This formation is only ten men without an F tag — pick one.
DEFENSE
FIELD & DISPLAY
Dots are drawn at true body size. Drag to try something — nothing here is saved.
Live position
Drag a player to see his exact spot.
Snaps to 6 inches. Drag a man here to try something. It is not saved and goes back as soon as you change the formation, a tag or the hash. To keep it, set it on the Formations tab.
Players
Worked out from the formation and its tags. An amber row is tied to the ball, a landmark or another player, and ignores the split sliders. A plain row is taking the rule split. Change any of it on the Formations tab.
Save
Ball is on the left hash, receiver on the right hash — most room to work with.
What the Concept Teacher says
Live measurement
Click the field to start the route.
Snaps to 6 inches. Everything is measured from where the receiver lines up, not from the ball — so the same route works from any formation, any tag, either side. Copy starts a new route from the one open now — same shape, new name — and leaves the original alone. Use it when a route is a version of one you already have.
Notes on this route
Saved with the route. Shows on the field when you hover the route, or all at once with the Notes button.
Points
Out = yards away from the ball. Negative means he breaks back toward the ball.
Up = yards downfield. Square cut plants and turns sharp. Speed cut rounds the corner off without losing speed. Aiming point is not a cut at all — it is a spot he runs through on his way, drawn as a hollow diamond. Click a point on the field to pick it out. On the last point the box asks how the line finishes instead: an arrow, or a block, which ends in a bar straight across — the same T the linemen carry on the man side of a protection. The shaded strip down each sideline is dead ground. No player lines up in it and no route runs into it. A route that asks for more width than the man has left is squeezed sideways until it fits — same shape, same corners, just narrower. Depth is untouched.
From WR measures the point from where he lines up. From ball measures it from the football instead — use it when he has to get to a spot regardless of how wide he started, like working back inside the box. Ball-anchored points show a faint amber tie line. Switching a point to From ball switches every point after it too, and any new point you add inherits it — once he is working off the ball he stays working off the ball.
Run to a painted line measures the point from a hash or the numbers instead. Frontside is the side he lined up on and backside is the far one, so a crossing route finishes on a real line rather than at a distance that only works out of one formation. Out still applies on top — leave it at zero to sit on the line, or use it to sit a yard or two outside or inside it. These get a tie line too.
Add option here branches a second path off the selected point. The main route is solid, the option is dotted. Clearing the main route, or deleting the point it branches from, removes the option too. With Option selected, Clear route wipes only the option.
Save
Routes save with the rest of the placer data.
Concepts
Concept
What it is
Receiver 1
Receiver 2
Receiver 3
Receiver 4
Receiver 5
The search box matches the concept name and any route the concept uses — so typing a route name lists every concept that sends somebody on it. Several words narrows it. Escape clears it.
Pick routes from the dropdowns. Green means the route is drawn, red means it still needs drawing. A concept is a name and an ordered list of routes. Receiver 1 runs the first, receiver 2 the second, and so on. Run out of receivers and the rest go unused, so a five route concept called to a two man side just uses its first two. Nothing says whether a concept is half field or full field, because the routes say it. Three or fewer and it is called to one side. Four or more and, called on its own, it counts across the whole formation right to left — Flip starts on the left instead. Name a second concept and both become side concepts: the first is the left side, the second is the right.
Tick by receiver count when a concept changes with the number of receivers out there — Stick is Arrow and Stick with two, Fade, Arrow and Stick with three. Tick by 2x2 / 3x1 when a whole-formation concept reads the two shapes differently. A shape row wins over a count row, and both fall back to the top row, which is why the top row is the fallback.
Still to draw
Every route a concept asks for gets added to the Routes dropdown automatically, empty, so you can work down the list.
Paste instead
Header row optional. Leave a cell blank if that receiver has no route in the concept.
Formation structure
Drag a player to set where he lines up.
Nothing here reaches the cloud until you press Save this look, and that saves only what is on screen. With a tag showing, the man the tag puts on the field gets his own row in the table so you can tie him to a landmark, and every tie change goes into that look rather than the plain formation. Ball in the middle, right-handed. With no tag showing you are setting the plain formation. Put a tag on and you are setting that look on its own — Scoot Right Slot keeps its own spots, and the hashes and alignment tags work off them.
Letter
Side
Type
On ball
Tied to
Out
Depth
Side is strong / weak, stored as the right-handed version. Calling it Left mirrors everything automatically.
Type controls the rules: WR gets the split landmarks and counts in receiver numbering,
TE aligns off the tackle and doesn't count, RB sits in the backfield.
Leave F or T out of the player list if you want a tag to place him.
Tied to is how you overrule the split. Leave it on the rules and he takes the normal landmark split. Tie him to the ball, the tackle, the last man in the box, a painted landmark, or another player, and Out is how many yards further from the ball than that thing he lines up. Tie Z to Y at 2 and Z follows Y wherever Y goes. Depth overrides how far off the line he sits. Leave it blank for the normal 1 yard.
A tie holds at every hash and under every F tag \u2014 unless that look has pinned its own spot, which the warning above tells you about. Alignment tags still win — call Squeeze and he squeezes like anyone else.
Import formation reference
Header row optional. side = L or R, onball = 1 or 0. Extra columns ignored.
F tags — where the F lines up
Tag
Side
Spot
Out
Deep
WR?
On ball
T tags — where the back lines up
Tag
Side
Spot
Out
Deep
WR?
On ball
Alignment tags — condensed splits
Tag
Side
Does what
Inner gap
Wide gap
Spacing
Wide at
Stack depth
Inner gap = how far the innermost receiver sits off the outside foot of the last man in the box
— tackle, tight end, or a wing put there by Stride or Wide. Wings are never moved by an alignment tag; they
become the thing everyone measures from. Spacing = the gap between each receiver and the man inside him. Wide gap replaces the inner gap once the formation carries Wide at receivers or more.
On-ball status and receiver numbering always stay exactly as the formation had them.
Stack behind works differently: on any side with two or more receivers, the on-ball man is the
point. He pairs with the man immediately inside him — or the man outside, if he is already the innermost.
Both slide half the gap so they end up nose to tail, and the off-ball man drops to Stack depth
behind. A third receiver on that side is left where he was, and a lone receiver is untouched.
Spot is the anchor an F or T tag measures from:
• Beside QB — offset sideways from the quarterback.
• Behind guard — stacked behind the guard on that side.
• Wing off last man — outside whoever is the last man on the line that side (tackle, or tight end if there is one).
• Slot — splits the gap between the last man on the line and the innermost receiver on that side.
• Out wide — takes a real receiver split off the landmarks, same as a WR.
Out = extra yards further from the ball. Deep = yards behind the line.
WR? means he counts when numbering receivers on that side. On ball set to "Mirror other side" copies the on-ball pattern from the other side of the ball, outside man to outside man.
Formation nicknames
Called
Is really
F tag
T tag
What this is for
Trips is Twins with a Slot tag. Spread is Twins with a Wiz tag. Rather than storing those twice
and letting them drift apart, a nickname points at a base formation plus its locked tags.
Pick the nickname on the Field tab and the tag boxes lock, because the tag is already part of the name.
Any spot you hand-set under one name shows up under the other — it's the same formation on grass.
Add a nickname here any time a tagged formation gets its own call word.
Field measurements
Yards from the middle of the field unless noted. Defaults are NFHS high school — hashes 17.78 yds apart, numbers 9 yds off the sideline.
Rules this app follows
These are saved in the database with everything else, so they travel with the data rather than living in a chat.
How the split gets calculated
#1 receiver anchors to a landmark:
• Ball in the middle → anywhere from 2 yards inside the top of the numbers out to the bottom of them, set by the field-side slider.
• Wide side of a hash → between the far hash and the top of the numbers.
• Boundary side → bottom of the numbers at the tightest, out to 3 yards wider.
• 3-receiver side on a hash → top of the numbers.
#2 and #3 split evenly between #1 and the tackle.
Tight ends and tagged players are placed by their own rules, not by the split.
The field-side slider runs the window in the middle of the field as well as on a hash. Both sliders only move men still taking the rule split — anyone tied to something on the Formations tab ignores them.
Whose defense
Fronts, coverages and full looks all belong to a team, so a week of scouting Libertyville never mixes with anybody else’s. Geneva is a team like any other — our own defense is the one we play against ourselves.
Techniques and zones are shared by everybody, because a 3 technique is a 3 technique whoever you play and a flat is a flat. Only what a team does with them changes.
Which way the defense sets
Worked out in this order, stopping at the first one that gives an answer:
1. the tight end side
2. the side with more eligible receivers
3. the field — the wide side when the ball is on a hash
With the ball in the middle and nothing to separate the two sides there is no answer, so it follows the way the offense set. Tick flip strength on the Field tab to turn it round — it is one or the other, so one click settles it.
Gaps in the formation on the Field tab
Counted outward from the center — A, B, C, D — with the space outside the last man on the line getting the next letter along. A side with no tight end has an open C gap outside the tackle; a side with one has a C inside him and a D outside. A receiver split wide is not a gap boundary, and how wide a split still counts is a setting on the Field Numbers tab rather than a guess. Every run responsibility is a gap, so this is what the fits will hang off later.
Fronts
Side is read against whichever way the defense set, so one front covers both — set a 3 technique to the strength and it moves with the tight end. Backers use the same gap and shade system with a zero added — 0 becomes 00, 4i becomes 40i — so there is only one technique table to keep straight. They have no name column because the names come from where they land, left to right: the leftmost is Lou, the rightmost is Rob, and anybody between them is Mike. One on his own is a Mike.
There is no Buck here. An overhang defender belongs in the coverage, because out there he lines up off a receiver — which is what a coverage row does and what a technique cannot. So how wide a backer is no longer decides his name.
Full looks
A look is a front and a coverage called together — Over Cover 3. It is what a team actually lines up in, and it is the thing worth writing down when you watch film.
Picking one here sets the front and the coverage on the Field tab in one go.
Coverages
The secondary is called separately from the front, the way you call it out loud — Over Cover 3, Under Cover 2.
A defensive back does not line up on a blocker, so there is no technique here. He lines up on a receiver by number or on a painted landmark, with leverage and a depth. Receivers are numbered outside in, widest first, which is the same key you would give him. Split reads the formation for itself: it puts him between the 2 and the 3 where a 3 is out there, and between the tackle and the 2 when it is only a two-receiver side — which is how the spot is actually coached, since “split the two and three” means the tackle when there is no three. The fixed split the tackle and 2 and split 2 and 3 are still there for when you want one or the other whatever the formation. Those two and head up the point man are the same spots the backers can take, offered here because an overhang defender lines up off receivers rather than off a blocker. They read from the same rules, so the two lists cannot drift apart. Where there is nobody to split between, or no man on the ball to sit on, he falls back to the top of the numbers and the row is marked.
Leverage only means something off a MAN — a receiver number or the point man. A split is a midpoint between two men and a hash mark is a line, so neither has a shoulder to take. Dragging him on the field sets an exact distance instead, so he can be three yards outside a receiver rather than the fixed yard the named leverages give; picking a leverage here puts him back on one of the three. If a coverage asks for a receiver who is not on the field, a number 2 to a nub side say, he falls back to the top of the numbers, and the row is marked so you can see it happened. A defensive back can rush too — double-click him on the field and pick a gap, same as anybody. An overhang defender belongs here rather than in the backers list, because out there he lines up off a receiver, and that is what a coverage row does and what a technique cannot. Zone after the snap is a different thing from where he lines up. Pick a zone and he gets a line to it and a bubble over it on the field; pick man and the line to the man he is on turns solid.
The zone list is written from his point of view. A man set to a side is offered the zones on his side and the same ones away, so a corner to the strength picks “Flat” and gets the flat he is standing in whichever way the offense sets. A man in the middle of the field gets the real left and right names, because he has no side of his own to be relative to. Played with a partner holds techniques two men share. Palms is the one built so far: the corner and the safety on a side both take it and read the same number two between them, and each gets a dashed line to that receiver. Because it sits on the man, a defense can play it to one side and something else to the other — which a coverage named "Palms" could never do, since that can only ever be Palms everywhere. Left and right are the offense's left and right, so a zone name means the same thing whichever way the defense sets.
The deep zones deliberately overlap — halves, thirds and quarters are three ways of dividing the same grass and only one is ever called at a time. Thirds break at the hashes, quarters at the middle of each half.
Techniques
Called
Lined up on
Which shoulder
Depth
Even numbers are head up, odd numbers are the outside shoulder, an i is the inside shoulder. The tight end is a real target of its own. The five linemen are always out there but a tight end is not, so when there isn't one he lines up on a ghost — the spot a tight end would have taken. Call a 7 to a formation with nobody there and he still lands where he belongs. The end man on the line is different: it means whoever is actually out there, tight end or tackle, and never ghosts. 1 yard outside puts him clear of the blocker rather than on his shoulder.
How far off a blocker's middle a shade sits, how far clear a 1 yard technique sits, and how far off the ball a lineman lines up are all on the Field Numbers tab with the other measurements.
Where your work is going
Everything saves on its own about four seconds after you stop making changes, so this button is only for when you want to be sure. It is the same save either way.
Back up and restore
Back up downloads everything — formations, routes, concepts, tags, rules — as one file. Do it before any big change.
Restore puts one of those files back. It shows you what is in the file first, downloads a safety copy of what it is about to replace, and will not go ahead if that safety copy fails. It replaces everything, so it is not a way to merge two sets of work together.
Restore always writes to whichever copy you are looking at right now — check the panel above before you use it.
Export
Every formation crossed with every tag, alignment, ball spot and direction, with each player's exact spot. Opens in Excel.
Self check
Builds every formation crossed with every tag, every ball spot, both directions and every protection, then checks the result against the rules. Takes a few seconds. Changes nothing — it only reports.
Look at the database
Prints the structure of whatever is stored at that path. Reads only, changes nothing.