When you’re breaking down passing concepts, the smash concept is a passing concept you see fairly often. It is a pretty simple two-man concept combining a hitch or curl route by an outside receiver with a corner route by an inside receiver. Idea is to force a CB to make a decision: squat on the short route or help the safety deep with the corner route. If corner squats, QB throws corner route; if corner drops deep, QB takes the easy short route. Smash Shallow is a three-man concept, with the outside receiver running a shallow cross while the two interior receivers run smash.
Smash Shallow Concept
The boundary receiver runs a vertical route. Tight end runs a corner route and field slot runs a five yard out as the short route. Field receiver runs a shallow cross route one yard past the line of scrimmage to behind LB depth. QB reads DB covering field slot to see if they squat or drop to cover TE’s corner route as they read smash concept. Third read is field receiver on the shallow cross. It is a three man read, low to high to flats, slot-TE-Z receiver.
Executing Smash Shallow Concept
A&M is in 11 personnel on the State 11 yard line. Jalen Preston is the boundary receiver, Zach Calzada is in shotgun with Isaiah Spiller aligned to his left. Jalen Wydermyer is aligned on the LOS inside the hash. Ainias Smith is the field slot and Moose Muhammad III is the field receiver. At the snap, Preston pushes vertical. It is unclear what route Preston is running because he is held most of the way. Wydermyer runs a corner route. Smith runs a five yard out and is immediately pressed by the CB. Muhammad runs a shallow cross. State runs a creeper and Spiller picks up the blitz. Calzada sees the press coverage on Smith and throws to the back corner of the end zone where only Wydermyer can reach the ball.
Result of the play is an 11 yard TD pass.
End Zone View
In the end zone view, you can see the pass protection pick up State’s creeper blitz and Calzada’s read of the smash concept as he throws the corner route.