Talk:Formation (American football)

Linebackers and depth
Linebackers are defined more by the technique they play than by the depth at which they play. 5-2 Eagle linebackers are often flush on the line of scrimmage, as are the rush linebackers in the 3-4. Further, linebackers in the 1950s through early 1970s played much closer to the line than in modern defenses. If you don't believe me and need it in print, compare the depth of linebackers in the 4-3 inside and outside as described in "Vince Lombardi on Football" with, say, the linebacker depths in Ron Vanderlinden's "Football's Eagle and Stack Defenses".

Thinking about it, maybe language to the effect they can be flush to the line of scrimmage and as far back as 5 yards from the LOS. Dwmyers (talk) 18:57, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Cleanup
Someone needs to clean this article up big time. -Excaliburhorn

Word choice
'''Ace or Single back formation: Consists of 1 running back lined up about five yards behind the quarterback. This formation can either have four wide receivers, three wide receivers and a tight end, two wide receivers and two tight ends, one wide receiver and three tight ends, or four tight ends (the latter two are very rare). This formation is good for passing, but is also good for running if a team has an athletic running back.'''

John Riggins was hugely successful in the Ace circa 1982-3 and even his mum wouldn't call him an "athletic running back" Megamanic 06:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Relevance?
I've never heard of 'Putnam City North High School'. Is this relevant?

Diagrams
I noticed that someone changed one of the diagrams, specifically the one for the 46 defense. If you can make better diagrams than are there, cool. GO for it. But IF you do change the diagrams, please change ALL of the diagrams, AND the keys to those diagrams. Two principles behind a good article are readability and internal consistency. When I created the original diagrams, I chose single-letters to represent each position (which lead to the unfortunate S=Strong Safety and s=strong linebacker problem). If you feel this is an inadequate system, then PLEASE CHANGE IT, but if you do change it, change it for ALL of the diagrams. It makes the article look cobled together and crappy to have those sorts of internal inconsistencies. As a side note, a few days ago I started a wikiproject at: WikiProject American football to address these exact concerns. If you are interested in helping improve the state of American football strategy articles such as this one, PLEASE join that project and help out where you can! --Jayron32 14:37, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

New diagrams being uploaded. Will take a few days
I am uploading graphics (.PNG) files for all of the diagrams in this article. It will take some time for me to get them uploads. I have done one (for the 4-3 defense). Comments anyone? When complete, I will have all of the diagrams consistant and will change the rest of the article to use the same terms as the diagram. As an aside, I apologize to the guy I addressed the last comment to... Especially since I am now (temporarily, until they all get uploaded) doing EXACTLY what I complained about. Sorry. When complete, I hope to have graphics like this availible for ALL articles that are part of the American football wikiproject. --Jayron32 17:53, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Like the new graphics - less room for ambiguity. BUT, can we make them smaller? half - two thirds that size would be good. Think you can probably configure that in markup without having to go back & resize the images.  If you can't do this let me know & I'll have a play but keep the images coming. Megamanic 03:46, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the comment. I will try resizing them.  I don;t think it will improve load time, but it might improve readability. --Jayron32 03:48, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Nice work - good size now IMHO. Megamanic 08:16, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Diagrams done. Next tasks: photos, references, and reorganization
Hey! I finished the uploads. YEAH. The next thing we should consider is some photographs. Probably NOT one for every section, but having some photos showing actual teams using a few formations would help with some context. Anyone who has these would be MUCH appreciated. Also for the future of this article:
 * 1) We need to get better references. I have a few books I am going to put down, but we also need some good websites, and we need to footnote and reference the information here well.
 * 2) We need to merge and redirect the individual articles to here. Use the section (#) tag in the redirects, and COPY the info in the individual articles here rather than simply blanking it. We may not end up using all of it, but it is better to save and then edit rather than to lose what might be some good information.
 * 3) We need to consider splitting this article into 2 (offense and defense) to be more managable. We don;t have to, but if the article gets to big, we might want to pare it down to a more manageable size.
 * 4) Maybe a rename. I like "American football formation" to be consitent with other articles in the project... But I am open to other posibilties.
 * 5) As always, keep improving the writing in this article. Be Bold (tm) in your edits!  Well, lets keep working on this one.  Once we get this one up to par, its off to help with positions and plays.  I have graphics for those ready to go as well. --Jayron32 03:55, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I cleaned up the images some more, formatting the captions in the "wiki" way, and cleaned up the writing some. Let me know what you think.  Feel free to clean up the writing some more too.  --Jayron32 05:47, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Flexbone picture
The picture for the flexbone formation is wrong. There are only 6 men on the line of scrimmage. --70.21.95.208 18:34, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Got it. Will fix the picture and upload again ASAP. --Jayron32 03:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

This is still uncorrected.

5-4 formation
I think that you should add the formation that I thought was comonly used. (please excuse the spelling, I can not see my keybord :/) The 5-4 formation is set up like this: Five defensive linement (left-right: Defensive End, Defensive Takcle, Nose Guard/Nose Tackle, Defensive Tackle, Defensive End)  Then you have four linebackers (outside, inside, inside, outside) After that you have your two safetys.

X    X      X    X X   X   X   X   X   X   X          Thank You!! Reckrap 16:12, 13 March 2007 (UTC)Reckrap

One issue with the phrase 5-4 (requires disambiguation) is that's what Bud Wilkinson calls his 5-2 Oklahoma, the precurser to the 3-4. In fact, you see that trend in college coaches and scouts of the 1950s, in that they count halfbacks along with linebackers when coming up with the total in the second line. Steve Belichick, Bill Belichick's dad, in his scouting handbook, calls the 4-3 a 4-5 for example. Dwmyers (talk) 18:57, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

"50 Tough"
This was popular in high school/college in the 80's. Essentially it was a 5-2 with two corners, a safety and a "monster back" who would go short or long depending on the anticipated play of the offense. Boz was a monsterback when he played for Oklahoma, that was the source of the controversy regarding his uniform number. Ellsworth (talk) 00:27, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

"Maryland I?"
Invented in October 30, 1992? I doubt it-- that formation has been in use in the pee wee and midget leagues since well before that. I started playing in '94 and that was our base formation-- I doubt it spread that quickly. It may have been only used in the college/pro level since that time but let's not give the supposed "inventor" that much credit. JMyrleFuller (talk) 03:48, 10 January 2008 (UTC) I agree with JMyrleFuller, Maryland I was used since the I formation has been around and a question what about the Full-House Formation that is even used by the Packers. 66.57.12.120 (talk) 23:01, 4 May 2008 (UTC)jts.4life

"Kneel" formation
Shouldn't the "kneel" formation be with the offensive formations instead of special teams formations? It uses all the regular offensive players in what is merely a slight modification of the T formation. BTW, it needs an updated diagram to match all the others. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dwane E Anderson (talk • contribs) 23:22, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It's close. If you consider the Madden NFL series as any authority, they have it listed under "special teams" in their playbooks, but I can see the argument for it being an offensive formation as it is a non-kicking formation. However, it does use a defensive player (unlike other offensive formations) and is not used for regular offensive plays, instead being used only in "special" situations. Either way, the graphic could use updating, but in terms of file format, I think the SVG of the kneel formation is preferable to the other JPEGs and if the other graphics could be converted to SVG it would probably be for the better. J. Myrle Fuller (talk) 01:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

T formation
I noticed that the T formation is listed twice. I didn't know which one to delete. I think they plays need to be order alphabetically as well. --Pinkkeith (talk) 16:21, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I think the second could be deleted and worked into the first. I disagree with alphabetical lists: some formations are extremely close variants of others but would then be separated.  -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 03:03, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Eastern Shotgun
The so-called Eastern Shotgun is simply your base slot-gun alignment with the HB split to the weak side, I wouldnt consider this another formation. Also, LSU didnt use a variation of the Pistol as their base offense in 2008. It was more of a package that was run only when Ryan Perrilloux came in. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.177.11.128 (talk) 19:29, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Two T formation sections, moved info to top
There were two sections on the T formation, and the first one contained a bunch of introductory type info that should be in a header section about offensive formations in general. I moved it up there, but I still think it's not ideal. There are issues with repeated information and continuity of thought.

Now, I think it might be a good idea to try to merge the offensive formations introductory paragraph with the rules paragraph right below it for better continuity.

I deleted the second T formation section and moved all its content up into the first one to hopefully make that more clear. MarcusMaximus (talk) 02:28, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Wildcat
With the recent success of the Miami Dolphins and last year's success of Arkansas, I think the zero quarterback, two runningback Wildcat formation should be added to this list. foxman9815 15:46, 6 October 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.11.193.191 (talk)

Definitely. Its mentioned under both the single-wing and double-wing, but I don't which it's related to, if either one. Someone who knows should write about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.164.215.130 (talk) 03:54, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Typical shotgun formation
There's a picture labeled "typical shotgun formation" that's in the article twice. I'm gonna delete the second picture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.164.215.130 (talk) 04:05, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

5-2 formation
In the diagram of 5-2 formation, there is NT instead of NG. The term NG is used for 5 lineman situations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.91.231.5 (talk) 13:47, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Broken Sources
None of the 3 source links work. I have noticed some of the rules mentioned on the page aren't in the official NFL rulebook, from what I can find (positioning of players before the snap, for instance). Currently this article has no (functional) sources. Randolphnimmer (talk) 19:14, 28 May 2019 (UTC)