Throughout the postseason, we’ve been stealing plays from other teams and drawing them up for the Green Bay Packers to use in 2026. We’re capping off this mini series with a doozy today and taking a play that the Seahawks ran in the Super Bowl.
This play happened with 13:29 left in the 4th quarter of a 12-0 game, and it ended up being Sam Darnold’s lone TD pass of the day.
The Seahawks are in 12 personnel (1 RB, 2 TE, 2 WR), starting in a completely balanced formation (a WR split wide to each side, a TE on each side of the line and the RB aligned behind the QB).
Before the snap, AJ Barner [88] motions from left-to-right, slowing to a settle in the insert position (under the line, between the tackle and the TE). That move has the Patriots – and Jack Gibbens [51] specifically – keying on the run. Gibbens attacks downhill as Darnold fakes the handoff.
Gibbens is anticipating the block from Barner. Thinking it’s a run, he doesn’t want to get hung up on trying to engage Barner. As a result, Barner is able to slide right past and emerge into the open field. With the Patriots in a single-high defense and the boundary defender to that side being run off by a post route, Barner finds himself wide open.
The Seahawks had shown some insert block runs in this game, so the Patriots seemed focused on shutting that down here and it bit them.
Nice playcall from the Seahawks.
Now, let’s steal it. Like the Seahawks, we’re rolling with 12 personnel. I had originally drawn up these plays in 11 personnel, with Dontayvion Wicks as the motion/insert blocker. That could still work (Wicks is the best blocking WR on the team and they use him in that role a lot), but, ultimately, I went with 12 personnel. My thinking was twofold: 12 personnel could get the defense matching your heavy personnel with their heavy personnel (getting another LB on the field), and the last two plays call for a FB role, which is not something Wicks is doing. We could just scrap the last two plays as part of this package, but I like them.
If the defense that week isn’t matching heavy with heavy, I’d probably scrap those last two plays and put Wicks as the motion/insert man. But, for now, here is what we have:
RB: Josh Jacobs [8]TE: Tucker Kraft [85]TE: Josh Whyle [81]WR: Christian Watson [9]WR: Matthew Golden [0]
Watson and Golden give speed on the outside. They both have the speed to run off the defender on the playside, but I’m giving Watson the nod there since he’s the superior blocker and we’ll need that skillset on a couple of our plays.
Whyle is given the nod as the vertical target for a couple of reasons. The main one is that I need a blocker on the playside who can hold up on his own, and Kraft is the only one on the roster at the moment who I feel good about doing that. We’ll get him a couple payoff plays, though. Don’t worry about that.
I had a little time, and this was a fun play to noodle on, so we have 8 diagrams. We’ll start with the play from the Super Bowl:
The one major change I’m making is the width of Watson. The Seahawks ran this with a wide split from that WR. Bringing Watson into a tight split helps to open up the boundary, but it also allows for a more favorable blocking path for some of the variations.
Next up, we’ve got a fairly typical run play that would set up the shot we just detailed above.
Just a standard wide zone insert run. If we’re sequencing the plays, this would be called before the vertical shot to the TE. How is the defense matching personnel? Do they rotate a safety down with the motion? Are they bumping the LBs to take on the insert block? Those are the types of things we’d be looking for. This is a base run, so we’re picking up those tendencies from the defense while operating in our standard offense.
Out of this look, we could also run a version of Crack/Toss. Whyle’s motion turns into an escort block, while an offensive lineman (the RT here) pulls to lead around the edge. Kraft is blocking down, and Watson is on the crack block (something he excels at). This isn’t necessarily something the Packers show every week, but it’s certainly in their arsenal, and you can run some slick variations off of it. Here’s one of my favorites:
Here’s our first payoff for Kraft. It looks like Crack/Toss, then Kraft releases through the teeth of the LBs while they’re trying to avoid his block. We’ve seen versions of this already in Green Bay, with one of my favorite versions being the opening play against the Titans in 2024.
Since we’re operating with slice motion off a half-boot look anyway, I figured we could work in one of the Packers’ core passing concepts: PA Boot.
Whyle releases to the flat, Kraft blocks down before releasing on a Slam route behind Whyle, and we get Watson & Golden on the deep and intermediate levels.
If we can work in PA Boot, that also means we can work in Leak, another half-boot concept. Instead of blocking and releasing back to the right, Kraft slips under the formation and leaks out the backside. Another payoff play for Kraft.
We’ve seen this a couple times from Green Bay, most notably in the 2023 Wild Card Round.
All of those are out of the same formation with the same motion from Whyle and the same release path for Love. We get the same general release paths for Watson and Golden. This gives a pretty good look at the whole “illusion of complexity” thing.
I had two more I wanted to work in, but the motion from Whyle is different. They both revolve around Whyle motioning into the backfield as a strongside FB. These last two plays are the reason we’re using Whyle instead of Wicks, but you can run everything above with Wicks in the Whyle role.
First up is a pretty simple FB lead play. Whyle motions to the backfield and acts as the lead blocker for Jacobs off the right side. Get the right look and then you can hit this beauty:
That’s right ladies & gentlemen, boys & girls: it’s the Cheese Wheel (no wheel is featured). It’s basically a post-rail concept, with the rail route coming from the fullback. Much like we saw in the initial play, you need to sell it to a point where the LB is looking to take on Whyle in the hole, then Whyle blows right past him. Watson is clearing out the boundary. Jacobs follows Whyle just like he would in FB lead, but stays back as protection.
When this hits, it’s a beauty. The first time I saw it in Green Bay was 2019 against the Broncos, and it led to Danny Vitale’s longest reception of his career.
So there you have it. A play to steal and 7 plays that could be built off of it from the same personnel/formation. A slight change for the last two plays, but the initial formation is the same.
Albums listened to: Ratboys – Singin’ to an Empty Chair; Geese – Getting Killed; Avery Tucker – Paw; Silversun Pickups – Tenterhooks