Film Room: Tyler's Play of the Week - NFL Week 13, 2024

FILM ROOM: Tyler's Play of the Week - NFL Week 13, 2024

By Tyler Arthur

Welcome to the first instalment 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 13 of the 2024 NFL season.

Amon-Ra St. Brown, 29-yard reception. Lions vs Bears

This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for Ben Johnson.

For the uninitiated, that is the name of the offensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions. He is one of the hottest coaching commodities in the league right now, and for good reason. His creative play design and fantastic playcalling – paired with the psychotic when it doesn’t work, genius when it does, attitude of Dan Campbell – is a large part of what makes the Lions offense so good.

So, today, we’re going to break down my personal favourite creation from this week’s Thanksgiving game.

This is a fantastic demonstration of why I am a very strong proponent of zooming out the broadcast camera on TV. But, that’s a rant for another time.

This 29-yard completion to Amon-Ra St. Brown came off the back of a very nice play design.

Let’s start from the top.

Pre-Snap Look

The Lions came out in a tight twins formation, on 3rd and 2, with two stacked receivers to the left and two to the right. After a pre-snap shift, they reset with three receivers to one side of the formation, all well inside the numbers, and then the X receiver, St. Brown, lined up on the left side on his own.

It’s definitely worth noting that when Jameson Williams shifts from left to right, a defensive back mirrors him. This indicates that the defense is in Man Coverage. When this happens, Jared Goff and his receivers tap their helmet, signalling to each other that they’ve all seen this and to change to their tagged adjustment to beat man coverage.

Now, if you’ve been reading my articles for a while, you may know what I’m about to say. There is a particular concept that always springs to my mind when I see a tight formation – and this just happens to be one which excels at beating man coverage – Mesh.

For those who aren’t familiar, this is what a typical Mesh concept looks like (out of the same formation as this play, for the sake of demonstration.

This is a basic Mesh play design. The two underneath drag routes create a natural ‘rub’ where the defenders covering each shallow cross get in each other’s way, making this a fantastic man-beating concept.

Whenever I see a tight formation, I expect to see this mesh underneath, and the likelihood of this increases even further when you confirm that it’s definitely man coverage (which Detroit did with the pre-snap motion).

So, what we’ve established is… When Chicago see a tight formation, and they’re in man coverage, the first thing they’re prepared to see is that mesh underneath.

Now let’s see what Detroit actually ran.

The X's & O's

Yep.

They ran a fake Mesh.

This is genius. As Amon-Ra St. Brown and slot receiver Tim Patrick run their meshing shallow crossing routes, the defense keys in on the design, and they’ve seen this a hundred times, so they know what to do, trail the best they can and limit YAC.

Except, immediately after the mesh point – when the two receivers cross over – ARSB sticks his cleat in the ground and turns up into a corner route. I’ve seen this called ‘Mesh Rewind’, I’ve gone for Mesh Return, but long story short it’s a fake Mesh with an absolutely back-breaking corner route.

This design is truly beautiful. Perfectly taking advantage of the extreme preparation and the engrained tendencies of NFL defenders.

As I said, the defense is in a man coverage look, running a Cover 1 shell with the single-high free safety. The would-be ‘Robber’ in this look is actually sent on a blitz, meaning the FS is the only player with a clear zone assignment. One additional player drops into coverage after he sees that his man (Jahmyr Gibbs) isn’t releasing out of the backfield, but this is very much a Cover 1 look – the exact coverage you’d hand-pick to run this Mesh Return against.

I implore you to watch again and this time keep an eye on the defender who has the unfortunate assignment of covering St. Brown.

Execution

That is a man who has chased a drag route 100 times in his career, suddenly seeing a corner route snap into open space out of nowhere. A fantastic man-beating play design is one thing, but when that’s combined with stellar execution from the route runner, that’s when you see someone get this wide open.

Absolutely beautiful.

This was genuinely one of the most exciting plays I’ve seen during the season where I knew immediately upon watching it that this would be my Play of the Week.

Bravo, Ben Johnson, Bravo.

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.