I was writing for Football Outsiders when the Miami Dolphins premiered their Wildcat package against the New England Patriots in Week 3 of the 2008 season. The Patriots were coming off a near-undefeated season, and through they’d lost Tom Brady to a knee injury in the first half of the first game that season, they had a team good enough to finish the season 11-5 with Matt Cassel as their starting quarterback. The only time Bill Belichick looked overwhelmed at all that season, even without the greatest quarterback in NFL history, was in this 38-13 loss against a Dolphins team that had implemented a bunch of option stuff based on single-wing packages from the Paleolithic Era of football, and Belichick had absolutely no clue how to counter it.
Then-Dolphins quarterbacks coach David Lee had drawn up the three primary plays of the Miami Wildcat the year before, when he was Arkansas’ offensive coordinator. So, there was precedent, and if there was one time Belichick should have been looking for enemy video and didn’t… well, we’ll leave that one alone.
The Wildcat was snuffed out halfway through its first season at the NFL level because it was too simple, too run-based, and nobody thought to add enough passing concepts to make it a Real Thing. Regardless, there have obviously been various read-option concepts in the NFL before and since, and one of the most popular in today’s NFL — especially with Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens — is what’s called “16/17 Flow” or “Counter Bash.”
Ted Nguyen of The Athletic did a great piece on Counter Bash last year (I’m stealing the playbook graphic from his article), and our own Mark Schofield did a video on the concept last December.
Here’s what it looks like when the Ravens run it. The idea is to create a mesh point with the quarterback and the halfback, with the backside guard and tackle pulling, and the frontside linemen down-blocking, defining the frontside as the side to which the running back would go. If it’s done right, the power choreography up front and numerical disadvantages create impossible problems for a defense, and that’s generally been true for opposing defenses when dealing with the Ravens’ version.
The quarterback is reading the frontside end to discern what happens with the option. If the frontside end stays put to defend the run, the quarterback will keep the ball. If the end rushes, the back will take it and follow the pulling linemen.
Now, the Ravens are not the only team set to stun the rest of the NFL with the QB Counter Bash concept; the 49ers came out against the Raiders in their Sunday preseason finale alternating quarterbacks Jimmy Garoppolo and Trey Lance in drives, and sticking the idea right down the Raiders’ collective throat. It’s something that 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan has been talking about for a while.