Jet Sweep and Power Read Landmarks

By Brian White
Offensive Coordinator
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Twitter: @CoachWhite_RHIT

Introduction:

The Jet Sweep is a play carried by most offenses in some fashion.  One of the popular ways to run this play today is associated with an interior run read, such as Power Read, or a “wrong way run” with a zone working opposite the sweep.  Many offenses choose to use a crack scheme on their perimeter to account for the inside Linebacker on the Jet Sweep side.  This concept creates a one-on-one match-up between the ball carrier and the unblocked cornerback.

An alternative to leaving the play side CB unblocked is to leave the inside linebacker unblocked and allow the course of the ball carrier to out-leverage a defender running from inside to outside.  This is the option that we implement in our offense. On any Jet Sweep, the ball carrier is instructed to run parallel on to the line of scrimmage until he reaches a specific landmark on the field before he can make any type of cut. 

Jet Sweeps fall into our category of “Red Line” plays.  These plays that intend to hit wide near the Red Line, which is 4 yards from the sideline.  On Red Line plays, the Offensive Line is blocking a different play, therefore the pursuit of the defense will not be accounted for in the blocking scheme.  For example, when we run Power Read, the OL is blocking Power and not chasing defenders flowing outside of the box.  This means that there will be some angry “free hitters” pursuing the play.  On a Red Line play, the ball carrier knows that he cannot cut back because he will be at risk of absorbing a blindside hit from one of the free hitters.  Any cut made must be a vertical up-cut and then he must work back out to the Red Line.

These are the rules we give our Jet Sweep runner:

-          Jet Sweep to the field = Landmark is the opposite hash

-          Jet Sweep from the middle = Landmark is the logo (halfway between the hash and the inside edge of the number)

-          Jet Sweep to the boundary = Landmark is the inside edge of the number.