Learning how to compliment your routes with other routes can really open up the field for your offense. We've already discussed in previous articles the different ways to make your reads, respond to the blitz, and create proper spacing. However, in this article we're going to show you how you can use a combination of routes to create perfect spacing. The play that we're going to break down is the Strong-I Normal TE Corner play.
In this first image, you can see the offensive assignments for the Strong-I TE Corner. This play already does a great job of attacking the first two levels of the defense. Unfortunately, we don't have a receiver that poses a threat at the 3rd level of the defense. We're going to run this play through once without making any adjustments to let you see how much easier the strong safety's job is when he doesn't have to worry about getting beat deep.
The Pittsburgh Steelers have come out in a basic 3-4 2 Man Under. The player we want you to focus on is strong safety playing a deep zone on the right side of the field.
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Immediately after the play begins, strong safety Troy Polamalu begins sliding backwards as he prepares to cover the deepest threat on that side of the field. Notice in the top left hand corner of the image, wide receiver Torry Holt is running a drag route. Polamalu's job on this play is to stay over the top, so now he will have to wait another second until another receiver approaches his area. Polamalu steps up and looks to make a play as he finds tight end Randy McMichael running his corner route.
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McMichael is the deepest threat on this play, meaning that Polamalu can now totally commit his coverage to just this player without worrying about getting beat deep. Polamalu was able to get right up on McMichael and knock the pass away. Fortunately, we know that we can get McMichael's route open much easier if we can just pull Polamalu away from the play. 
This time we've hot routed wide receiver Torry Holt to perform a streak route. Holt's route will compliment McMichael's route because it will now force Polamalu to drop deeper down the field. Otherwise, if Polamalu doesn't drop deeper, then we can just simply look to hit Holt over the top for an easy 6 points.
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Once again Polamalu begins sliding back after the snap. However, this time our receiver will continue running upfield. Polamalu recognizes the streak route from Holt and quickly turns to start running with him to prevent from getting beat deep. Holt's streak route prevents Polamalu from stepping up to jump on our corner route from the tight end.
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We make the throw with St. Louis Rams' quarterback Marc Bulger to the now wide open tight end Randy McMichael. Unseen in this image is strong safety Troy Polamalu peeling off of receiver Torry Holt to try to help recover on the open tight end. McMichael makes the catch with plenty of separation as Polamalu can only helplessly watch. The extra second or two that we bought by forcing Polamalu to run with Holt on the streak pattern opened up plenty of room for our tight end to make a much easier reception. Learning how to compliment your routes will create openings in your plays that you never knew existed. Sometimes you'll just want to use another route as a decoy to get another player open. Obviously, the ideal situation is to use a complimenting route that can be functional in the play. However, if you know that you can get another route open by using another player as a decoy, then by all means do it.
