LEARN A HOLGORSEN PLAY: Air Raid “Four Verts” and “Storm” Vertical Stretch Concepts

When "everybody go deep" is really about clockwork timing and nuance

PROGRAMMING NOTE: This is the second in an offseason series breaking down some of the favorite concepts new Nebraska offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen has utilized at previous stops. While it’s not known exactly what style of offense Holgorsen will be running at NU, he has some consistent concepts he’s carried with him throughout his play-calling career that are strong bets to be on Nebraska’s 2025 menu. New entries will appear sporadically throughout the offseason.

Previous entries: Y Cross

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“Everybody go deep,” is one of the simplest football strategies you can imagine, something you’ve probably participated in if you’ve played any sort of backyard or recess pick-up game. “Just run to the fence, and I’ll chuck it up.” All or nothing: football at its least strategic.

Despite that seeming simplicity, though, the Air Raid’s “everybody go deep” play — Four Verticals, also referred to as “Four Verts,” “All Go,” or “6” — is really a miracle of timing, nuance, and elegant design:

From Hal Mumme and Mike Leach’s Kentucky playbook.

Despite having four players running in more-or-less straight lines down the field, Four Verts is not often a deep shot: In operation, Four Verts is a medium-depth vertical stretch concept that relies on extreme levels of feel and practice to attack seams and second-level openings through options on routes. Though Four Verts will generate some of those backyard-football shots down the field against certain defensive coverage looks, it’s much more likely to generate completions 12 to 15 yards down the field, behind and outside the second level of coverage but in front of the deep coverage, with the ball always meant to “find grass” (meaning open space in the defensive structure). As the Air Raid has proliferated through the sport over the last three decades, dozens of variations, adjustments, and tags have turned Four Verts into a Swiss watch of a play that can find yardage against just about any defensive look it’s run against.

As an Air Raid disciple — and assistant under Mike Leach when Leach really started experimenting with and mastering the play — Dana Holgorsen’s offenses have incorporated and relied on Four Verts throughout his play-calling stops at Texas Tech, Houston, Oklahoma State, and West Virginia, making it likely we’ll see it as part of his attack with Nebraska in 2025. Holgorsen has also shown and talked about in clinics a variation off Four Verts called “Storm” that functions closer to a “Veer and Shoot”-style downfield option shot play that we’re seeing popularized across the sport now.

I’ll go over the basic history and rules for the Air Raid’s Four Verts play so that we understand the general structure, then I’ll go over the changes Holgorsen made to it to create the “Storm” concept.

HISTORY

Whereas Hal Mumme and Leach can legitimately claim to have created the modern Y Cross concept during their experimentation at Iowa Wesleyan from near-scratch, the Air Raid didn’t “create” a play with all vertical routes; that’s been in football playbooks in some form probably since the forward pass was legalized.

What the Air Raid can take credit for is coming up with the modern conception of “Four Verts” as more of a nuanced, medium-depth vertical stretch play, thanks to the option-route tweaks and “find grass” ethos of the offense. And Leach, specifically, can take credit for perfecting and weaponizing this modern version of the play.

While Four Verts — called “6” in the Air Raid playsheet and terminology — was in the Mumme/Leach playbooks at Iowa Wesleyan, Valdosta State, and Kentucky and in Leach’s playbook at Oklahoma, it didn’t really take off into its current form until Leach’s stint at Texas Tech, when he tinkered with it to add new options and teaching points to the routes to make the play viable against any defense, creating something that could be repetitively deadly by making it adaptable to whatever the defense did after the snap. Leach’s Red Raiders were maniacal about repping Four Verts during practice to develop the feel, timing, and decision-making required to run it well.

This is a quote from Lincoln Riley, a former Texas Tech quarterback and later assistant coach at Tech under Leach, in an interview with Fox’s Joel Klatt several seasons ago about the program’s focus specifically on Four Verts/6:

​​“(Texas Tech) would literally have days of practice where we would only call this play. Our guys get frustrated. The defense knows it’s coming. And you’re just expected to execute. At the time, I got to be honest, I thought it was a little crazy. But what it created was a sense of any situation, especially, the big situations, we were going to find a way to execute it.”

After Leach’s re-work, Four Verts went from an inefficient concept that Leach described primarily as something he deployed to keep defenses honest and turned into an efficient, productive monster: In a clinic from between his time at Texas Tech and Washington State, Leach said his offenses pre-Texas Tech completed a pass on Four Verts on about 28% to 30% of their attempts, but after it became a focal point of his time in Lubbock, his offenses could reliably complete it around 58% of the time, for over 9 yards an attempt. Keep in mind that 58% completion rate is on a play that was throwing the ball 15-20 yards down the field. Pretty unreal.

Leach described Texas Tech games where the Red Raiders did little else but run Four Verts for long stretches of play, including the second half of Tech’s iconic win over No. 2 Texas in 2008. Texas Tech ran Four Verts on four of the five plays on its game-winning drive, including Michael Crabtree’s legendary touchdown catch:

The play has proliferated out of Leach’s domain at Tech into broader football, both as his Air Raid assistants in Lubbock spread the play in their future jobs and as all levels of football shamelessly copied the play. It’s become a staple of the sport, popular at the high school and smaller college levels all the way up to the NFL. Here’s a great article from The Athletic writer Ted Nguyen on variations off the play from Sean Payton, 2019 LSU, Todd Monken, Andy Reid, and even triple-option maestro Paul Johnson.

Nebraska actually ran the Air Raid Four Verts semi-frequently last year under former coordinator Marcus Satterfield, including eight times alone against Illinois for several big completions:

I’ll get back to this example later in the post after explaining the basics of the play so we can evaluate what went right and wrong for NU here.

RESPONSIBILITIES/READS/RULES

The play is essentially mirrored to both sides of the formation, so the teaching points can be broken down by the outside receivers, inside receivers, and the tailback, and we’ll go over how different teams teach their quarterbacks to read the play at the end.

Outside Receivers

The outside receivers (the X and the Z) are aligned to the width of the number yard-line markings on the field. Their initial job at the snap is to take an outside release — meaning they want to run off the line of scrimmage to the outside of the corner, positioning themselves between the corner and the sideline. Per Leach’s various clinics on Four Verts, the outside receivers were taught to attack the outside number on the opposing corner’s jersey as they come off the line.

After the release, the outside receivers run as fast as they can straight down the field. It’s important that they stay straight and fight the DB to stay on course up the numbers and leave space between themselves and the sideline for the ball to be thrown into on a downfield pass. This isn’t a route that’s run with super wide splits by the X and the Z right up against the boundary; you want there to be space outside of the receiver for a quarterback to lob a ball into and for the receiver to make adjustments on the throw.

As they come off the ball, the outside receivers’ vision should be on the corner. They are watching and waiting for the corner to leave their backpedal and flip their hips and run in a straight line down the field with the receiver. When that happens, the DB will no longer be looking at the field of play and will be focused on looking at the receiver. Once the receiver sees the DB has flipped their hips or turned their pads, the receiver is taught to put their eyes on the quarterback so that they can see the ball thrown and adjust to where it’s placed.

Where the corner and receiver are in relation to each other when the pad turn happens determines where the ball is thrown by the quarterback. If the receiver is at even depth or ahead of the corner when the pad turn happens, the quarterback will throw a lob over the top and ahead of the receiver and toward the sideline, with the receiver running past the corner for an over the shoulder basket catch. This throw/read looks like either a true downfield “vertical” ball or a slot fade, deep down the field and fading to the sideline:

But if the corner is still ahead of the receiver when the pad turn happens — or starts the play backed way off or bailing at the snap — the ball is thrown behind the receiver on a rope for a backshoulder-type throw underneath. Leach’s verbatim teaching point on the throw — and excuse the curse word, I’m trying to be accurate with his language — was to place the ball on the receivers’ “ass cheek away from the coverage” so that they could have position to flash back toward the ball and make the catch away from the defender:

Leach also was adamant about a rule Tech had for these outside receivers on this play: “Quarterbacks make decisions; receivers run routes.” This is meant to stress that receivers can’t anticipate where they’re going to get the ball and modify their routes off of it. Receivers trying to decide where the ball was going led to mistakes: If an outside receiver ran slowly anticipating the back-shoulder fade, and the quarterback decided to throw over the top, the receiver wouldn’t really be in position to play the ball, which could potentially lead to an interception. And vice versa for a receiver who ran blind off the snap and wasn’t prepared/looking for the back-shoulder ball. The outside receivers job — every time — is simply to outside release, run as fast as they can down the field, and get eyes on the QB. The QB then decides where the pass goes, and the outside receiver adjusts to where the ball is.

This two-way option conceptually gave Four Verts an answer to whatever that corner was doing: If the corner played tight man or had a shallow zone, they get beat over the top. If the corner played off, you get beat underneath.