Another Great Tendency-Breaking Route

We love tendency-breakers here at Football Film Room. Whether it’s routes that bait defenders or inventive blitzes that break down protections, we have a deep appreciation for the coaches who spend countless hours finding ways to set up their opponents and then pull the rug out from underneath them. There’s almost nothing better when watching film.

This example comes from Week 14 of the 2022 season. In that game, the Eagles offense did just about anything they wanted to against the Giants defense, ultimately winning the game 48-22. The key play of the afternoon that basically sealed the win midway through the second quarter came as a result of the Eagles setting up and then breaking their own tendencies.

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We’ll start with Philly’s second drive of the game. Multiple times, they ran a play featuring a deep-over route from the tight-slot receiver against the Giants’ Cover-1 defense. Both resulted in incompletions, however:

Fast forward to the first play of the Eagles’ third drive, with Philly already leading 14-0. The Eagles were set up with great field position at the Giants’ 33-yard line and immediately went for the jugular.

Initially, it looked like they had another deep-over route called from a tight-slot position, this time with A.J. Brown running it:

From deep safety Jason Pinnock’s perspective, this route looked the same midway through the play as those previous over routes:

The Eagles would also run a post to the side of the over, another ploy to help guide Pinnock towards that side of the field:

But Brown would not be running a deep over. Instead, he broke his route back to the outside:

Brown left his defender and Pinnock in his tracks and would end up wide-open for an easy touchdown:

I don’t know if the Eagles game-planned this during the week or if they saw how Pinnock was reacting to the previous over routes and figured it was time to attack. Either way, this was a great job by Shane Steichen, the Eagles Offensive Coordinator at the time, of setting up tendencies and then breaking them at the right moment.

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