Tight Red Zone Hammer Concept


By FirstDown PlayBook on Dec 23, 2019

The Hammer concept has always been one of our favorite tight red zone plays. If the tight end runs a nice physical stop route one yard deep in the red zone then he has a great chance to have the quarterback jam the ball in there vs zone coverages. After all a big body that is covered is often not covered.

The quarterback is normally looking for the best side to read the high low as the X and the Z run the back of the end zone. During our coaching career we called this a lot of different things. We called the concept a 64 wrap and at Buffalo we called this concept with the 64 wrap on both sides the hammer concept.

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“This short clip shows a slight adjustment we made to it as we were expecting the defense to pressure us in the red zone and play man coverage.

Instead of having our tight end and slot receiver push one yard into the end zone we had them convert this route to an out vs man coverage. We felt pretty good about our slot receiver match up vs most nickel backs so it really gave us an extra option vs man coverage.

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It also gave us a quicker answer vs the pressure we often got. The tight end and the slot must run their route at least one yard into the end zone so that they are sure to score with a catch. The wide receivers must run their routes deep enough in the end zone to create separation between their route and the underneath route.