Why should you consider adding football motion and shifts to your offense?
Here’s why.
I have been blessed to speak with great defensive coaches and ask them about the things offenses do that keep them up at night.
And the more people I ask, the more clear it has become that pre-snap movement and multiple-formation teams create havoc in terms of planning and trying to understand how offensive coaches are going to call a game.
Every defense has its own set of rules and beliefs as to how they will set their front or align their back seven, which no longer involves the simplicity of setting their defense based only upon the location of the tight end.
Defenses are now factoring in the alignment of other skill players, especially the alignment of your running back relative to those other players.
This gives them a great advantage, as they can now be dynamic week-to-week in ways that used to only be advantageous to offenses.
Not to mention that with the invention of HUDL and other scouting analysis systems teams now have at their disposal, defensive coaches can get great data based upon the alignment of your offensive skill players.
After doing this for nearly twenty years, I believe it is now easier for defenses to determine how I am going to call a game than it is for me to determine how they are going to attack us.
Therefore, as offensive coaches, we must become more creative by doing things that take little practice time, but force them to spend numerous periods during their planning and practice time working to understand.
HOW TO BEGIN THE PROCESS OF ADDING FOOTBALL MOTION AND SHIFTS
Before creating skill player movement, I believe it helps to set a standard as to what you want from your motions, so you are able to have everything you need.
Ultimately you are going to want to create a system in which all of your off-the-ball skill players are able to move from any location on the field to another.
But how you get from nothing to everything is key to ensuring you have what your offense needs. I believe that if you are going to have enough movement to create an impact large enough to frustrate defenses, you must address the following:
- Each skill player moving from one side of the field to the other
- Each skill player moving from tight to wide or wide to tight on the same side of the field
- Each skill player faking movement from one side to the other
- Each skill player faking movement from tight to wide or wide to tight
As we progress through this article, you will see drawings of motions in hopes that it stimulates thought of how you will be able to use the movement of skill players within your scheme to give your offense an advantage.
TIGHT END FOOTBALL MOTION
The most important person to create motions for is your tight end. If you are a team that has an in-line tight end or a hipped tight end that can also be a receiver, moving him around during the pre-snap is a must.
Like I mentioned above, you must be able to move your tight end back and forth to ensure teams can not make calls based upon his alignment or where they believe he will be aligned when the ball is snapped.
Tight End moving from one side of the field to the other:
Tight End moving from tight to wide or wide to tight on the same side of the field:
Tight End faking movement from one side to the other:
Tight End faking movement from tight to wide or wide to tight:
SLOT MOTIONS
This is the most used skill player motion I have seen over 30+ years of being involved in high school football, but with the implementation of four receiver sets and running quarterbacks, it has seemed to create less and less trouble for defenses.
That being said, besides having only jet motions, these motions are still very important to have available.
If you play a team that does not adjust their coverage to motion, you can get them aligned in a coverage, switch to another formation, and perfectly align them to meet the needs of your pass concept.
Slot moving from one side of the field to the other:
Slot faking movement from one side to the other:
TAILBACK FOOTBALL MOTION
Shifting and motioning your running back is more difficult to place within your scheme than any other position.
But if you have a second running back in your offense or a quarterback that can run the ball, this is a great way to create a numbers advantage.
It can force linebackers out of the box, get your best player into the passing game, add pre-snap perimeter RPOs to your running game, and create a personnel advantage with your best player.
Tailback moving from one side of the field to the other:
Tailback faking movement from one side to the other/wide to tight:
Tailback moving from base alignment to the field or from any location back to base alignment:
Tailback moving from base alignment into the boundary:
Another way to move your tailback to confuse the defense is to simply have him switch sides in the gun formation.
Defenses frequently put their strength away from our tailback, wanting us to run to their 3-Technique.
Have a call that switches the tailback from one side to the other in the pre-snap after they are aligned, and snap the ball.
You can also put your tailback in a pistol formation to start the play, then move him to his base alignment immediately before the play begins.
This would force defensive lineman to move as the ball is snapped if teams want to continue aligning based upon their game plan.
SHIFTING MULTIPLE PLAYERS AT THE SAME TIME
As you start getting better at seeing how your pre-snap movement enables you to get from formation to formation, you can begin adding more than one player within your shift.
There is no reason why you cannot have pre-snap movement from multiple players.
They all know their position-specific motions, and none of their motions will impact the other skills players that will be moving.
The first way to do this is to simply call two motions.
If you are able to verbalize, tag, or signal a motion, you can just as easily signal two.
Moving both the tailback and tight end on any given play is a great way to confuse the defense, especially if they are interested in where the tailback is going.
And if two is doable, then why not three. If you have a basic system in place where each skill player has their own shifting tags, you can do whatever you want whenever you want.
Another way to move multiple players at the same time, is to have players explode from one formation to another.
Each week we tell them from which formation we will be exploding.
Then, when they get the call, they will know that they are going to line up in the base formation we practiced all week, then shift into the formation that was signaled.
There is no formation from which you cannot explode, and you can even change your base formation in between series as your players get more used to the idea.
Most importantly, if as a play-caller you are having trouble recalling how to move from formation to formation within a game, this is a great way to start creating movement without accidentally moving kids into incorrect formations.
BE SURE TO CONTINUE PRE-SNAP FOOTBALL MOTION THROUGHOUT THE GAME
It is very easy to create deceptive football motion and shifting at the beginning of games by scripting them into your plays.
But, as the game progresses and you begin moving away from your script, it can become more difficult, especially if you are not one that can easily visualize how to get from one formation to another.
Defensive coaches frequently joke about teams being very dynamic in the first quarter, but always going back to their basic personality the further they get from that first series.
We cannot allow this to happen.
Be sure to do your best to create scripts prior to each series, or place motion notes within our call sheet.
This will help you verbalize the numerous ways you can get from one formation to another by moving one, two, or three players.
Start small, and continue to increase the number of options as you get more comfortable.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, simply moving one player to another location on the field has a larger impact than you can imagine, and the defensive dysfunction it can cause is only limited by your creativity.
Move everybody on certain plays, then act as if you are going to move people on others.
If we are honest with ourselves, we are not as tricky as we think we are, and as the game progresses and tensions arise we will fall back on our boring play-calling personality.
Using movement increases the chances of the defense playing “vanilla”, and may even force them to show their personality.
I urge you to consider this, as the more basic your offense, the more using motions, and shifts will positively impact how defenses react to your scheme.
NEXT STEPS
Want to see how effective Football Motions and Shifts can work inside an offensive system?
Coach Matt Canada has some incredible examples of how using movement can make things really difficult on the defense.
This year he is now the head coach of the Pittsburg Steelers – make sure you follow his developments offensively there to see what he is doing.
I created an entire course detailing his offense that you can learn a lot about the purpose and intent behind his football motions and shifts and how you can also incorporate them into your offense in a simple way.
Master Of Disguise Course
Jason,
Since we only practice twice a week we use a “scatter” shift. In this shifting we tell all of the movable players where we want them to line up just prior to the ball being snapped-like trips right or slot left. Each of the guys have to first align in one of the spots that are their final alignment in another formation because we frequently snap the ball on the first sound and then shift to their final spot. Some times we have everyone shift on the first ‘shift’ call. Some shift early and some shift late if we have two shift calls for shifting. In these situations the early shifters may shift again when the late shifters make their move. Other times we will call for a shirt and no one will move.
We understand the value of motioning, but feel that it takes too much time our limited practice time,. However, shifting takes far less time once the few formations are learned.The only guy we motion is our TB and only to widen him a bit faster on his swing routes.
Coach, thank you for your reply! Concerning practice time, I bet if you taught the motions to your kids in the summer, they would never forget them. Our kids are always smarter than me, and when I challenge them mentally, they never fail to impress me.
If you still feel as if you need to practice them a lot during the season, put the motions within rhe play-calling portion of your practice script. That way, as you call the plays during practice, you don’t have to think.
Thanks again!
Aaron