Combining Wide Zone with Slant Routes

The perfect complement to Key screens for explosive plays.

If you’ve followed my stuff for a while, you know how much we lean on Wide Zone as the foundation of our offense. It’s what everything else builds off of. And once defenses start overcommitting to stop it, we start to attack other areas of the field.

Earlier, I wrote about how attaching Key Screens to the backside of runs puts the defense in conflict, often leading them to play tighter man coverage or shift extra bodies outside.

Attaching Quick Screens to the Run

That’s exactly why our most explosive RPO of the year was Wide Zone paired with Double Slants—it attacked the very adjustments teams made to stop our screens.

Key Screens are great, but attacking the defensive backs with routes gives the defender multiple looks to worry about, creating hesitation.

It was simple but effective.

Let’s break down why it worked so well.

Why Double Slants?

The double slant concept has existed forever, but when paired with a Wide Zone, it creates problems for defenses.

• Natural Leverage – The first slant, typically from the slot, would attack inside leverage, making it an easy throw if the linebacker vacated.

• Built-in Outlet – The second slant (Fin route) gives the QB another option if the first window isn’t there.

• Complementary to Our Key Screen – We used a lot of key screens to the perimeter, forcing defenses to commit wider on the perimeter. Once they started leaning toward the screen, the slants had more room inside.

The Foundation: Wide Zone & A Simple Read

Wide Zone is all about stressing the defense horizontally. The natural flow of linebackers tracking the run makes slant routes perfect for attacking backside linebackers.

Quarterback Reads

One of the biggest reasons this RPO was so effective for us was how clean and simple it made the quarterback’s decision-making. By locking the backside tackle, we left the backside linebacker unaccounted for, making him our primary post-snap read.

Here’s how we coached it up: