The Benefits of Under-Center Play-Action

Play-action is a quarterback’s best friend. It forces hesitation in the pass rush and influences defenders in coverage, often leading to defined reads and easy completions. Doing it from under center can have an even greater impact on the defense.

The simple reason why is that it takes more time for the play-fake to define itself from under center than it does out of shotgun. And that means defenders trying to read the play and see if it’s a run or pass spend more time waiting than going. That creates larger windows and slower pass rushes.

Take this play from the 2022 season between the Giants and Colts, for instance. New York would break down the Colts’ coverage with a post-wheel route combination. However, they used several tactics to throw Indianapolis off the scent.

First, they didn’t run the route combination in the conventional way. Instead, they had tight end Daniel Bellinger align in the backfield as a fullback and sneak out into the secondary to run the wheel route:

To set up the route combination, the Giants would use a run fake involving two potential ball carriers - wide receiver Darius Slayton off of orbit motion, and running back Saquon Barkley:

Utilizing under-center play-action allowed this to be a slow-developing play-fake with two potential ball carriers, and that made it more difficult for the Colts to decipher everything that was going on. It forced their second-level defenders to keep their eyes in the backfield for just a split second longer than usual: