MS Film Room #34: Update On Red Routes

In today’s Madden School Film Room, we are expanding on 2 of our earlier film rooms posted a couple months ago: Film Room #29 and Film Room #26.

In those Film Room episodes, we went over specific plays showing you how to make defenders in shallow zones abandon their assignment and crash down on your quarterback.

In today’s episode, we are going over how to do that same technique but from any play in Madden 22.

Check out the full breakdown below!

Playbook: Any

Formation: Any

Play: Any with an outside receiver as the “red” route

Setup:

1. Hot route the outside receiver on the “red” route to a smoke screen
2. Make any other adjustments you’d like

Reads:

1. Once you snap the ball immediately roll out with an escape artist QB
2. Then just pick an open receiver to throw to

Overview: There are a few things to keep in mind when using this technique.

1. This only works against standard zone coverages like Cover 2, Cover 3, Cover 4 Drop, etc. It does not work against man to man or match coverage
2. You need an escape artist QB to buy enough time to make this work.
3. This technique is a bit cheesy and will likely be patched soon.

Let’s take a closer look at how this should all look.

This is the play art that we came up with for the video. You are welcome and encouraged to build your own play art for your scheme.

Notice how the receiver that we hot routed to the smoke screen is the “red” primary receiver. That is what makes this technique work.

Once we roll out with our quarterback, notice how all of the defenders in shallow zones start crashing down on our quarterback, completely abandoning their zone assignments.

We designed this particular play to have 3 receiving options come open at different times and well spaced out so that our opponent will have to choose which of our receivers to try to take away with his user.

We have the running back on the wheel as our primary read who has all kinds of space.

If he is covered, then we look to the tight end (circled in red) who is sitting down in the middle of the field with no one around him.

Then we also have our receiver who will come in underneath our running back. Just look to see which one is open and make the throw.

One this play, we choose to throw to the running back on the wheel. He makes the reception without any defender within 15 yards of him.

It is already about a 30 yard gain and if we can make one defender miss, it will turn into a touchdown.