Todd Monken's Four Vertical Concept
A portion of this article is taken from The 2023 Baltimore Ravens Complete Offensive Manual. Todd Monken carries a few neat variations of Four Verticals, so I wanted to take the analysis a few steps further than what is found in the book.
Four Verticals
The first two diagrams show the base versions and starting point to how Todd Monken installs Four Verticals.
The 2023 Ravens Dabbled with Four Verticals. They ran it most often in traditional doubles and trips formations.
In many cases, the outside receivers had the option to sit down against soft coverage. These “fall out” routes give Lamar a check down if the seams are taken away.
When an offense calls Four Verticals, they are hoping for single high coverage. Most teams want to work the slot receivers 1 on 1 in the seams. Also, against single high, the outside receivers are 1 on 1 with no safety help.
There are many ways to read Four Verticals. It can be taught as a matchup concept, a coverage read, or even a pure progression. If you talk to three separate coaches, they probably teach it differently.
The checkdown is a critical element of the Four Vertical concept. Defenses can take away the vertical routes with certain coverages, so the checkdown needs to be designed to take advantage and replace these defenders.
Using an option route over the ball is solid checkdown design. It allows the running back to win 1 on 1, and sit in the void if the Mike wants to get depth in two high coverages.
The Ravens often called Four Verticals with a token play fake to the running back.
The rest of the article shows the following:
12 personnel variation
High Red Zone variation
Double move to free up a Seam route
Why it Worked
Why it Didn’t Work
Full season 11-minute cutup of Four Vertical variations from Todd Monken and the 2023 Ravens.