When watching film, you’ll often see plays that you can see a future vision for. If you see the same play long enough, it’s not hard to see what it may be setting up. Are they running a play action bootleg
a bunch of times? Brother, you can be sure you’re going to see a half-boot version of that with a deep route adjustment to try to catch the defense napping. Is the defense biting hard on quick slants? Get ready for the Sluggo (slant-and-go).
Sometimes it’s a little more subtle. The alignment of a wide receiver on a run. The break point of a receiver on a certain concept. The motion of a tight end. The initial release path of a guard.
Sometimes, however, they smack you right in the face. They smack you right in the face so hard that you assume that wrinkle will never actually pay off: it’s just something for the defense to spend just a couple of minutes thinking about when gameplanning. It’s like watching a movie where the reveal of the killer seems so obvious that it must be a misdirect…right?
Anyway, we’ve seen two of those so far this year and I wanted to talk about them before we get a potential payoff. Both of them start the same way: with a direct snap to rookie wide receiver Savion Williams [83].
Williams – a 3rd round pick in 2025 – missed a lot of time in the offseason with various injuries and hasn’t seen the field a ton this season. Through 3 games, he has been on the field for 20 snaps. As a wide receiver, he has run 8 routes (per NFL Pro), with only 3 of those being routes where he was lined up as a wide receiver on the play (4 came off jet motion and 1 was a vertical route from the fullback position).
He’s basically been a gadget guy, which was pretty much expected. He didn’t come in as the most polished receiver, so giving him the jet sweep/misdirect/run-fast-horizontally role always made the most sense for his early path to playing time (Williams eating that role allows wide receivers like Matthew Golden to focus on more of the true WR stuff).
The Packers have started rolling out a small package of plays with Williams as the QB. They’re not taking Jordan Love off the field on these, which is where this whole thing is going.
Play 1: Week 2, 2nd & 8, 11:06 remaining in the 4th quarter
The Packers originally line up with Jordan Love in shotgun, but they shift pre-snap, with Williams motioning back to shotgun while Love lines up deep under a stack on the left.
At the snap, Williams takes the ball and runs to his left, while Love releases deep behind Williams to the right. Love puts his hands up for the ball and Williams gives a little fake pitch. Love carries out the fake briefly by holding his hands up as if he has the ball and is looking to throw (but he doesn’t hold it too long, lest he give the defense an excuse to tee off on him).
The Packers are essentially running a pin-pull run (outside receivers block down with the tackle to that side pulling and leading on the left), with Williams following it. It’s a 16 yard gain that likely goes for more if Williams doesn’t slip
The fake to Love slows the backside pursuit, which is a nice benefit to this, but you’ve got the obvious potential of Williams pitching to Love coming back the other way with receivers releasing. Like I said, that was never going to happen on this rep – all the receivers are blocking – but it does put the seed of doubt into opposing defenses. If the Packers catch a team who shows flat, fast pursuit down the line on a play like this, they could dial this up with a pitch to Love and a receiver or two leaking out as options.
Play 2: Week 3, 2nd & 3, 4:36 remaining in the 1st quarter
Against the Browns, they didn’t mess with shifts: the play starts with Love lined as the under man in a stack on the left and Williams as the shotgun QB. They’re running the same type of run out of a different look: this time they’ve got a heavy YY-Wing (two TE’s in-line on the same side) on the right. Those TEs are blocking down and the right guard is pulling to lead around the edge.
There’s no criss-crossing in the backfield between Williams and Love, but we still see a little misdirect from Love. At the snap, he steps back slightly and puts his hands up. Williams gives a brief fake to the running back on the inside give, then keeps the ball around the right and picks up 2 yards.
This is clearly meant to simulate a potential double-pass, with Williams throwing to Love and Love then looking to throw downfield. Again, for the time being, it serves to put a seed of doubt into the minds of the defense. We now have a couple examples of Williams in at QB and two potential trick plays off of it.
I’ll state the obvious right now: if the Packers want to actually run a double-pass off of this in a game, Love needs to get more depth on the outside. If they ran a double-pass on this rep, the pass from Williams would be forward, which would only serve to get Jordan Love blown up on the outside. He needs to retreat back hard, or start at the depth he did in the first play.
I have no idea if the Packers are going to run the obvious variations to these plays or not, but I can pretty much guarantee you that these trick plays are in the playbook (maybe they get one rep a week). They won’t run these unless they feel the conditions are perfect, but I love seeing the set-up. Hoping for an eventual payoff to at least one of these at some point this season.
Albums listened to: Bass Drum of Death – Six; Wednesday – Bleeds
