Red Sea Counter

Description

U Bacon was designed primarily to pound away at defenses running off right guard and right tackle. However, in the NFL there is no play than can work all of the time; no matter how good your personnel are the other team has enough talent to stop just about any play dead in it's tracks once they have it figured out and can see it coming. The Red Sea Counter was introduced early in the development of U Bacon to mix things up, drawing the defense into the heart of the offensive formation toward the halfback only to see him turn the other way after the defensive rush is trapped. This play will punish teams that try to stop U Bacon power plays through sheer numbers of bodies by overloading the offense's right side, and keep those defenses honest against future plays.

I really like to run this play against aggressive defenses. It is designed to suck in and trap interior blitzes and is also very effective against man coverage, where the linebackers instinctively rush into the middle. It is not so effective against zone coverages, where backers and safeties take more of a wait and see attitude and flow more from side to side in pursuit. Red Sea Counter can be truly devastating if you can use it or other weakside U Bacon running plays early in a game. If you can get the defense to shift over to cover the weakside, call Red Sea and hit the Playmaker to go to the strong side instead. You will get all the benefits of the trap of the defensive line plus the full blocking power of U Bacon's strong side! If you get this situation setup and execute the play correctly expect to get an easy 10 or more yards on the run.

Player Assignments

See the Madden Playbook Guide for a description of these symbols.

Blocking Assessment

Because the right guard and tackle parting like Moses parted the Red Sea tends to take care of most of the defensive line, the key to executing this play is really about knocking out the linebackers. In particular the ROLB is the most likely to get a clean rush around the left tackle. If he lines up wide consider moving the FB into the middle (I Form) position. Hopefully the defense will still think dive rather than weakside run, and this will give the FB enough of an extra step to smack the edge rusher before he gets into the backfield. Motioning the #2 TE to the left is also a possibility but is more likely to give away your intent to a human opponent. Once you do get to the outside make sure to cut upfield as soon as you can. I've found that once you start running around the cornerback it is very difficult to get turned upfield for a decent gain, so look to make a hard cut upfield behind the block of the FB.

The weakside blocking cannot handle two clean rushes from the outside, so if the defense shifts or spreads both th D-line and LBs you have a couple of choices: hit the Playmaker to a counter right or use motion to get blocking help. I really like the Playmaker if the defenders overload the left side, but this will not happen much against the right side heavy U Bacon formation. If the D spreads out motioning the TE to seal the outside may be the best bet, just take the handoff and cut back to the inside and hope for a small gain. Actually there is a third choice, audibling to a power run up the middle is always a good choice when the D is spread wide.

Analysis

Pros:

• Very effective against defenses softened up by strong side power runs
• Playmaker to strong side is even more effective than natural direction of play
• Uses aggressive defensive tendencies against the defense

Cons:

• Quick rush around outside edge can beat FB into backfield
• Is effectively neutralized by a defensive line spread wide
• Decent sized openings often get strung out sideways, yielding disappointingly small gains