NFL 101: The Route Tree

Former NFL defensive back and current analyst Solomon Wilcots explains the route tree.

[juniormolina]

THESE ARE FREAKIN AMAZING!!! Pls keep em' coming.

[divantewilliams]

The way my school did it was different.
1. 3 yard out
2. Slant
3. Comeback
4. Curl
5. 10 yard out
6. 10 yard in
7. Corner
8. Post
9. Streak

[adrianbravo]

My dad tells me to watch this 5 times a day

[thatboylije]

For my coach
0. Was a whip
1. Was shallow cross
2. Slant
3. Five n out.
4. Five n in
5. Ten comeback
6. Dig
7. Corner
8. Post
9. Go

[Jelperman]

The route tree was invented by Don Coryell when he was head coach at San Diego State in the 1960s. Coryell realized it was much easier to get a new player to learn a number than a name. So instead of calling a play "X-post, Y-cross, Z-corner" it could be called "827". As Joe Theismann said when he first started playing for Joe Gibbs (one of Coryell's padawan learners): "If you can count from 0-9 and know left from right, this is easy to learn".

[cellodabest]

Jesus Christ he is an amazing route runner

[frankyi]

So many of these passes were off target that OBJ had to adjust to. The curl and corner were pretty good passes, I couldn't tell on the post how much was a well-placed pass and how much was OBJ adjusting his route to the pass, but Eli was doing him no favors.

[hfbk]

OBJ is so good! Crazy how people say he is overrated.

[jjmeara]

My highschool route tree
0- 5 yard curl
1- 3 step slant
2- 5 yard out
3- 10 yard in
4- 12 yard out
5- 12 back to 10 curl
6- fake 3 yard out route into a go
7- post
8- corner
9- go

[wonzaga]

my school does a mini combine and i have no idea why they dont show these videos instead of people running the 40 and doing the bench press and all that

[JonJonGTA]

I knew some of these routes by their names but first time I heard with numbers

[fxg]

Aye in 6 Years when I declare for the NFL as a TE this video inspired me

[hholdtheline]

I believe that the 3 and 5 routes are reversed in number only, the 3 route is the comeback and the 5 route is the 10 yard out.

[nobelpeaceprizeloser]

So for wheel routes, rub routes, and untraditional routes are there tags or special code words for that?

[marka]

Cool hopefully this helps me in Madden

[TheVoiceofKizzy]

No problem replaying prime OBJ absolutely cooking DBs

[aqn]

6 can also be a curl route & 4 a 10yd in.

[touher]

WOW!!! This is every that I need to know to be a good player and has the mind of a coach. I have two questions that I want to ask:
1) What is a seam route?
2) Do u really have to spin on a stop-n-go route?

[timg]

Love these videos! Question, when people say, "he's a good route runner, " how do they know? How would the person watching know what route the player was attempting to run? Do they just mean he's good at juking his defender in order to get open?

[SantaWithGuns]

What's the wheel route though? Here because of that Cam Newton play. Also is there a video on how to defend these types of plays?