The other is a quick out to five or six yards depth, where you “stick your foot in the ground, plant it to drive off” the route. It is basically reading a quick out, to settle or take it upfield along the seams vs. aggressive rotation or a safety playing the line hard on run situations. You have to settle on what you see before making the first cut, or drive upfield seeing people drive on your route.

Preference is to use the slant/settle look from outside in, since that target can always run away from the corner. That compliments being a rub on the route for a back on a swing route to the flat.

The Gruden variety stick route is designed to attack a linebacker or underneath player that jumps initial moves quickly. It should work well on blitz rotations or impatient zone defenders, in addition to defensive backs that come down hard in run support mentioned. Diagnosing you stick route is a bit harder on a straight stem, the extra step in six yards probably helps that.

Zone under with really loose safeties, likely to help on outside speed, the stick might work that seem greatly. It seems to one of Gruden’s main routes to use in the red zone and against “pattern reading defenses”(cover 8 or 9, those being the most prevalent in football when he was coaching, using two safeties and zone or man under by five underneath).

There was another reference made in that playbook that matched what I thought as well, it was tagging certain protection calls against certain popular tactics by adding extra spacing to double read blocker duties. The next time you discuss the zone blitz we’ll detail it closely.

Speaking of waiting on the throw, our QB often waited too long on that corner route I mentioned. The result was the slot would end up 15-18 yds downfield and get covered up by the safety or the corner peeling off of the #1 receiver’s vert route. He got lit up pretty good once and let our QB know how he felt about it. We hit him at 12 yds every time after that.

Thanks for the heads-up on the angle route. We’re predominantly a spread team but we do use a heavy group with 2 TE’s in short yardage. Sounds like something we might want to try with that personnel.