FILM ROOM: Tyler's Play of the Week - NFL Week 11, 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 11 of the 2024 NFL season.

Marquez Valdes-Scantling, 71-yard TD Reception. Saints vs Browns

Come on, guys. You thought I’d go the whole year without breaking down a Derek Carr passing touchdown..?

If you haven’t been paying attention over the last two weeks, you would be blissfully unaware of the fact that Packer-turned-Bill-turned Saint Marquez Valdes-Scantling has had an absolutely lights-out fortnight, with a pair of back-to-back huge performances. In Week 10, he totalled an impressive 109 receiving yards and 2 TD’s on just three catches. Week 11 was even more explosive thanks to this 71-yard touchdown catch.

What was interesting, though, was the way that MVS found the end zone. Generally speaking, he is a deep threat who thrives on getting in behind the secondary for a long bomb touchdown – which is why he’s a great weapon for Carr at QB, who has a criminally underrated deep ball.

However, this play wasn’t a long heave behind the defense. In fact, it was a clever design to spring him open for a shorter throw, which he then took to the end zone with a long run after the catch, something we’ve rarely seen over the course of his seven-year career.

Pre-Snap Look

The New Orleans offense has one primary weapon, who always draws the attention of the defensive players when they break the huddle. In fact, you can actually see two of the Browns’ secondary pointing to him as we speak. That weapon is Alvin Kamara. On this play, when they came out in an empty 4 x 1 (four receivers to the left including an in-line tight end and one solo receiver to the right) look, the star half back was lined up outside to the far left.

When the best player on the team lines up somewhere he usually wouldn’t, NFL defenses take notice.

The Browns D is lined up in a very aggressive front, with just one single off-ball linebacker, while the other two LB’s walk down to the line of scrimmage. The strong safety is also walked down to match up with the extra receivers to the offensive left. This means that the free safety and second-year linebacker Mohamoud Diabate (poor guy, all on his own) have the entire middle of the field to themselves.

Smoke and Mirrors

The key to having a player who draws attention is using them to distract or misdirect, so that you can set something else up behind it. And that’s exactly what they did on this play.

Watch here as Alvin Kamara runs this ‘Orbit’ motion, behind Derek Carr, who expertly sells the fake.

This is the first time I have ever broken down a play for this series where I genuinely cannot produce a defensive play design for you. I physically can’t. The reason for that, is because the Browns defense bites as hard on this play action to Kamara as it is humanly possible to. They commit so much to the run that I am legitimately incapable of telling you what their passing assignments should have been.

I would highly recommend you watch that clip again, but now, specifically watch the Free Safety, Juan Thornhill.

When Alvin Kamara ran the orbit motion on this play, Thornhill remortgaged his house and bet every dollar in his bank account that the ball was going there, driving on the ball like a heat-seaking missile.

However, that was all a smoke screen, to set up the shot play beyond.

The X's & O's

This really is the definition of a shot play. Coming off a heavy play action (and using two extra bodies to block for Derek Carr’s rollout), the Saints sent just two receivers on routes… But it turns out two was plenty!

Due to the absolutely beautiful play fake, and the extremely aggressive run-first reaction of the D, these two passing routes end up being more than enough to find a soft spot in a completely non-existent pass defense.

The two routes in question are a deep corner route from tight end Juwan Johnson and an intermediate crossing route from MVS. The big-bodied TE takes the top off the defense and then the speedster find some space underneath the safety.

The idea is that off the hard fake, Carr can escape outside the pocket and find one of the two routes, or run himself if the defense doesn’t cover his exit to the left sideline. The most likely success for this play is if the defense plays man coverage, but if Valdes-Scantling sits down at the right time, they can try and find a soft spot between zones, as DC4 moves and creates a nice angle for the throw.

However, what happened in reality was that Kamara’s fake jet sweep was so convincing that when Carr turned to face the right way, his receiver is throttling down his route to sit over the middle of the field – absolutely wide open.

The solo MLB, Diabate sells his soul (almost as much as Thornhill does) to follow Kamara, and leaves the whole central area of the defense vacated.

MVS sits in a nice pocket of space, and once Carr drops a simple pass in to him, he simply sits back and watches his receiver do the rest.

Execution

I will admit, this play would definitely have seen different results if Cleveland played a bit more conservatively and didn’t all sell out on the Kamara jet sweep, but this series is all about breaking down interesting and fun plays. This was a fantastic example of how the use of some misdirection and make your star player a decoy, to launch a more aggressive play elsewhere.

From the end-to-end camera, you’re able to see just how insanely open this throw was when Carr turned and got his eyes downfield.

Once the ball was in MVS’ hands, there was only going to be one result. And that result was a 71-yard TD seemingly out of nowhere, thanks to some nifty play design and fantastic execution, making it a more than worthy recipient 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.