Redskins No Huddle/Hurry Up Offense Concepts - Part One

Yesterday the Redskins practiced their "Turbo Offense" (thanks to Rich Campbell and his notes and observations for that term). The turbo offense consists of their no-huddle, hurry up and 2 minute packages that require the offense to be run at a high tempo. I went back and watched a few of the situations that saw the Redskins use the turbo offense last season and noticed a few concepts that came up quite frequently. The first was by far the most commonly used concept.

The Redskins are in their Zebra personnel group (one tight end, one running back, three receivers). The tight end, in this case, Fred Davis stands off of the offensive line and acts as an extra receiver. They use "Scat Protection" that allows the running back a free release into his route, leaving just the five offensive lineman to block for the play.

This play offers multiple options for the quarterback, depending on the coverage. But given that the offense is in its turbo package, the defense will normally play a zone coverage, most commonly Cover/Tampa 2 or Cover 3.

Against Cover/Tampa 2, the tight end's corner route is the key. It's designed to grab the attention of the zone defender and drag him deeper into his zone. That allows the zebra receiver to run his slant pattern underneath into a free zone. That's exactly what happens in the play above, and it's an easy completion.

Had the defense decided to run man coverage, Robert Griffin III could have hit the corner route to Davis before the safety was able to get over to help, or checked it down to the running back, who would have had a big area to run into because of the clearing route on his side of the field.

Here's the same play against the Giants in week seven.

This time, the Giants rotate a safety down and play Cover 3.

The zone defender is still forced to stay with the tight end as he runs through the zone, leaving the slant underneath wide open.

The other option Griffin has on this play is the second slant route. If the zone defender leaves the corner route from the tight end and bites on the initial slant, the Z receiver has a open space to run in to behind that on his slant route. When the Redskins run two slant routes on the same side of the field, they call it "Lion".

This concept can help pick up a short chuck of yards pretty quickly. It's tried and tested against multiple coverage schemes and has viable options against every one of them.