Commanders OTAs Day 1 Round Up

Rounding up the interesting clips and notes from the opening day of Commanders OTA practice

The Washington Commanders began phase three of their offseason on Wednesday with their first organised team activities, or OTA, practice. During phase three, teams are not allowed to run drills with heavy contact, but they can run 7-on-7, 9-on-9 and 11-on-11 drills, among others, to help get their systems installed heading into training camp. I was not at practice, for anyone that doesn’t know, I live in Europe. So instead I’ve been searching the internet for clips and notes from the beat reporters that were at practice to round up the things that stood out to me.

Working Under Center

An obvious focus during the early portion of OTA practice on Wednesday was the quarterbacks working under center. We know head coach Dan Quinn and new offensive coordinator David Blough have both talked about getting under center more often in order to set up play-action passes. In his first two years in the NFL, quarterback Jayden Daniels has primarily worked out of the shotgun, so there is a bit of an adjustment to make, though not one that I expect to cause him many issues. But it was notable that the first drills we saw them running on the Commanders official live stream of practice were the quarterbacks taking snaps from under center and handing the ball off to the running backs before rolling out on a bootleg.

This clip from the Commanders official live stream shows a nice drill that gets the quarterback under center and dropping back to hand the ball off to the running back on a basic wide zone run. However, they add on a nice detail to the drill. Instead of the quarterback just stopping after the hand off, they have another coach toss a second ball to the quarterback after the hand off and have the quarterback continue a bootleg rollout before throwing to the flat.

This is a nice drill because it works on the basic fundamentals of being under center and handling the ball off to the running back, but it adds in important details. Ideally, the quarterback is never just out of the play. Even if they hand the ball off, the quarterback can potentially influence the back side defensive end or linebacker if he rolls out on a bootleg fake. Getting a back side defender to bite or even just pause for a moment can create leverage for offensive lineman to reach their blocks and open up a cutback lane for the running back. So this drill makes the quarterback naturally learn to lean into that bootleg action on standard zone runs. Of course, they also will run bootleg play-actions off of those basic zone runs, so it helps get the quarterback practice at those too, effectively practicing two plays that have significant overlap and relation to each other in one drill. Nothing groundbreaking but it’s good to be efficient when practices are so limited in the offseason.

Efficient, targeted drills

Continuing on that efficiency note, it stood out to me that a lot of the drills the Commanders ran on offense were very efficient but also targeted to specific things we’re expecting to see in David Blough’s offense. For example, a lot of teams will warm up by lining up all their receivers to one side and having them all run basic slants or quick out routes. But the first drill I saw clips of with quarterbacks and receivers was much more detailed and targeted to something a lot more receivers will run.

Here we see a clip from WUSA9 reporter John Duran. While slants and quick outs will be run in this offense, they won’t necessarily be run by every single receiver. So instead, here we see a drill involving shallow crossing routes. Every receiver in the offense will run a shallow cross at some point, some will run them multiple times per game, so it makes more sense to work on that route as a warm up drill instead of basic slants or quick outs.

But there’s also some nice detail involved in these drills. First of all, they split the receivers up into two groups, enabling them to run shallow crossing routes from both sides of the field. This drills the receivers to run the routes from either side of the formation, but also lets them practice crossing through traffic. Both sets of receivers run at the same time so they cross in the middle of the field, as they would on a basic mesh concept. It’s a nice layer of detail, but it also adds to the efficiency because the Commanders can have two quarterbacks and two receivers practicing at the same time.

But another layer of detail here is how they’re drilling the receivers at the point of the catch. You can see they have multiple coaches with arm pads acting as underneath zone defenders. This gives the receivers a visual aid to see how and where they need to break off their crossing route against zone coverage and find a soft spot in the zone. But the details don’t stop there. You’ll also notice how the receivers break off their routes and turn back to face the quarterback, but as the ball arrives, they open up their bodies to help them turn and run down the field.

In soccer, this is known as receiving the ball on the half turn, where the body is opened up so a player can receive a pass from one side but still turn and run in the other direction. I believe NFL teams will refer to this as drop stepping. You can see the receivers drop step with their inside foot as the ball arrives. This enables them to get a head start on turning up the field and trying to pick up additional yards after the catch. It might not appear like a major detail, but that drop step or half turn can give a receiver an extra step on a defender, which can make all the difference in if they get tackled at the catch point or if they can make that defender miss and pick up an additional five yards.

This wasn’t the only targeted drill I saw from the Commanders offense either. I saw them working a lot of choice routes and pivot routes, which were staples in Ben Johnson’s 2023 Lions offense that we’re expecting David Blough to run.