Communication breakdown: Why the Buccaneers’ hot reads aren’t working
As we continue our efforts to diagnose what ails the Tampa Bay Buccaneers offense, we turn to the hot read. Earlier this week we walked through a rather odd sequence in Sunday’s loss to the Kansas City Chiefs were the Buccaneers were perhaps “too cute by half” on offense with personnel packages. Now, we turn to another issue: The hot read.
In most pass protection schemes, there is a chance the offense will not have enough blockers to account for a potential blitzer. In those instances, one of the receivers on the play must be the hot read, and it is the quarterbacks job in a given situation to get that player the football if the blitz does come and the offense cannot account for every pass rusher in the called protection.
Here is a look at how that might come together, from the offense that Tom Brady was in last season. We will start with the basics, looking at the offensive formation and defensive front:
So to use this as an example, the 2020 New England Patriots line up with Cam Newton under center and use 21 offensive personnel, giving them a tight end, two running backs and two wide receivers. The Arizona Cardinals respond with with a 4-4-3 package, expecting a running play. Fullback Jakob Johnson and tailback Damien Harris are in an I formation, with tight end Ryan Izzo to the left. Arizona has seven defenders in the box, with cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick lurking about seven to eight yards over the tight end.
Now, if the Patriots look to throw here and use a six man protection scheme, they can block six defenders. That is a core protection that involves the five offensive linemen and either the fullback or the tailback. In that design, the tight end and the other running back have free releases into their route, and have no protection responsibilities.
So say the play looks like this, with a dual-slide as is called for in this protection series:
The route concept to the left here is a little Smash design, with the tight end on a corner route and the fullback releasing to the flat. These players have free releases and no protection responsibilities. The left tackle, left guard and center slide to the left due to the three defenders on the line of scrimmage to that side, and the right guard and right tackle slide to the right, responsible for those two defenders on the line of scrimmage. The tailback, Damien Harris here, does have a protection responsibility. He will scan from the middle linebacker to the weakside linebacker, or inside out.
So, with six people in protection, you can block six. If just the front five players rush the passer, you should have this blocked up with Harris free to help. If they rush the front five and one of the linebackers, you have six, with Harris picking up the blitzer.
What if they bring seven?
That is where the “hot read” comes in. In this scheme, “Y is hot,” which means that if both linebackers come, then Newton is going to look immediately to Izzo, the tight end, for a quick throw. Since you cannot account for seven pass rushers, you “block” the seventh rusher by throwing quickly and getting the ball out before that unblocked player can get home.
Now this is a somewhat rudimentary look at hot reads, and there are obviously variations and wrinkles in each system. And obviously defenses try to force you to throw hot and then jump the throw, which is why you might see something like we do here, which is Kirkpatrick lurking over the tight end. But this is what we might call a “protection-based” hot read system.
The kind of system Brady has been running for two decades.
That brings us to the Buccaneers.
When Brady decided to join Bruce Arians down in Tampa Bay, many pieces were written dedicated to what that marriage might look like schematically. Obviously the majority of ink was spilled looking at what Brady in Arians’s downfield “no risk it, no biscuit” offense would entail. But other little things, such as terminology, also would need some time. Ted Nguyen from The Athletic wrote about the terminology issue, and so did I back in August.
And also, hot reads.
Matt Cassel, who spent some time in the New England system, wrote a few days ago about the challenges that Brady faces in adjusting the the Arians offense. It is a meaty piece that is worth your time. Cassel talked with Carson Palmer – who faced his own ups-and-downs adjusting to Arians – about the transition. Hot reads, and learning how Arians handles them, was a big part of the learning curve:
The biggest adjustment Carson had to make was in the “hot” game: Which pass-catchers have hot routes and when do they turn “hot?” There are all of these subtleties for each individual player based on where they are and how they run their hot route, if it’s built into the call or not, who they’re “hot” off of and how that affects protection schemes. There’s a lot that goes into it.
It’s different in New England. We took care of our hot route issues by calling out new protections at the line. We’d re-identify certain people, so if we were able to see pre-snap that certain guys were blitzing, we’d re-identify the protection and push everybody to that side so the quarterback didn’t have to throw “hot.”
That’s a fundamental difference from a lot of places I’ve been where they say, “If they blitz, throw the hot route.” New England will say, “Let’s make this subtle adjustment. Let’s re-identify a certain linebacker so we push the line in the right direction, and by doing so, we don’t have to throw hot.”
So while New England is slightly different that other teams, there is a common thread: The hot reads are “protection based.”
With Arians, it is different: “In Arians’ offense, the system is less protection-based and more understanding where your “hots” are, trying to get your hot target the ball as quickly as possible and seeing if he can break a tackle.”
If you look through an Arians playbook, you’ll see that sometimes the hot reads are not players around the football such as tight ends, as you often see in more “protection-based” systems, but rather receivers in stack formations, bunch formations, or even isolated to one side of the field. Arians wants to punish teams that blitz by attacking space or matchups quickly, rather than reacting to a particular blitz package or individual blitzer.
Reacting to a blitz is tough for any quarterback, and often times muscle memory takes over. When you have spent twenty years in one style of offense, unlearning that and learning a new method is going to take some time.
And it likely leads to miscues. Take the second interception Brady threw against the Kansas City Chiefs, which came against a blitz package with the quarterback looking hot:
The play falls apart for other reasons, but Brady makes the right read here, as Arians pointed out this week. But hot reads are still an issue for this offense, as the coach also illustrated when referencing this play:
I feel like it’s really first quarter stuff – catching up with their gameplan versus us and adjusting to it, because we were in very manageable third downs. They had a blitz zero package that we didn’t handle well the first couple [of times] – who was hot [and] what they were supposed to do. [We] kind of ironed it out on the sideline [but] it led to another interception late when the ball went off the helmet. It was the same blitz, but we just didn’t correctly adjust. Tom [Brady] was perfect on it and we didn’t adjust to the right angle of the route for the zero blitz. Other than that, I thought when we adjusted, we played pretty, pretty solid.
But then there are plays like this:
The Buccaneers dial up this concept on a third down in the first quarter. This is a lovely little mesh concept with a wheel route from Antonio Brown out of the backfield and a dig route over the top from Mike Evans. Rob Gronkowski runs a post route.
The Chiefs run a Cover-0 blitz here, and this might have been one of the plays in the first half that Arians referred to. Because when they blitz, Brady seems to look for Gronkowski first as he releases, but the tight end never looks for the football. So Brady under pressure floats a pass in the general direction of Brown on the wheel, and the ball falls harmlessly to the turf out-of-bounds and the punt team takes the field.
So, was Gronkowski the hot read and he did not look for the ball when he should have? Brady’s eyes go there first, but the TE is chugging downfield. In a protection-based system (the kinds Brady knows best) that would make sense. Or was Brown the hot read and Brady should have gone there first? Or someone else?
Luckily for me, I don’t have to answer those questions. But the Buccaneers do, and soon. Thankfully they have a bye week to sort these issues out.
