Personnel & Formations

Personnel should fit the situation, not be chosen to exploit how a defense has to align to it.

• Goal-line personnel is for goal-line situations — inside the 10, or inches to go. One line, both sides of the ball: goal-line offensive formations and goal-line defensive fronts are goal-line calls.
• Do not manufacture the box. Inside either 25, a designed quarterback run — Blast, Trap, Power and the like — comes from a real running group: three receivers or fewer on the field. Two backs and two tight ends is football. Four wide and a quarterback keeper at the goal line is not.
• Extreme wide splits are a way to pull defenders out of the box, not a formation. Line up in something a coordinator would recognise.
• Direct snaps and screens are situational calls, not a compressed-field default.