A Bit Of Luck

Despite the success of the option fake, the Panthers still needed two bits of luck for the screen to work as well as it did, both of which can be seen here:

First, the Bengal’s far-side defensive end is left completely unblocked throughout the play, and this is fine – as long as he looks to chase the run fake from the back side – which he did here; but if he is smart enough to recognize the screen and slide into the flat with Anderson then he has a chance of blowing this play up. Similarly, the far-side linebacker can blow up the play by diving under the screen.

This is where recognizing zone coverage pre-snap is so important as while in zone, the linebacker drops back to undercut Funchess’ route; in man, he would likely have been assigned to Anderson and so would be more likely to undercut the screen. Even in zone, however, if he is able to recognize the screen, he still has a chance to make a play on the ball. Luckily for the Panthers, all of this is going on in a fraction of a second and defensive players are rarely aware enough to recognize such plays in real time – Luke Kuechly being one of the few exceptions. Therefore, when Anderson does get the ball, there is plenty of space for him to operate:

Run After The Catch

While it would be easy to say that Anderson was then able to run the ball into the end zone without much difficulty, there is one additional thing to note on this play, namely how Anderson is able to set up the final block to prevent the deep safety from being able to prevent the touchdown:

Chris Clark does an amazing job of with the far-side linebacker, finally pushing him out of bounds with some help from Kalil. However, the key block he makes in addition to this is on the high safety to seal him inside while Kalil blocks the far-side corner – but this block by Clark wouldn’t have been possible if Anderson hadn’t hesitated to give Clark time to seal off the safety. Anderson might have been able to simply truck the safety into the end zone, but it is hesitation like this by a veteran running back that can make the difference on screens and similar runs in space.

Add all these aspects together and you have a highly effective play that makes use of something the Panthers do really well – namely the triple option – and use it to generate additional yards when the defense starts to target it. This is what good offensive coordinators do, they use their strengths to maximum effect and use deception to generate the occasional splash play rather than having it as the basis for their offense; hopefully this play is just the start of what Norv Turner has planned this season – don’t forget, with this play on tape, defenses will now have an additional worry when the Panthers run the actual triple option.

The more defenses have to worry about, the less they’re able to be ready for.