They are coming for your freedom. The crackdown on downfield linemen has begun in your league whether you like it or not.

You already started to see it last year. Your favorite power RPO that you beat teams with a year ago started to get flagged for ineligible man downfield penalties. That inside zone split that you threw a hard post off of? Called back.

What is a team to do when their favorite defense melting RPOs keep getting flagged? Turn to the NFL.

A major difference in the NFL’s rules compared to high school and college football is that linemen are allowed at most one yard downfield. College rules allow more leeway at three yards. Looking at how the NFL deals with their more rigid rulebook on this matter can give us some ideas to take with us into the offseason.

The outside zone RPO is the NFL’s bread and butter concept because of the horizontal movement of the offensive line before heading up field. If pro offensive lines can stay within one yard downfield, you shouldn’t have any problems with a little more wiggle room.

The change between a straight outside zone play and it becoming a RPO is how we handle the backside end. The quarterback deals with the end in regular outside zone. In the RPO version, the backside tackle will handle the backside end so the quarterback can read the linebacker. Most teams will run the play away from the open side and have their tackle or tackle and guard lock the backside defensive linemen and base block them back.

Ideally, we would like to read the linebacker inside the first slant route that we have. Whether that is from a single receiver side, two receivers running double slants or slant flats to three receivers running whatever iteration of a slant concept you can put on paper.

In the Chiefs dominant playoff win over the Colts at snowy Arrowhead Field, every Chiefs run out of shotgun in the first half was this outside zone RPO. Within it, they showed a few different slant concept variations.

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There a few ways for receivers to run the slant route. Here are a couple simple ones:

Against zone, he can take his steps hard upfield but then on his cut inside, throttle down into space as the linebacker vacates because of the run and his defender falling off in zone.

Against man, he can start with a slight outside release to get his defender to open and create a bigger window for himself. Here is the Bills’ Charles Clay doing just that:

The three simplest keys to give the quarterback are:

1. If the read linebacker runs with the running back and creates a large enough window for the slant, he removes the ball from the runner’s gut and throws it.

2. If the read linebackers stays in the slant window long enough, hand the ball to the runner.

3. If the linebacker blitzes, we can skip the ride fake and throw directly to the slant if no other player is plugging that window in our peripheral vision.

The next thing to figure out is how you are going to value a run compared to a pass. The slant throw is probably of greater value overall. You can see teams have started to change how they manipulate the handoff. Instead of a true ride handoff, the quarterback puts the ball in a position to throw with fingers on the laces so he can throw it quicker into the closing window.

You can see in this clip of the 49ers running the play. Quarterback Nick Mullens holds the ball ready to throw and barely puts the ball into the runners stomach:

The crux that defenses face when playing against this scheme is that the offense is showing a horizontal running play which opens a large window for a backside slant. The linebacker being read really needs to get on his horse to get over to the playside to deal with the cut back. A look at one of Kansas City’s touchdowns in their recent playoff game against the Colts shows how this works.

We can see the backside linebacker hesitate to take away the slant that’s coming behind his head because the Colts are allowing their defensive end to rip inside and play the B-gap while their linebacker can stay outside in the C-gap. Unfortunately, the defensive end gets beat (or held), so the linebacker is coming from far away to make the play. The running back is probably tackled in the backfield if they are not worried about a slant hitting them.

If you already have the outside zone play as part of your run game arsenal, adding the RPO to the backside of it is an easy to way catch a defense napping.

Photo Courtesy: Justin Edmonds/Getty Images