When you run RPO’s and are the less athletic team, a lot of opponents will try to play cover 1 press man against you. This takes away the slants, bubbles, and puts a guy in the window of your pop pass. However, what it does leave is a 6 man box and a 1-high shell. Check me out on Twitter: @IMFB_Blog

Above you have the CBs pressed on the outside WRs, the strong safety playing 2 yards off the line on the #3, and a deep safety playing off over #2. Not quite press 1 (another deep safety 10 off at the ball) all around, but the foundation is there that it’s probably some form of man 1 coverage. What’s open? Well there’s 6 in the box so your run game. especially with no flat defender/force player to the 1 WR side, inside zone read should be there (IZR for short), especially a QB pull if the DE plays it right for us.

Above, you’re getting man 1 free with 5 in the box. We should be able to run against this look and again, what’s open: The IZR and the QB pull- if the DE plays it right for us and there’s no scrape-exchange with the ILB.

You can see the read end squeeze inside and he gets himself blocked down so the QB reads pull and can escape outside the OT.

Above, you can see the QB with plenty of daylight on a 15 yard pick up.

Watch the video below for a chalk-talk on RPO’s vs press-man 1.