Many football watchers were excited to see former LSU passing game coordinator Joe Brady make the move back to the NFL to take over as the offensive coordinator for the Carolina Panthers. Last year in Death Valley, Brady was partly responsible for one of the nation’s best passing games, and the huge draft board rise of current Cincinnati Bengals passer Joe Burrow. While the Panthers lost his first game as an NFL OC, Brady’s creative use of empty formations is a roadmap to how he and the Panthers are going to attack defense in 2020 and beyond.
This started early in their loss to the Las Vegas Raiders. Take this play, a 1st and 10 early in the contest. Quarterback Teddy Bridgewater aligns in the shotgun with the backfield empty. The Panthers have three receivers to the left – including running back Christian McCaffrey who aligns as the inner-most receiver – and two to the right:
If you look at the defensive alignment before the play, Bridgewater can be fairly confident, even without motion, that the Raiders are in zone coverage. The safeties are about 15 yards off the line, the cornerback to the left is in a zone alignment, and the linebacker nearest McCaffrey is not right over him, but shaded to the inside of him. Knowing this, Bridgewater can assume that that linebacker is going to open to the three-receiver side at the snap. That is what happens in zone alignments, and with McCaffrey to that side, it is even more of a likelihood.
So Bridgewater turns at the snap to throw the slant to the right, away from the linebacker drop:
The empty formation combined with McCaffrey’s alignment gives the quarterback information before the play, so he knows where to go with the football.
This completion from late in the first half. is another example of Brady using formations creatively to give his quarterback presnap clues. This time the Panthers start in an empty formation before bringing McCaffrey back into the backfield. In response, the cornerback who was over the RB simply slides, rather than trailing him. Bridgewater now knows the Raiders are in zone coverage. He makes a check at the line of scrimmage, and then works a concept in the middle of the field to Anderson with the receiver sitting down in a soft spot in the zone coverage:
Again Bridgewater gets information thanks to how the formation forces a defensive response. Only this time the defense is responding to a shift away from an empty alignment, to a more traditional 3×1 formation.