Before the snap
Decision-making does not happen in a vacuum.
A few years ago over at Inside the Pylon I wrote a piece with that title, and outlined everything that goes into a quarterback’s mind over the course of a single snap. Basically, the piece walks through a single play, drawing on lessons and moments from my own playing career, to highlight just how difficult playing quarterback can be.
Now bear in mind that I was a Division III backup. I wasn’t staring down NFL defenses or anything close.
There is an old scouting phrase when it comes to evaluating players: Scout them from the snap to the whistle. But with quarterbacks, the calculus is different. A quarterback’s job starts the moment the play is called, and he starts his pre-snap process. Quarterback, in contrast to some of the other positions, is a “huddle to whistle” process. When you are watching a quarterback, you need to understand that what happens at the line of scrimmage – before the ball is snapped – often determines the success or failure of a given play.
But do not take that from me:
Much of the really crucial stuff that’s going on in a football game is hidden fro the fans. They wait impatiently between plays for the next snap and the ensuing action, but what goes on from the time the quarterback breaks the huddle to the moment the ball is snapped can determine the outcome of a game just as much as a great catch or a goal line stand.
That’s right, many games are won and lost while the ball isn’t even in play. A large chunk of a quarterback’s contribution is made during those 15 seconds that he’s walking to the line and standing under center. NFL quarterbacks may not be calling their own plays anymore, but they have a new responsibility that wasn’t nearly so complicated 20 or 30 years ago: reading the defense. Do it right and your offense looks unstoppable. Do it wrong and your unit looks hopelessly overmatched.
That is from Joe Montana, and his book Art and Magic of Quarterbacking.
The venerable quarterback went on to describe what he did at the line of scrimmage, first with his four-step checklist. He would: Check the linemen for the defensive front, check the safeties for the coverage, check the cornerbacks for some possible quirks in the coverage, and finally check the linebackers for a potential blitz.
It began for Montana with the linemen. “As you break the huddle, you should be checking the defensive linemen to see how they are lined up, either as a four-man or a three-man front…this all has to be recognized by the quarterback at the line of scrimmage, preferably before he gets under center.”
Once the front is deciphered, the quarterback needs to read the secondary. This, according to Montana, was his most important task: “Nothing is more important to reading the defense than the safeties.” How does a quarterback accomplish this?
You should check the weak-side (free) safety first. If he goes back to the middle of the field, it will be some kind of zone-either a three-deep zone or some type of zone coverage with a little man-to-man. It won’t be a two-deep zone, because he would play to the left or the right in that scheme, not in the middle. So if he goes to the middle of the field, you should next look to the strong safety. (Sometimes you can see them both at the same time). If the strong safety moves forward, then to the outside, it’s probably a three-deep zone. Sine the corners and the free safety will be responsible for the deep areas in a three-deep zone, the strong safety is coming forward and to the outside to take one of the short areas.
Of course, you have to check the cornerbacks too. As Montana described it:
After reading the safeties, the quarterback should read the cornerbacks. Sometimes you can even pick up man-to-man coverage from the corners faster than the safeties. A quarterback might be able to read what the coverage is just by studying how the corners line up. In man-to-man, the cornerbacks usually line up a bit more inside. Sometimes it’ll only be half a step, or even a shade. They’re protecting against those crossing patterns and slants. Think about it. If it’s a zone, and the receiver cuts across the middle, he’ll be moving from one area to another, and the corner will simply pass him off to the defender responsible for that area. If it’s man, the corner is responsible for chasing him all the way across the field. The corner will give him a step on the outside, because it’s harder for the receiver to run away from him; the sideline will help him defend. The key is for a quarterback to become accustomed to seeing this slight movement in the way the cornerback lines up.
And this is what Mahomes was getting to: The ability to pick up the subtle nuances of what quarterbacks can decipher from a defense in the pre-snap phase, based on film study. As Montana described it “[s]o you not only need to read the defense, you need to study enough film that you can begin to recognize the tricks, too.” A trick Montana had? The helmet stripe when you looked at the cornerbacks: “You check out the cornerbacks’ helmets and see the stripe down the middle. They’re looking at you, and that means zone.”
There are ways that offensive coordinators can help their quarterback during this pre-snap phase of the play. The biggest is motion. Montana alluded to it: “…if it’s man the corner is responsible for chasing him all the way across the field.” That begins before the snap of the football. If you’ve watched the New England Patriots, you’ve noticed how often they use motion. Yes, they do it to generate favorable matchups, but they also do it to give Tom Brady – arguably the greatest quarterback of all time and the player Mahomes himself mentioned when discussing reading defenses – information before the snap.
Take, for example, this touchdown from the 2018-2019 season against the Minnesota Vikings.
The teams line up for this 1st and 10 with Brady in the shotgun and three receivers to his left. Gordon is the outside receiver with Chris Hogan in the slot and Julian Edelman aligned on the wing. New England starts this play with a Y-Iso alignment, putting tight end Rob Gronkowski alone on the right:
Before the continue look at the Vikings’ defense. You see both safeties deep, which tells Brady at this point that Minnesota is perhaps in a two-deep coverage, whether Cover 2 or Cover 4. But as Josh McDaniels so often does, he uses pre-snap movement to get his quarterback more information, as well as getting one of his receivers an easier release. Edelman comes in motion from the left into a stack alignment behind Gronkowski. As he moves, watch what the defense does:
Instead of a defender trailing Edelman as he crosses the formation, Minnesota responds by simply sliding linebacker Anthony Barr to the outside. At this point Brady can be almost certain that Minnesota is dropping into a zone coverage look. Unless they want to have a linebacker cover Edelman one-on-one…
Here is the route concept:
To the left Gordon and Hogan run a dig/wheel combination, termed Win in the playbook. Gordon runs the dig while Hogan takes off on a wheel route to the outside. On the right side Gronkowski and Edelman run D-Pivot. The wide receiver takes off for the flat while Gronkowski runs a convertable route based on the coverage. He will either run a deep curl, a deep out or a corner route depending on what he sees from the secondary.
What does he, and more importantly Brady, see? Minnesota spot drop into a standard Cover 2 look:
This is going to be easy pickings for Brady. By not disguising their look, the quarterback can simply confirm at the start of the play his pre-snap expectations, and execute accordingly. Here, Gordon runs his dig route in front of the two safeties and behind the linebackers, and is wide open for the throw:
Now look, playing quarterback is a hard job. But on this play Brady’s task is a bit easier thanks to the pre-snap movement and the fact that Minnesota’s secondary simply spot drops into their assigned zones. Now, the Vikings might have thought that pressure up front would have forced Brady off his spot and into a mistake, but as we have seen so often from the veteran quarterback, his ability to use footwork in the pocket to slide or climb away from pressure stands out again. Watching this play from the replay angle you can see how pressure starts to build off the left edge, but Brady so adroitly clicks and climbs in the pocket before delivering the strike to Gordon:
This is some of what Mahomes was referring to: Picking up cues from the defense in the pre-snap phase of the play. The ability to rely on indicators from pre-snap motion is a huge advantage for the quarterback – which is why I am a strong advocate for getting players moving before the snap – but as a quarterback you might not always have this added information.
But this is the hardest part of the process for a QB: Figuring out what the defense is doing before the snap. The more information you have, and the clearer your picture of the defense is before the play, the better your execution will be. Because once the ball is snapped and bodies are flying, if you’re spending time diagnosing the defense, you’re wasting time…and the clock is ticking.