FILM ROOM: Tyler's Play of the Week - NFL Week 9, 2024

By Tyler Arthur

Welcome to the latest 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 9 of the 2024 NFL season.

Saquon Barkley, 14-yard Reception. Eagles vs Jaguars

I have no words.

Just watch.

Okay, now watch from this angle.

Alright, now the first angle one more time.

So, if you read this article weekly, you’ll know that I like to walk the path less traveled. I don’t always pick the most obvious choice for my personal Play of the Week. It would be boring to just pick the first one that springs to mind every time, right?

Well, this week, I am making an exception.

Because this is one of the wildest things I’ve ever seen.

Now, I know that this play is all about the execution, and don’t worry, we’ll get to that shortly, but first I have to do the Tyler thing and break down the X’s and O’s – at least a little bit, before we return to the discussion at hand: that Saquon Barkley is not human.

Pre-Snap Look

The Eagles came out in a near symmetrical narrow formation with 11 personnel, pulling all of their players way inside the numbers. This tight formation achieves two things. Firstly, it makes it so that every single receiving threat on the offense could theoretically run in either direction. Everyone could run an out-breaking route (such as in a Bench Concept), or they could cause chaos over the middle (such as in a Mesh concept).

Secondly, it narrows all of the defenders, meaning that anything that goes either outside or across the field has an easier chance to create space toward the sideline. This means that ironically, by narrowing yourself and sacrificing the horizontal stretch of the defense pre-snap, you can put a lot of pressure on the defenders after the snap to cover you sideline to sideline.

On the defensive side of the ball, the Jags are showing a single-high look, with the cornerbacks around six yards from the line of scrimmage. Just from looking at this pre-snap, you’d suspect that it would likely be a Cover 3.

The X's & O's

In reality, they were actually running a two-high look, with a slow pre-snap drop from Darnell Savage to occupy one of the two deep halves. The thing that makes this cover two interesting, though – and the key to this play’s result, is the underneath coverage.

It’s 3rd and 6, so where a traditional Cover 2 has two hard flats, Jacksonville opted for a deeper cloud flat zone on each sideline, so their cornerbacks are playing at the sticks. Their goal is to ensure that the receivers can’t get in behind them for a first down. However, as we now all know… this puts a lot of pressure on the downhill tackling if the ball gets dumped off underneath.

They also had one of the linebackers seemingly manned up, as when he saw motion he followed it and played the TE heads up outside.

This play was really interesting – even before Saquon did something insane. They motion out the tight end on the short side of the field and run a smash concept. Usually the ‘Smash’ route combination is formed of a hitch route and a corner route, which is kind of what AJ Brown runs, except at the top of the stem, it turns into a wheel route. This means that the same high-low read is there for the QB, but changes the target for where you’d throw the ball. On a corner route you throw it underneath towards the sideline, whereas on this route, you’d lead him upfield over the top. This variant of Smash is weaker against Cover 2, but in theory would be more aggressive if Brown can get behind a different shell.

They’ve also got a backside post coming across the deeper area of the field at the same time, so my guess is that Kellan Moore’s intention designing this play is to put a lot of the vertical pressure on the right side and overload the defense that way.

This worked out really well in the end, because it left the left side of the field incredibly open. Big-bodied wideout Johnny Wilson (who is basically a TE) chip blocks and then releases for a curl route, and Saquon Barkley’s swing route sends him out into acres of space. And that’s when the magic happens.

Execution

It’s not uncommon for magic to happen when Barkley has the ball. He’s one of the most electric backs in the league, in fact. But this, this was something else.

Yes, that’s the third different camera angle I’ve shown of the play, and yet it still doesn’t feel like enough. So, I promise I’ll show one more in a minute for good measure.

When Saquon Barkley catches this football, he has a trio of defenders on the same side of the field as him. The first is right in front of him, about four yards away. Juked. The second is unimpeded coming downhill from a little further away. Spin move. The third takes a second to get free of his blocker, but is able to come in for the tackle at the perfect time, right as Barkley is coming out the back of the spin move to beat the second guy.

Backwards Hurdle.

Those two words have never been used together before. But since Sunday night they’re literally trending on social media.

After simply receiving a dump off and being tasked with trying to make a man miss and fighting for a first down, Barkley literally goes above and beyond – in every sense – and turns it into the most memorable 14-yard gain I’ve ever seen.

It wasn’t a huge gain, it wasn’t even a touchdown, but without any shadow of a doubt, it was 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.