Breaking Down Scott Turner's Passing Game, Part 1

Part 1 of a series breaking down some of the core passing concepts in Scott Turner's system and how he likes to disguise them.

The Washington Commanders’ offense underwent a lot of changes this offseason. Obviously, trading for quarterback Carson Wentz was the headline move but the Commanders also made a lot of other moves. They revamped their offensive line, brining in Andrew Norwell and Trai Turner to replace Ereck Flowers and Brandon Scherff at guard, while also adding new weapons in wide receiver Jahan Dotson in the first-round of the draft and tight end Cole Turner in the fifth-round. On top of all of that, third-round running back Brian Robinson could take some of the heavy workload off Antonio Gibson, allowing Gibson to open up his role a little more too.

That’s a lot of new pieces to work with, so attention in training camp turns to how Offensive Coordinator Scott Turner fits them all together. Turner’s style in the passing game since becoming a coordinator has been to lean on a handful of concepts and dress them up with various personnel groups, formations and motions to keep the defense from knowing what play is coming. This takes some of the burden off the quarterback, who has to learn a lot of different formations and motions, but once the ball is snapped, the reads stay very similar for him. 

Now perhaps with Carson Wentz, who on paper will be the most talented quarterback Turner has called plays for (Cam Newton was injured when Turner called plays in Carolina), that style of play-calling could change. But with this group of talented weapons Washington now has, staying with the philosophy we’ve seen from Turner would make sense too. Allowing Wentz to work with the same handful of concepts and just moving players around into different spots within those concepts could be an effective way of making use of the talented weapons Washington now has, along with finding some consistency from Wentz instead of the ups and downs he’s shown over his last few seasons.

So what are some of the concepts that Turner relies on and how exactly does he disguise them? In this series of posts, I’ll break down some of the most common concepts Turner calls and show examples of the different ways he gets to them. For this first post of the series, let’s take a closer look at the Dagger concept.

Dagger

Turner’s favorite concept, at least in terms of how regularly he calls it, is by far the Dagger concept, or as he would likely call it in his system, 86. The core of the concept involves an inside receiver, either a slot or tight end running a deep vertical route designed to grab the attention of any deep defenders and force them deeper. That opens up a hole behind him for the outside receiver running a deep dig.

This is the most basic form of dagger. Here, Washington works out of a 12 personnel set, consisting of one running back, two tight ends and two receivers. The formation is a two by two set, with both tight ends aligned to the right side and both receivers aligned to the left, with the X receiver on the outside and the Z receiver in the slot. The Z receiver, in this case Cam Sims, runs the vertical route up the seam to try and occupy the deep defenders, while Terry McLaurin breaks in behind him into the vacated space. Washington also has one of the two tight ends run a shallow cross from the other side of the formation, just to give the defense an underneath receiver to worry about too. 

I don’t know exactly how Turner teaches this concept, but most teams have the deep dig route from the outside receiver as the primary read. However, some teams have the inside receiver be flexible with his route, working more vertically or bending his route more towards the middle of the field depending on the coverage and that could make him the primary read for the quarterback. On this occasion, Sims runs clear up the seam and could have been a touchdown option, but Heinicke took the checkdown option instead.

The reason why Turner loves the Dagger concept so much is that it’s so flexible. It gives the quarterback a lot of different answers to various coverages, and it can be run from various personnel packages and formations. 

Here’s the same concept, but this time from a slightly different look. Washington uses an 11 personnel set here, with one back, one tight end and three receivers. Switching personnel groups is an easy way to disguise looks, but Washington has lacked the depth at various positions to enable them to do that regularly under Turner. Now with multiple viable options at receiver, tight end and running back, Turner can be a lot more creative with his use of personnel groups this year.

On this occasion though, Turner uses his most common personnel group. The concept is still exactly the same, but the personnel involved changes. This time the Z receiver stays to the right of the formation and stacks with the tight end tight to the formation, while a third receiver is brought in to play the slot. Instead of the tight end running the shallow cross, the z receiver runs it, but the read still remains the same for the quarterback. The Packers do a good job staying on top of the vertical route and McLaurin’s dig route, but they leave Adam Humphries wide open on his shallow crosser underneath. It’s an easy pitch and catch and Humphries is able to pick up a first down before getting safely out of bounds.

So far we’ve seen the Dagger concept run out of two by two sets. Another way to disguise the concept is to play around with formations. Turner has plenty of formations in his playbook to work with and can easily adjust the Dagger concept to run it out of a trips set.