The Opening Drive 7/27: Todd Monken's Schemes to Know -- Run-Action Toss Series

Punishing defenses selling out on the run is a Monken speciality. His toss series is a big part of the process.

Jul 27, 2026

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Cleveland Browns head coach Todd Monken takes notes during team OTAs at CrossCountry Mortgage Campus of the Cleveland Browns in Berea, Ohio on June 2, 2026. (USA Today)

Every offensive coordinator claims his play-action is dangerous because of scheme — bootlegs, run-pass conflicts, a receiver leaking behind a safety who bit on the mesh point. Almost none of it matters if the run action being faked isn’t a real threat first. Play-action doesn’t create explosive plays on its own. It borrows credibility from everything else in the run game — trap, crunch, outside zone, power — and cashes that credibility in against a defense that has already been punished enough times for guessing wrong. Monken’s play-action numbers in Baltimore are less a separate skill than a receipt for how thoroughly his run game had already done its job.

The volume alone tells part of the story. During one stretch as Baltimore’s play-caller, Monken had Lamar Jackson running play-action on 32.2 percent of his dropbacks, tied for third-most in the league, and Jackson was nearly unstoppable on those snaps specifically — a 72.9 percent completion rate, 10.0 yards per attempt, four touchdowns against zero interceptions, and a 127.2 passer rating. That’s not a marginal boost from faking a handoff. That’s a quarterback playing a meaningfully different, easier version of football than he plays on standard dropbacks, because the defense is being asked to solve two problems at once and consistently failing to solve either. The run threat matters, as we all know, where Baltimore led the league in yards per carry on first down at 6.0 and ranked third on second down at 5.3, which is exactly the profile a defense has to respect before a fake means anything.

Cross compare how the Baltimore run offense worked well with how well the play-action off of it thrived. The Ravens led the NFL in passer rating (132.1) and completed a whopping 73.1% of their play-action dropbacks. That is where we will be turning our attention this week. 1,115 passing yards in 2025 when using the manipulation and 11 touchdowns. The volume wasn’t as high as others that led the league but each usage was meaningful and the most effective you will find when studying the tape.

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Today I want to dig into the Ravens use of the toss-action for chunk plays. We have covered how Monken loves to use pin/pull in a variety of ways, whether on a sweep, quick toss, or quarterback run. Pin defenders inside and then push the ball to the perimeter to stress the defense laterally.

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