Admin Notes
Raising this topic back up, after a bit of dormancy. Given RPO is basically a run play with a quick option pass to a receiver, I would envision this to be defined as a normal run play but with the "option" being to a wideout (and not possible in three-RB sets with two TEs). The DEL sim would run this as a normal run play (possibly with misdirection-type effect on the defense).

Mechanically, within the game, I suppose it could be run as a quasi trick play, similar to how misdirection runs and play action passes get a "defense confusion" penalty to account for them not being sure what is coming.

The biggest question would be how the game picks which play gets executed. Any thoughts on what in DEL defensive systems would be best suited for this? in real-life, it can be based on alignment, if a particular defender drops into coverage, man vs zone coverage, etc.

Comments
Bob Miller
I'd like to see this option.
AND the ability to line up two tight ends on the weak or strong side together. If it's currently possible I haven't figured out how to do it.

John HenryDos
This would be nice to have. Having had many QB's with different levels of Sp and RS it is hard to design plays that fit the QB skill set with 'dual threat' QB attributes. Having them be able to run more RPO will make this more realistic given the current number of real life teams running RPO.

Ron BK (Nov 17 06:06:06 2020 )
This would be awesome. A great update. And a good update for Maryland’s offense.

Coach Proto (Sep 14 08:15:26 2025 )
I echo JohnHenryDos comments. But I'd think a QB would need a high intelligence stat to make this work well since he's gotta make complicated reads in a very short time.

Gregor Ellis (Sep 15 14:26:41 2025 )
BTW while I would love to see this added the ineffectiveness of zone defenses makes me worry about creating a silver bullet especially for RPOs run against 2-man D to the strongside in a 3WR-strong alignment.
T specifically answer the question you asked Andy: Ideally IMO this would be best covered with a zone defense that adjusts the zones as teams do IRL (collapse the size of strong side zones a bit and stretch the weakside zones). Since that does not seem to happen in the sim with almost the only consistently effective D being 2-Man I don't know how this would be handled.

Agree with Proto on the need for high QB IN. I also think it might require a tweak to increase the effectiveness of QBs running.