How to Understand Where to Run the Football

Hat on Hat: Why Numbers Matter

From the I formation, the offense has seven blockers at its disposal: 5 linemen, a TE, and a FB.  So if the offense wants to run the ball, it can handle seven defenders.  For every hat the defense brings to the box close enough to affect the run game, the offense has to have one of its own guys bring a hat up to block.  This is a diagram showing a Isolation style run out of the I formation:


  When you have this 7 on 7 situation, Coach Davie says the ballcarrier provides an advantage because he can dictate which gap the play is headed toward.  "It is almost impossible to stop a great tailback when each of your defenders has a blocker on him. It's difficult for a defender to shed a blocker and make a play. Bottom line: offense wins this matchup."

If the defense brings a safety up for run support, it means someone goes unblocked and can make a play on the ballcarrier.   Davie: "Because you have added the eighth man, you outnumber the offense eight to seven and the defense wins this matchup." 

Maryland Rules

The title of this entry, "How to Understand Where to Run the Football," is the title of a slide from a University of Maryland Quarterbacking Powerpoint presentation slide.  The slide goes over a long list of rules for determining when the offense has favorable matchups and should run the ball.  What we really need to be concerned about is not one box, but two boxes: the frontside where the play's action is heading, and the backside where the play is moving away from.

The sheer number of hats you have in the box is not the only thing that matters; it also matters where in the box they are.  The reason is because a guy ten yards down the line of scrimmage cannot tackle someone on the other side of the field.  If you have a play running toward the strong side, a defender at the edge of the box on the weakside cannot easily make a play because he is simply too far away.

HydroTech makes this point in part IX of his review of the 2008 Emerald Bowl for California Golden Blogs.  His entry is titled "Zone Blocking Creates a Numerical Advantage," and he reminds the reader that "typical zone running play moves so quickly and away from the backside defensive end that the offense leaves the backside defensive end unblocked."

From California Golden Blogs, "Emerald Bowl Review: Part IX"

HydroTech: "The offense can leave this defender unblocked because typically that defender is so far away from the play and the ball that he's a non-factor.  Thus, that is why on zone running plays the backside DE is ignored."  Phil Fulmer had an article on adapting personnel to offensive schemes in the 1999 AFCA convention proceedings that had a small tidbit related to this.  Talking about how the Tennessee coaching staff wanted to change up the blocking scheme, Coach Fulmer said they "tried to have several answers to blocking the extra defenders, one was the offensive line on the backside. We leave the least dangerous guy unblocked and an extra man would help with the most dangerous." (emphasis added)

This is not only true for outside zone running plays, and the Maryland offense takes numerical advantage into account for all runs out of its two back formations:

1. Never run the ball to the TE (strong) side if there are 5 defenders on that side.
2. You must run the ball to the SE (weak) side so the defense does not overload the TE side.

• If there are 3 or less defenders on the SE side, run to the SE side.
• If there are 3 and a half or more defenders on the SE side, run to the TE side instead.

The concept is the same even for its single back rules, which tell the QB to count the number of defenders in the box and run only if it's 6 on 6 with a TE or 5 on 5 in a 4 WR formation.  Basically, if you can go hat on hat, run; if not, pass.

Count the Hats: Iso Right

Without getting into audibles and changing the direction of the run, we can still use these ideas to look at the pre-snap defensive formation and figure out if we are in favorable or unfavorable playcall situations.  This gives us a good idea of how good our chances are to break a big play.

Consider the following play against Georgia Tech, running Iso to the right:

How many defenders are there on the frontside of the play?  Draw a line separating the front and back sides of the play, and we see 3.5 with a safety lurking in the back outside the box.

The NT lined up over Center counts as half.

We look at the Maryland rules and see that if there are three and a half or more defenders on the SE (weak) side, run to the TE (strong) side.  That is in fact the case here, with 3.5 defenders in the SE and TE sides.  So the rules would say run to the strong side.  We have sufficient blockers for everybody on the playside:

Notice the backside defender is left unblocked, just like in the Cal zone plays.  Pre-snap, this looks very good, and if everybody does their job we should be able to break a big gain.

At the handoff, we see what we want, except something odd is happening.  The SS is blitzing from the outside and the FS is backpedaling into a centerfield spot.  Instead of two deep, we are looking at only one deep zone over the middle.  The strong safety blitzes himself out of position and we are in business!

Coming off the combo block, the OG (#77) released to the inside.  As planned, the FB (#36) leads the run up the hole and takes on the MLB.  The TE (#80) has effectively taken out two players by blocking one and getting in the way of the blitzing SS.

The OG that released is now floating in the secondary looking for someone to hit.  He is in great position to seal off the FS coming over from the deep zone, so we keep the blocker between the ball and the FS.  Normally the SS would have been in position to limit this to about 8 yards, but instead we make a run for the flag in the corner of the endzone.



Count the Hats: Power Left

Now take a look at this pre-snap read running Power to the left against Navy:

This time, the matchup is even more favorable - there are only three defenders on the playside.   This means we have enough blockers.  In fact, there are two players so far out of position that they may not need to be blocked.  Our FB looks like he is an extra blocker on the frontside - we will just run away from the other two:

Of course, that's in a perfect world where everyone makes their block.  What actually happens is that the OT falls down after the TE releases the combo block, so the FB shooting through the off-tackle hole picks up the defender and the HB bounces the play outside.  The two question marks are left unblocked and never enter the play.

The run goes for a nice gain, and could have been for six if the HB hadn't defaulted to covering up the ball and sprinted at full speed:



If you see a tough formation to the strong side, don't be too disappointed with a 3 or 4 yard gain.  For every one of these great 20+ yard runs, there will be tons of small 2 to 5 yard gains.  It is important to run a good mix of strong and weak side runs, hitting both the inside and outside.  Eventually, as the defense tries to guess where you are going to run, the playcalls will line up with a very nice mismatch for you to exploit.  These opportunities come several times a game, so the trick is recognizing them and knowing what to expect at the snap.