History of American Football Positions - Making Sense of IT All

Making Sense of It All

The trend away from geometric naming of the offensive positions has led to considerable confusion. It has been said that some coaches at low levels of football, having heard game descriptions that included a team's having "put their tight end in motion", have done exactly so, and incurred the penalty for the resulting illegal motion. Because of the rules of the game, it frequently matters whether a player of the offense is on the line of scrimmage or in the backfield, and in those cases the descriptor "wide receiver" is insufficient and "end in motion" (except in Canadian football, where they're allowed to be shuffling sideways along the line of scrimmage when the ball is snapped) is nonsense, although it may reflect the way the player in question is listed on the roster. In describing the play in a National Football League game, one may hear the contorted locution, "The quarterback was eligible to receive a forward pass because he was in the shotgun formation", when it would be far simpler to say that the team's eligible receivers included the tailback who took the snap; the rules apply differently depending on whether the player is positioned behind the snapper to take a handed snap, or further back and hence in the backfield.

One can delineate two types of useful nomenclature. One type is for such purposes as calling play-by-play on radio, in text, or as described to a blind person. Such a nomenclature focuses on where a player is when the teams line up for scrimmage, and can describe the formation overall. Such nomenclature is also useful for technical purposes—instructions for coaches, for example. In this type of nomenclature geometry predominates, and there are no paradoxes such as extra ends, ends in motion, or quarterbacks standing deep in the backfield. For many play-by-play purposes, some geometric details, such as whether a wide receiver is an end or a flanker, can be glossed over unless they come into play. If a wide receiver is described as being in motion, the announcer, in calling it "motion", conveys it as legal play by a flanker, but if an end changes position, the announcer refers to the player as "shifting" instead. The advantage of speed in calling a game is manifest, and it is faster to say "Jones and Smith are split out wide left and right" than to specify that one is a split end and the other a flanker, or that both are flankers or ends.

The other type of nomenclature describes players by their usual roles—a description that is more suitable in describing a whole game or season than play by play. Such nomenclature may be used on rosters or in scouting reports, for instance. While in 1950, it would have been common to say, "This team needs a passer", to include various positions from which a player might throw forward passes (and a pro team might well have converted a college tailback into a quarterback), it does not seem to do much harm to say, "This team needs a quarterback", in an era when one associates quarterbacks with passing and vice versa. On the other hand, it does not hurt at all to mention the skill, rather than the position, if it is really a skill that is sought rather than a "job title". And if a team's standard formation is shotgun, nothing is gained by including "quarterback" in the roster if there really is not one.

In describing defenses, there does not seem to be a need for dual nomenclature. Nobody sees a need to geometrically break down a formation of three safeties into strong, weak, and "middle", for instance, although if a team is expecting a kick one might well specify positions of "deep safety" and "shallow safety". The line and linebacker position names give role and geometric information about equally. In odd-man line formations, the adjective "nose" can be reserved to distinguish cases wherein the middle lineman is directly opposite the snapper from those where the middle defensive line player is offset, and "middle" is superfluous if the existence of the odd number of linemen has already been conveyed.