The Mesh and Mesh Rail examples I provided in my previous breakdowns are some of the most common versions of the Mesh concept in general. But there’s another variation of the play that tends to be used for short-yardage and goal-line situations.
It’s in these short-yardage situations that defenses tend to be more aggressive. They don’t just play man coverage. They play tight-man coverage from a press position, often jamming at the line.
So offensive coordinators have to be ready to dial up their best man beaters to help their receivers create separation.
“Mesh Traffic” is one of those man-beaters.
On the below example from this year’s AFC Championship Game, the Chiefs held a 3-point lead with 1:35 remaining. The Bills were desperate to get a stop and were treating this 3rd-and-9 as a short-yardage situation. Notice the tight-man coverage:
They were ripe for Mesh Traffic.
Below, you can see that this route concept unsurprisingly includes Mesh:
But the play is designed to go to the running back out of the backfield. His route comes from an offset position in the backfield opposite of the side he’ll release to. The idea there is to make his defender have to run across the field, and of course, fight through traffic to stay with him:
And as the name of the play indicates, traffic isn’t just something the offense is hoping to create. It’s specifically built into the play.
Here, the Chiefs aligned in a Trips-bunch formation and would use all three receivers (as well as their defenders) to create that traffic with crossing routes and inside releases:
That allowed running back Samaje Perine to outflank his defender (LB Terrel Bernard) for the game-sealing first down:
Here’s another version of Mesh Traffic from a game between the 49ers and Buccaneers in Week 11 of the 2023 season. The 49ers would also use a trips bunch look to run this out of and create traffic.
But the wrinkle here was that Kyle Shanahan would motion running back Christian McCaffrey to the outside just before the snap. That got his defender to move with him. And he was still moving in that direction at the snap, which gave McCaffrey an extra step of separation to the other side:
That type of motion is often accompanied by a route to the same side. Shanahan played off of tendency here to successfully set up this play.
This final example of Mesh Traffic comes courtesy of Bills Offensive Coordinator Joe Brady. This is as exotic of a design as you’ll see, as Brady added some nice eye candy to the play to throw the defense off the scent.
This was a 4th-and-3 during Buffalo’s Week 2 win over the Dolphins. The Bills were in a 1x3 with a Trips bunch to the left and running back James Cook offset to the same side:
While this was a high-probability man-coverage situation, Buffalo wanted to be sure. So they used motion to get an indicator.
First, Cook motioned behind Allen before coming back and settling to his right. Dolphins linebacker David Long (#11) followed: