When to RPO - and When Not To

RPOs are always a hot topic in football, and for good reason. When they’re working, they can appear impossible to defend. The problem is that the conditions under which they work are more specific than a lot of offenses account for — and the conditions under which they don’t work are more common than most playcallers want to admit.

What an RPO Is Actually For

There are two schools of thought on RPO design. One treats the pass as the primary concept and the run as the protection — you’re going to throw it, and if the box empties out, hand off instead. The other treats the run as the primary concept and the pass as the protection — you’re going to run it, and if a defender vacates to take away the run, you punish him for it.

My philosophy is more in line with the second approach. The underlying belief is that a well-schemed run play can reliably gain four yards, and the RPO exists to keep a specific defender honest so that four yards stays available. I want to get the ball where we have a hat-for-a-hat. Maybe we have an 11 Personnel formation against a 4-2 box. That’s 6 vs 6. I need to identify who the 7th defender is that the defense wants to bring that we can’t block. Let’s say it’s an outside linebacker apexed to a Twins set. If we’re 6 for 6 inside and our two WRs are accompanied by a CB and a Safety, that’s 2 for 2 on the perimeter. The OLB is the adjuster that can either be the extra defender to the Twins or the extra defender to the run. I want the ball to go whichever way he didn’t choose. That’s a real and legitimate use of the RPO. Wide receiver perimeter blocking, especially from a wide split, rarely produces a good angle on the primary defender that needs to be accounted for. That RPO mentality also produces an element that if the ball gets to the WR where we are 2 for 2, I have one WR blocking one of the DBs. In theory, if the pass catcher makes the other one miss, it should be an explosive play, if not a touchdown.

The Problem With “Just Don’t Throw It”

A coaching point that comes up frequently in RPO-heavy systems is telling the quarterback to know the situation — essentially, “we have this RPO, but don’t throw it right now.” That’s a reasonable in-game adjustment, but it isn’t is a schematic answer.

If the playcaller doesn’t want the ball thrown, the routes shouldn’t be run. Not because of what the quarterback might do, but because of what the defense can do. A corner who recognizes a down-and-distance situation where you’re unlikely to throw may not honor a speed out to the boundary. A Curl-Flat OLB may not widen with a bubble. If the RPO route is running but the offense has no intention of throwing it, the defense gets to make that bet at no cost. The defender who would have been the read key now has a free run at the ball carrier, and the play that was supposed to be protected isn’t.

The cleaner answer is to take the RPO off the field entirely in those situations. My primary answer as such is to condense the formation so receivers become blockers. Another option would be to use motion to reassign the defender in question before the snap. In my system, motion alone doesn’t take away an RPO, but changing the defender’s assignment at the snap, likely coinciding with a different defender in a less advantageous alignment becoming the force defender, would still slow the fit for the defense or create an RPO worth throwing based on something like having 3 eligibles for 2 defenders. Block both defenders and throw the ball to our extra man.

Either way, the force defender is still accounted for, the quarterback still has a clean read, and nobody is running routes that the offense has already decided not to throw. The red zone against a loaded box is one obvious example. Fourth and one is another. The element of the offense knowing the snap count should be enough to get a quick-hitting run through the chains — so should the quarterback just know not to throw it, or should the playcaller have already removed the decision from the equation?

First Play of a Drive

Analytically, scoring rate roughly triples when an offense gains four or more yards on the first play of a drive. That’s a meaningful number, and it’s worth building a philosophy around. On first and ten, the question isn’t whether the RPO is open — it’s whether it’s the most reliable path to staying on schedule.

Beyond that, if a quarterback just ended the previous drive with an interception, the first play of the next drive probably isn’t the moment to ask him to make a high-pressure decision. The value of a clean handoff and a positive run there goes beyond the yardage — it gets the ball moving, settles the offense, and creates a foundation for the rest of the drive before asking him to throw again.

What Happens When the QB Isn’t the Strength of the Roster

One of the quieter arguments against building an offense entirely around RPOs and quarterback decision-making is the same argument against building it entirely around any one position group. Every offensive system has to have a plan for what happens when a key position is below average.

What if the offensive line is undersized? You scheme around it, adjust protection, lean into concepts that create easy angles. You don’t cancel the run game. The same logic applies at quarterback. If the best available option at that position is a below-average decision-maker, an offense that relies on him processing and reading the field on the majority of snaps is an offense without a contingency. A complete system should be able to live without the RPO in a given season — leaning into a heavier run game, a few screens, and wide-open play action shots where the quarterback isn’t reading coverage so much as finding the open window he already identified pre-snap. Three to five pass concepts a game with clear decisions beats twelve pass concepts that require a quarterback the offense doesn’t have.

When do I like RPOs?

Most of this article has been about when I don’t like to have RPOs. Outside of this list, I don’t mind RPOs on almost any “pass and run” (PAR) down. Most often, that’s first downs outside of the first play of the drive and red zone, any second down between 1 and 10, and some third downs where I know we’re going on fourth down if necessary.

Essentially, I like them when I don’t have a specific preference as to calling a run play or a pass play. The Offensive Line coach in me never complains about running the ball, so I might should say where I have a less than 75% preference (as opposed to a 99.9% preference to run on 4th & inches).

The RPO is a tool. Like any tool, its value depends on the conditions under which it’s being used, the people using it, and whether the playcaller has an honest answer for what happens when those conditions aren’t met. Paid subscribers will have access to the end of the article, where I break down one of my RPOs from my last stint as an offensive coordinator.