FILM ROOM: Tyler's Play of the Week - NFL Week 10, 2024

By Tyler Arthur

Welcome to the latest installment of my Play of the Week series. I am going to deep dive one snap from every week of the NFL season, to try and bring you an inside look at what happened on my favourite play of that weekend’s games.

There is no set formula for what would make a play the best; it could be fascinating from an X’s and O’s perspective, it could be an exceptional piece of play design or just amazing execution from an individual player.

The one thing that every play will have in common, however – it will be awesome.

Let’s take a look at my Play of the Week for Week 10 of the 2024 NFL season.

Ricky Pearsall, 46-yard TD Reception. 49ers @ Buccaneers

He’s here!

After Ricky Pearsall was drafted in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft, landing him on the San Francisco 49ers, he was poised for an incredibly exciting year – a talented young wideout joining the star-studded cast of this offense, spearheaded by Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle and Brandon Aiyuk. As yet another weapon was added to Brock Purdy’s utility belt, it looked like a rookie year with fantastic potential.

Unfortunately, prior to the start of the season, Pearsall was shot in the chest during a robbery. This obviously threatened much more than just his NFL career, but he lucky recovered fully from the incident. He did miss a couple of invaluable months at the beginning of his journey, however, he was able to return to action a couple of weeks ago, and in Week 10 he finally found the endzone.

Ricky Pearsall isn’t just healthy, he’s ready to make an impact.

After a handful of catches in his first two appearances, the Arizona State product announced himself with this impressive 46-yard touchdown reception in Tampa, coming open over the middle of the field and burning the Bucs defense.

So, let’s break down the beautiful play design from Kyle Shanahan, which helped to spring Pearsall free for this long score.

Pre-Snap Look

San Francisco came out in their patented 21/12 personnel (in this particular formation they chose to deploy FB Kyle Juszczyk as the second tight end), in a narrow pistol look. The two receivers are around 5 yards outside the tackles, with Ricky Pearsall lined up to the field side, Juan Jennings to the short side.

This is a balanced formation, allowing for the Niners to run or pass the ball effectively.

Also, by lining up in such a narrow look, they pull the defense into a similar area of the field, forcing them to set up in the middle of the field and then react horizontally after the snap. This asymmetrical look increases the threat the Niners can impose toward the right sideline, as they have the two TE’s and a receiver lined up to the right and only two defenders shaded that way, threatening a flood concept or something similar to attack this numbers advantage.

However, in reality, they had something else in mind.

The X's & O's

Shanahan dialed up a beautiful three-route levels design, here, sending every single route except for the HB Swing over towards the shorter side of the field. Between the outside return route from Juszczyk and the two dig routes from Pearsall and TE Eric Saubert, Purdy has a plethora of targets, all with one smooth right-to-left progression.

While these three levels routes all attack the middle of the field, Jordan Mason’s swing to the right and Juan Jennings’ quick out to the left stretch the defense outside.

The objective is simple, as the defense expands to take away the outside threats, they attack the heart of the defense.

This particular play is perfect against the call that the Buccaneers were running on this play, as it sends three routes into the short to intermediate depths over middle of the field, where there are only two linebackers to cover.

Tampa Bay’s D called for a Cover 3 Lock – a single-high look where the majority of the coverage is the same as a normal Cover 3, but the usual deep-third responsibility of one cornerback gets traded for man coverage on the X receiver.

This coverage isn’t ideal against the Niners’ levels concept. If the two hook zones (in yellow) take away the two dig routes, Juszczyk would get open underneath them. If one of those linebackers comes down to prevent the short completion, then one of the digs will get open behind, etc. Or, as happened in this case, you could hit them right down the middle.

The nuanced part of this play that I found satisfying – and what ended up opening the defense up for a big play – was the very slight difference between the two dig routes.

Saubert’s dig starts narrow and breaks flat at 12 yards of depth. Pearsall’s starts from wider and with an outside release, to increase the space between himself and linebacker J.J. Russell’s hook zone, before breaking to 15 yards as he rounds upfield. The gap between these routes is enough to create space between them, and the additional width of the outside dig forced the linebacker to turn his hips and face the route. As soon as he opened those hips, it created a window behind him for Purdy.

Execution

When Saubert breaks on his dig, the linebacker drives on him, and just a moment later, Pearsall wraps around behind Russell, finding the middle of the field wide open. Brock Purdy throws a beautiful ball between the two linebackers and the rookie WR does the rest.

Watching from behind Purdy on this throw makes it all the more satisfying.

Funnily enough, as I mentioned earlier, even if the two digs were both taken away, the return route from the full back would have come open underneath and Juice still would have been looking at a 10-yard gain anyway.

This fantastic design, paired with perfect execution and some impressive speed after the catch, makes this a worthy winner of my Play of the Week.

Tyler discovered American Football when he went to university and became obsessed with it. Since then he has played, watched and written about it, while on a mission to attain as much knowledge (and win as many fantasy football championships) as possible.

He currently plays Wide Receiver for the Northants Knights.

Tyler loves nothing more than watching the All-22 to break down the film and teach people about the sport he loves.