What is a hot route in football and when would an offense have to execute one? A hot route is a change is a wide receiver's route. The one thing that separates football from the other three major sports...
The one thing that separates football from the other three major sports (basketball, baseball and hockey) is the fact that football players usually have a week to rest before their next game. During that week, most teams work to prepare a very detailed and precise game plan for the next team on the schedule.
But, while the offense on one football team is designing ways to put the ball in the end zone on Sunday, the defense of the other team is coming up with ways to stop them.
With so much preparation going into the sport of football before the game even kicks off, most games are won and lost by the adjustments that teams make during the game. One adjustment that offenses make on a regular basis is the hot route.
Stanley Conner is the offensive coordinator and running backs coach for Alabama A&M. Before joining the Bulldog staff, Conner was a four-year letterman at Jackson St. University where he helped the Tigers earn four Southwestern Athletic Conference titles. Following graduation, Conner played with the New Orleans Breakers of the USFL and the Ottawa Rough Riders of the CFL before settling down into his coaching role. In his time around the sport of football, Conner has learned just about everything an offense would need to know to run a hot route successfully.
"A hot route means the defense is blitzing, and the job of the quarterback is to get the ball out of his hands," he said. "Just like how you react when you touch something hot, you give it a quick response. So when we say hot route, we're referring to the quick response you're going to have to give to react to that blitz."
Specifically, how does an offense know when to call a hot route?
"Most of the time, when a safety comes up to the middle of the field, he's telling you that they are more than likely going to run a blitz," Conner said. "So if that happens, the receiver is expected to run a certain route and the quarterback is expected to locate him at that particular time. The free safety's primary job is to stay in the middle of the field. Whenever he moves from that position, he's alerting you that something is different with the defense. We call that sight adjustments."
Conner said that there are also ways for a defense to trick an offense into thinking they are running a blitz.
"Defenses come up with different schemes where they may put you in a hot situation, but it actually may not be a hot situation," he said. "So what they'll do is, the defense will come up to show blitz hoping you go to a hot situation. But instead of blitzing, they drop back into zone coverage hoping you make a mistake. So you have to be able to recognize that and you have to be able to protect against the blitz so you can throw down the field. It's a real cat and mouse game all the time."
Conner said the best way for a quarterback not to be fooled by the fake blitzes is to do his homework.
"You have to study the zone blitzes as well as the blitzes in general," he said. "You have to know when to take a chance and when not to take a chance. And then you get into tendencies. How often do they look to run something, how often will they run something. Those are additional things you have to worry about when you're considering whether or not you're going to take that chance."
