Most offenses that throw the ball at a high level don’t win with a long list of protections. They win with two or three that their linemen know cold, with clear rules for the back, and with a quarterback who knows which one he gets when the pocket breaks.
Coach Rich Hargitt lays out the dropback protection menu from his Surface To Air System. Three calls. Each one built for a specific problem. And a strong argument for why carrying fewer protections is a feature, not a limitation.
Video: Rich Hargitt – Surface To Air System: Dropback Pass Protection
Roger and Lucy: The Half-Man, Half-Slide Base
Coach Hargitt’s base dropback protection is a half-man, half-slide scheme. Roger means manned to the right, zoned away. Lucy is the mirror.
In Roger, the right guard and right tackle are in man protection on the first two down linemen. The center, left guard, and left tackle slide away: center to backside A, left guard to backside B, left tackle to backside C. The three offensive linemen on the slide side end up covering three defenders by gap. The two linemen on the man side end up accounting for their two down linemen, with the back factoring in on the front-side linebacker.
Five, Five-and-a-Half, or Six-Man Protection
The back’s assignment is what Coach Hargitt calls the adjustable piece. He teaches it as three settings:
– Free release: Five-man protection. The back is out. The quarterback is hot on the front-side linebacker. If that linebacker comes, the ball gets out in a hurry.
– Check release: Five-and-a-half-man protection. The back looks for the blitz before he leaves. Elongates the play if no one comes.
– Max: Six-man protection. Coach Hargitt calls this a “max call.” The tailback throttles down behind the offensive line and sits for any delay blitz or creeper pressure.
Coach Hargitt is emphatic about how much of his dropback game runs out of this scheme. If he threw 10 consecutive dropback passes, seven to eight (and sometimes nine) would be some form of Roger or Lucy. He calls it their “come home to mama” protection. The quarterback will immediately check to it when he wants to throw.
Cyclone: The Sprint Protection Where the Back Eats
When the offense is getting out of the pocket, Coach Hargitt’s call is Cyclone.
In Cyclone right, the right guard and right tackle both block and attempt to reach the first two down linemen, base engaging if they can’t get the reach. The tailback arcs and is responsible for C, D, and E. Coach Hargitt’s cue to the back is direct:
“Anything that comes off the edge, he will eat. That’s the term we use. You eat pressure off the edge.”
If the back has no work off the edge, he steps back and scans for an interior blitzer or a twist undercut. He’s a second-level cleanup player once he confirms the edge is clean.
The Backside Hinge
The quarterback gathers the snap, drops his right foot, crosses over with his left, and sprints away from the box. The center, left guard, and left tackle step to the call. If there’s a down lineman in their path they block him. If not, they hinge back, opening the left hip to pick off any looper, stunter, or late sim blitzer coming off the backside.
That backside hinge is the piece that keeps the sprint action from getting strip-sacked from behind. Coach Hargitt walks through the footwork and the timing of the hinge in the clip.
Bourbon: The Full-Slide Answer (with a Tight End)
The last protection Coach Hargitt adds is Bourbon. It’s a full line slide, and it’s the piece he says the offense “majored in” in 2022 with high effect.
Bourbon left slides all five offensive linemen to the left. Left tackle has left C, left guard has left B, center has left A, right guard has right A, right tackle has right B. And here’s the non-negotiable: Coach Hargitt runs this almost exclusively with a tight end, on or off the ball, who takes the backside C gap. That gets him CBA-ABC accounted for across the front. Six legitimate gaps covered.
The Only Way the Defense Wins
Coach Hargitt is specific about what the offense is daring the defense to do. Unless one of his offensive linemen misses an assignment, the only way the defense gets pressure is:
1. Bringing a man off the backside D gap
2. Twist stunting and transferring a rusher through a gap to arrive late
3. Leakage through a gap
The back is the answer to all three. He flash fakes and comes downhill in the A gap. His eyes go immediately to the backside D gap (the call-side left in this example) looking for what Coach Hargitt calls a “sapper”. A guy off the left edge.
If he sees no sapper, the back sticks his foot in the ground and winds back to the tight end side, looking for someone coming late off the backside D gap. If he doesn’t find work in either direction, he throttles down behind the center and the A gaps to pick up late leakage or late twist stunters.
That’s three scans in one rep from the back. Sapper, wind-back, throttle down. Coach Hargitt teaches the footwork and the eye progression in detail in the clip, and he has multiple game clips of Bourbon cleaning up pressures that would have gotten home against a standard half-slide.
Three protections. One built for the base dropback game and flexible enough to carry an entire offense. One for when the quarterback gets out of the pocket. One for when the defense is bringing pressure the half-slide can’t account for. Coach Hargitt’s point about keeping the menu tight is worth sitting with if your protection install feels bloated. The five up front have to know it cold before they can play fast.
This article covers the dropback protection package, but the full Surface To Air System clinic is a complete video playbook. Coach Hargitt breaks down his core dropback concepts (Y Cross, Four Verticals, Yankee, Sail, and Liberty) along with complementary plays like Rebel and Chase that build the system around these protections.
He walks through the New England Series and shows how each protection fits with each concept in live game film. If you’re building a dropback passing attack this offseason, the full course connects the schemes to the protections in the way his quarterbacks actually learn them.
Link: Rich Hargitt – Surface To Air System Video Playbook: Dropback Passes & New England Series
