How the Seahawks Create Big Completions Off of Play-Action

A large portion of the Seahawks’ passing game comes from play-action. In fact, they were 2nd in the NFL in percentage of passing yards coming from play-action this season. They were also very effective at it, finishing 1st in EPA per play according to NFL Next Gen Stats.

Klint Kubiak’s entire offense seems to be geared around generating big plays off of play-action. For instance, Seattle was nearly 50/50 with their run-pass selection. They also ran 56.7% of their plays from under center during the regular season, the 3rd-highest rate in NFL.

Both the balanced play-selection and the under-center nature of the offense play a huge role in making their play-action passing game more effective.

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If the defense believes you’ll run the ball, play-action will be more effective (even if your run game itself is not that effective).

But operating from under-center is an important component here as well. Play-action passes from under center tend to be more effective than out of shotgun.

The simple reason why is that it takes more time for the play fake to define itself from under center than it does out of shotgun. And that means defenders trying to read the play and see if it’s a run or pass spend more time waiting than going.

Second-level defenders can get sucked up further into the line of scrimmage, keeping them from getting depth in coverage. All the while, receivers are further downfield into their routes. That creates larger windows. Not to mention, deciphering whether its a run or pass slows down the pass rush.

All of this combines to give the quarterback more time to attack downfield.

On top of all that, Sam Darnold can throw from the pocket or roll-out in either direction. His ability to throw on the run, especially while moving to his left, is as good as any quarterback in the game. This helps make Seattle’s play-action passing game more versatile.

And Kubiak does a great job of keeping the defense off balance with some of his tendency-breaking concepts.

First, let’s take a look at their under-center straight-dropback play-action. Focus on those 2nd-level defenders attacking the line of scrimmage in response to the run fake, preventing them from getting any depth in coverage:

You can see the impact on the pass rush here as well. Watch both D-lines move laterally with the run action and the edge rushers to the right hold up to defend the run:

That’s a nice way to live as a quarterback.

Now we get into Sam Darnold’s high-level abilities throwing on the run, and in particular, to his left:

This is an ability he’s always had, by the way:

That ability allows Kubiak to be versatile and feel comfortable calling boots in either direction.

Now, we can get into Kubiak’s bread-and-butter play-action boot flood concept that he likes to lean on and then call tendency-breakers off of.

First, you can see the play concept illustrated below: