Acme Packing Company
In the last article, we briefly covered the events leading up to the final Chicago Bears touchdown in regulation and broke down the details of that final play that tied the game. Ultimately, the Bears knocked off the Green Bay Packers 22-16 in overtime on the back of a deep shot from Caleb Williams to D.J. Moore.
As stated in the previous article, the game started slowly unraveling for the Packers early with the loss of Jordan Love in the first half (though to be fair to Malik Willis, I thought he played well), the Josh Jacobs inside-the-5-yard line fumble, and the Romeo Doubs muffed onside kick recovery.
The Packers had to take the ball first in overtime and were driving until they got on the Bears’ side of the field. Willis and center Sean Rhyan botched the quarterback/center exchange and recovered it, but it was fourth down, and they didn’t convert, allowing the Bears decent field position and putting, once again, enormous pressure on the Packers defense to respond.
After getting across midfield, Bears head coach Ben Johnson called a shot play that took advantage of the Packers’ defensive tendencies whenever the Bears came out in 13 personnel. It was a play Caleb Williams said they installed during the week of practice, but it appears they just didn’t find the right time to call it until overtime.
The Bears also ran the ball a half dozen times out of 13 personnel (1 running back, 3 tight ends), so in seeing the formation, they likely expected a run play.
The pass concept is a common play action shot play out of 13 personnel with two routes as the primary and secondary reads. A deep post and a deep sit route with the option to break outside away from the coverage.
In overtime, the Packers were keying on the Bears’ run game from this defensive alignment with the safeties around eight to nine yards from the line of scrimmage.
Before the snap, Williams motions Cole Kmet over from left to right. With only the linebackers shifting over, the Bears got the pre-snap alignment they wanted.
The play is a quarters concept beater that isolates the corner on the deep post due to the quarters safety to that side being in a flat-footed read of the number two receiver inside. The deep over concept aims to pin down the boundary safety and cornerback and take a shot over the top of the defense.
The safety at the top of the screen, Javon Bullard, was assigned to the #2 receiver on his side, Kmet. When Williams snapped the ball to execute the play action fake, Bullard focused on Kmet and took his run game read steps as he recognized the run action, while Kmet initially stayed in to block.
On the left side of the offensive formation toward the bottom of the screen, the play call had Colston Loveland running the deep over-the-ball route right at safety Xavier McKinney. With McKinney sitting inside...
