This Unbalanced RPO Puts Defenses In A Bind

When you call this Zone Y Stick RPO out of an unbalanced formation, you have combined a lot of good football in one play. This unbalanced RPO would be good from any normal 3×1 formation. Your number three receiver would be the stick route runner just like he is here.

Run pass options are hard enough to defend out of normal formations. When you add this little wrinkle it now throws the defense off. They have to not only find the eligibles. They also have to know who the defender is that the offense is putting into conflict of assignment. About the time the defense identifies the Y as eligible the defense is reading who the coverage guy likely is.

This Zone Read Y Stick Run Pass Option is very popular at all levels of football. In fact the flavor of late has offensive coordinators running they RPO’s off of their base schemes. It is not unusual to see RPO’s off of power and Wing T concepts. The addition of this philosophy would work for these football plays as unbalanced RPO’s too.

Adding the unbalanced ingredient to any play can throw a defense slightly off with their alignments and keys. It can have the effect of forcing a defender to execute a technique that they normally would not have to. Your tight end is running his stick route off the Will linebacker who is not as experienced at defending it.

Related: Check Out This Split Zone RPO

Tap on the play to the right to watch a quick video on this. The video is a little older from a while back but the coaching points remain the same. This unbalanced RPO is a great example as the rules are fairly simple. Unless the defense is willing to play some type of closed field coverage, the odds are pretty good that you are going to be able to run the inside zone with good numbers.

Finally, one of the most redeeming parts about this unbalanced RPO is if the quarterback ends up with the ball in his hand late, it is still a very tough run scheme to stop on the boot.