Breaking down a Washington Commanders play call

Taking a closer look at the different components and terminology of a play call

I recently listened to Commanders quarterback Taylor Heinicke on the Bussin’ With The Boys podcast with Taylor Lewan and former Washington linebacker Will Compton. The whole show was very entertaining with some funny stories so it’s worth a listen, but at one point Heinicke is asked about the biggest difference between college and the NFL. He talks about how the play calls are so different and then gives an example of a call that Washington had run that day in practice. 

As a fun exercise for a Monday morning, I figured we could take a look at the call and see if we can break it down and figure out what the play might look like drawn up. The play Heinicke talked about (which can be found at about 1:39:30 on the video) was “Gun Trade Right Vacant Gone Right 968 H Pivot F 9”. 

That might appear as though it’s just a random assortment of words and numbers, but it all has a meaning. Starting from the first word, “Gun” lets the offense know that the quarterback is working out of the shotgun. “Trade Right” is the formation. In the Air Coryell system, formation names are categorised nicely. Trade Right is part of the “T family” of formations which are all three by one formations. Almost all formations beginning with a T will start with three receivers to one side of the formation and just one receiver on the other. I managed to find this example of the Trade Right formation in an old Air Coryell playbook.

As you can see, there are three receivers to the called side of the formation. In this case, our call is Trade Right, so the three receivers are aligned to the right side. However, it’s not just any three receivers. The Y, which is the tight end, aligns tight to the formation with the Z receiver in the slot. Typically the Z receiver would be on the outside with the F receiver in the slot. But in this formation, they trade roles, hence the name trade. 

For the Commanders, this could become a fairly common formation this season. With Curtis Samuel and Jahan Dotson both being so flexible and capable of playing both the Z receiver and the slot, we could easily see this type of look regularly with Dotson and Samuel trading roles often.

The next term in the call is something I’m not personally familiar with. The term “Vacant” could mean a variety of different things, but its position within the play call means it's either a formation variation or a motion. If it’s a formation variation, it could mean that the tight end detaches from the offensive line and is vacant from his normal position, though typically teams would use the tags “Off” or “Open” to alert the tight end to change their alignment. It could also be some type of motion, perhaps signalling for the running back to vacate the backfield and motion outside or to the slot. 

Unfortunately I’m not sure exactly what it is, so we’ll have to just move on to the next part of the call: the protection. “Gone Right” is one of the base five-man protection calls in the Air Coryell system.

This is an example of Gone protection from an old Air Coryell playbook. Protection schemes can be very complex so I won’t go too deep into this one. But the key for us to know on this one is that it’s a five-man protection scheme, meaning the offensive line has no help from a tight end or running back. The benefit of that is that it allows all five eligible receivers to release freely into their routes, but it also means the quarterback has to be ready to get the ball out in a hurry if a blitz comes from the wrong side, as the offensive line won’t necessarily be able to pick it up.

After the protection we have the route combination. The Air Coryell is known for using the digit system to tag receivers with their routes. The route tree is numbered so that inside-breaking routes are even numbers and outside-breaking routes are odd numbers. They’re also numbered from low to high based on the depth of the route, with the shallower routes being lower numbers and the deeper routes being the highest. These rules are largely the same across all variations of the Air Coryell system, but the route trees can change depending on the alignment of the receiver.

968 is the main call for the route concept, telling one receiver to run a nine route, one receiver to run a six route and another receiver to run an eight route. But how does each receiver know which route is theirs? The rule for the Air Coryell system is that the first digit called is for the receiver aligned to the single side of the formation, in our case the X receiver. That means the X receiver is running a nine route.

A nine route can have a few variations, but it in its most basic form, it’s just a go route, telling the receiver to get down the field as fast as possible.

The second digit in the call is for the inside receiver to the two receiver side of the formation. Obviously, we have three receivers to the right side of our formation, but as we’ll come on to, the F receiver has their route tagged separately. So that means that the tight end, or the Y, will run a six route.

The six route can vary quite differently depending on the alignment of the receiver. These examples show a few variations from different wide receiver alignments, but in our play it’s being run by a tight end attached to the formation, which makes it the equivalent to a basic cross in a west coast offense. The first example above is what it most closely resembles, but the tight end would break off the route at 10-12 yards instead of 15-18 in the example.

That leaves the third digit for the outside receiver to the two receiver side of the formation, which is the Z receiver here. So he runs an eight route.

The eight route is perhaps the most variable route in this system and it can change a lot depending on the alignment and the coverage too. At its most basic, it’s a post route, getting vertical and then breaking inside towards the goal posts in the middle of the field. But in certain situations, it can become a deep crossing route. In this concept, I believe it’s likely more of a basic post route.

The F receiver and running back get their routes tagged separately with the calls “H Pivot F 9”. We’ve already seen a nine route from the X receiver, so we know the F receiver is running the same thing. Both of them are working go routes down the sidelines on either side of the field. But the running back has a pivot route, which looks like this:

The pivot route for the running back has them changing directions multiple times. First they release outside before getting to the line of scrimmage. Then they break inside like on what’s commonly known as a Texas route. After a few steps inside, the back then breaks back outside towards the sideline, where they can either continue running outside against man coverage or sit down in a hole between zones against zone coverage.

Add all of those pieces together and we get a play that looks something like this:

It’s an interesting concept reminiscent of the famous vertical 989 concept, but with an added basic cross by the tight end that can potentially put a deep safety in a bind and open up the post route for the Z receiver. The back on the pivot provides a nice checkdown option underneath with what should be plenty of space to work with given the other vertical routes.

Of course, this is my best guess at the concept and I could be totally wrong as I’m using an old Air Coryell playbook as my reference given I don’t have access to Scott Turner’s playbook. There is also the added formation variation/motion term “Vacant” which could change the play just slightly or make it significantly different depending on how exactly it changes the alignment of the five eligible receivers. If you’ve heard of the that term or have any better guesses at what this play call might actually look like, feel free to message me and let me know!