Monday Money Play – Pistol Bunch TE – Cross Drag

This week we’ll be breaking down our first play of the year out of the pistol set. Pistol Bunch TE specifically. The play is Pistol Bunch TE – Cross Drag. This play takes advantage of crossing routes and high-low reads from a set that can also easily be run out of. A big perk is that you don’t really need to make any adjustments to this play to make it effective against your opponent.

Play: Pistol Bunch TE – Cross Drag

Playbooks: Cardinals, Pistol Playbook, Saints
Required Hot Routes: none!

My first read on this play is always the tight end dragging from right to left. This route along with the B(o) route are the most consistent routes for this play. They beat zone coverages and often man coverage too providing your WR is faster than the defender.

The next route I typically look to is the Y(triangle) route. The B(o) route typically does a good job of pulling down zones to get the Y(triangle) open deeper, and that route also tends to beat man pretty good too. Because of this I almost never throw the X(square) in route since the Y(triangle) route is usually open for bigger gains in situations where I might consider throwing it:

The last route I throw, albeit rarely, is the route to the RB. This is a good bailout route when nothing else looks to be open. As you can see from the example below, I didn’t see that I had the Y(triangle) route wide open, and everything else appeared to be at least moderately covered. I threw the route to the RB and ended up picking up a big gain. While I did see the B(o) route open, I was hoping to use that WR as a blocker down field when throwing it to the RB.

Hopefully this play is a good addition to your rotation. Especially those of you using the Saints playbook where we have broken down several plays previously. Check back next week for another Madden Money Play, and if you didn’t see last week’s play you can check it out here.