This week, I want to take a slightly alternative approach to our One Play, Many Ways theme.

To this point, we’ve primarily focused on the different ways to present one play to the defense — be it different personnel groupings, formations, or motions.

This week, we’re going to look at one of the Packers’ crossing concepts — how it almost exactly mirrors one of the plays in my own offense — and what it teaches about the idea of utility concepts: plays that can survive almost anything a defense does.

How the Packers Ran It

The Packers are absolute masters of the Cross concept, and they ran one this week that almost exactly mirrors one of the crossing concepts in my own offense.

In a 3x1 formation, Cross acts as a weak-side flood concept. The single receiver runs a blazer route — a go or post option. If the middle of the field is open, he breaks to the post, putting the safety in conflict, especially in quarters. Does the safety sink under the post, or does he nail down on the cross?

On the three-receiver side, one runs a shallow cross, which serves as the play-side flat read. Another runs the regular crossing route, and the backside receiver runs a dig or basic route.

Where the Packers’ version was different from mine is in the running back’s release.

In my system, I don’t like swinging the running back wide. I prefer to have him check up over the backside tackle so that if we get Cover 2, where the safety can take the go route and the corner can take the flat, the inside linebacker (hook player) will sink underneath the cross. That’s fine — because now the running back over the backside tackle combined with the dig creates a bow concept, high-lowing the backside hook-curl defender.

In contrast, the Packers swung the running back out wide. I don’t like that because if it’s a true Cover 2, that gives us problems on the front side. The corner can then pick up the swing route of the back, the hook player can sink underneath the dig or basic, and now all five eligibles are covered.

But overall, the rep was very similar to the way we run it. Jordan Love even read it the exact same way I teach it.

The way I teach my quarterback: you’re reading the play-side safety.

• If he nails down on the cross, then we have one-on-one on the blazer.

• If the safety stays high, then we are high-lowing the play-side curl defender with the shallow underneath and the cross behind it.

On this play, the safety came downhill — actually to take the flat route, from what it looks like to me — but either way, Jordan Love saw the safety rotate down and threw the one-on-one matchup to his X receiver. It fell incomplete, but the process was pristine.

In all, the Packers ran 12 crossing concepts this past week. A large portion of those were Twig Knife (or what they call Stick Knife), which we’ve already covered. Be sure to check out that article if you haven’t yet — it ties directly into what we’re seeing from Green Bay’s passing structure.

Paid subscribers will have access to the rest of the piece, where we’ll dig into how the Packers’ usage of crossing concepts ties directly into the One Play, Many Ways philosophy and a full cutup of all 12 Cross plays the Packers ran this week.