block it the same as Power. Playside down blocks, BSG pulls. BST protects b gap.
The only difference is our pulling BSG needs to attack the C gap, rather than work up to a LB. I need to do a better job coaching this up next season.
Our biggest problems came from back side pressure, usually frontside pressure meant the TE or FB was wide open and we hit it quickly.
One adjustment I have seen and will use int he future is to have the Rb cut back immediately after the mesh, to pick up the backside C gap.
You can use backside WRs to run backside drags, or attach another TE to help secure the backside.
I can’t stress enough how helpful the OL play is on selling play action. We do not pretend to block power, we full on block power, we just don’t drive anyone past 2 yards down field.
Below are 2 clips of power pass, one hitting the TE, one hitting the FB.
This is just our base power pass that we install in spring ball. We can run a variety of concepts off of power action. The play stays consistent for the players in the box.
Power pass action works great to throw double posts, post/dig, verticals, or whatever dropback you hang your hat on. We would release our TE/FB into routes as well as keep them in for max protection on certain concepts.
Power pass is a the perfect constraint when defenses start cheating. I should have called it more times last season and it will continue to grow into bigger weapon in our arsenal.
