Eagles Film Room: Concept of the week – Crunch

Closer look at Philadelphia’s scheme.

In addition to writing the All-22 offense and defense reviews after each Eagles game this year, I will also write this one called ‘Concept of the Week.’ I will break down a specific concept or play on offense and defense and explain the play in more detail. Hopefully, this will allow you to look out for that play in future weeks. This week, we will look at Kenny Gainwell’s big run against Washington, which came on a concept called ‘Crunch’.

Crunch

“Crunch” is a type of trap play. It’s a rare concept involving a trap and a wham block. I haven’t seen the Eagles run it in a long time, and it’s definitely more of a Kellen Moore concept than a Jeff Stoutland one. It’s a boom-bust play, so you don’t see it often. If it hits well, it can be an explosive run, but if anyone screws up, it can end very badly.

Let’s get into the concept. As I said above, it involves both a trap and a wham block. These are blocks that pull a blocker to block an uncovered defender. This block will go opposite to the rest of the offensive line. Trap and wham are the same thing. Wham uses a tight end to block, while trap uses an offensive lineman. That’s it. I saw someone describe the offensive line movement as looking like a pair of scissors a few years ago and that has always stuck with me.

Crunch is a brilliant call if you run a lot of pin-pull because it looks similar, but the play hits the opposite side. The Eagles do run a lot of pin-pull! Additionally, When you are in shotgun, the back will normally run to the opposite side he is lined up. However, on crunch, the running back gets downhill fast to the same side that he is lining up which may catch the defense out. Normally on a gap-blocking scheme run (power, counter, etc), the line pins down to the backside and pullers pull to the play-side. This play does the opposite! Which makes it pretty unique and cool.

Let’s look at the design.

When you see it drawn up, it’s pretty clear you need an athletic offensive line to run this. There’s a lot happening here!

As you can see, the Eagles are running crunch to the right. So the tight end ‘whams’ the 3-technique to his left and the right guard ‘traps’ the other defensive tackle. The right tackle and center will “pin” defenders back or towards the play-side (the opposite to other gap scheme runs, remember). This creates a scissor-blocking action between each pair of blockers as I mentioned above. It’s cool!

It’s a bit of a confusing play, so if you want to check out a video segment, have a look below! I do the ‘Concept of the Week’ segment on my podcast weekly too.