Acme Packing Company
Taking a play from the AFC Championship game and giving it to the Packers
Since the Packers season ended in the Wild Card Round, we’ve been watching the other games in the playoffs and trying to find cool things to steal and give to the Packers offense. A couple of weeks ago, we stole at a pitch/shovel play from the Lions. Last week we stole a couple RPOs from the Chiefs. Today, we’re stealing a Mesh concept from the Bills and their offensive coordinator Joe Brady. But not just any Mesh concept. No, we’re stealing Mesh Double Rail.
Mesh is a concept that the Packers leaned hard into early in the LaFleur era. In Bobby Peters’ 2020 Green Bay Packers Complete Offensive Manual (which you should absolutely pick up), Peters said “the Packers are the best Mesh team in the NFL. They run more variations than any other team I have studied.” And they were good at it, too. Per Peters, they averaged 8.4 YPA when running Mesh in 2020.
That came crashing back down to earth in the playoffs. And, while they still leaned heavily into it in 2021, they had trouble recapturing the magic (4.9 YPA running Mesh in 2021). After that, they just kind of stopped running it (after running it nearly 30 times per season in 2020 & 2021, I’ve got them at around 10 instances in both 2023 and 2024).
I’ll have a bigger piece this offseason about Mesh and how the Packers can build it back into their attack, but, for now, we’re just stealing this one play. Because Mesh is making a comeback around the league and I want this variation in the Packers playbook as soon as possible.
There are a thousand different variations of Mesh, but it all revolves around two short drag routes crossing each other in the middle of the field. While the concept itself is commonly traced back to LaVell Edwards at BYU, the concept was brought to prominence through the Air Raid system developed by Hal Mumme and Mike Leach. (S.C. Gwynne has a terrific book on the history of the Air Raid called The Perfect Pass, with a large section devoted to Mumme & Leach perfecting Mesh in their system.)
A common variation is something called Mesh Rail. You get the crossing routes in the middle of the field, combined with a Rail route (vertical route from the backfield). It’s something we’ve seen from the Packers. The Bills saw that and thought, “What if we had two Rail routes?”
The Bills are facing 3rd & 3 at their own 37-yard line, down 7-0 with 7:30 remaining in the 1st quarter. They come out in 21 personnel (2 RB, 1 TE, 2 WR), with the wide receivers in tight splits. The Chiefs have a lot of bodies up at the line.
The Bills have their two wide receivers running the dueling drag routes, with their tight end (Dawson Knox [88]) running a Sit route over the crossing...
