Misdirection: Using Pre-Snap Movement and Multiple Personnel Groupings to Gain an Offensive Advantage

Mike Martz is one of the more productive offensive coaches in the National Football League.  He has utilized pre-snap movements for years and during many of those seasons he has gained a competitive advantage.    

    As an offense, we want to create the illusion of being very complex while we are, in fact, being simple and basic. We accomplish this through using a variety of movements and personnel groupings. By minimizing the number of basic concepts, creating a large number of ways to run each concept, and having different players execute them, we make our offense very difficult to defend. As a staff, we believe in this approach to offense because we can avoid overloading our five offensive linemen and our quarterback with new concepts every week. The teaching remains the same but it looks completely different to the defense.    

    After talking to a number of defensive coaches around the region, we have identified seven benefits of pre-snap movements and using multiple personnel groupings.    

1. Simplifies the defense - It causes defenses to make multiple checks prior to the snap and this can lead to most defenses playing mostly base defense. This is beneficial for our offense.    

2. Motion Causes Emotion - Movement causes an element of uncertainty and, for most defenders. It forces them to think-which can tie up their feet. If we can take the aggression out of a defense by making them uncertain of what is coming next, then we will have an advantage.    

3. Prevents the defense from matching up their best defenders on our playmakers - By changing up the alignment of our “go-to guys”, this prevents them from getting their best defenders on our biggest offensive threats.    

4. Creates opportunities for our playmaker - Moving our playmakers around can create touches for them in a variety of ways. This is a way of making sure that our playmakers touch the ball enough in order for us to be successful.    

5. Allows for Multiplicity - Movement will give us an opportunity to get to all of our formations and concepts from a number of different ways. This will again keep the defense guessing (more uncertainty and more to prepare for).    

6. Creates favorable match-ups - We can get our playmakers on a favorable match-up.     

7. Gain leverage on defenses -We can get an extra player to the point of attack by motioning or shifting. We can also get to unbalanced or empty formations to cause problems for defenses. 

Making it Work: 
 
Formations:

    We use formations that have a specific lettering system and they will have to be memorized using rote memory.  The player should be able to identify where each letter or position is aligned (See Diagrams 1). 
 
Personnel Groupings:

    Our personnel groupings are still based on the universal numbering system.  We give each personnel grouping a name and we assign each player a letter for that grouping. 

For example:

Buccaneer Personnel (11)

X-Receiver

Y-Tight End

Z-Receiver

B-Receiver

A-Running Back 

Regular Personnel (10)

X-Receiver

Y-Receiver

Z-Receiver

B-Receiver

A-Running Back 

    We can line up our best players in different spots in order to take advantage of a certain match-up by simply creating a new personnel grouping.  This is a method that we use in order to avoid having our playmakers double-teamed or taken completely out of the game by a dominant defender. If we line up our best play-maker in different positions, we can create ways to get him the ball but also avoid having him covered by our opponent’s best corner. 

    We use an assortment of pre-snap movements to do this. The first movement is our full formation shift.  We will line up in a formation and on the quarterback’s signal, the skill position players will shift to the second formation called (See Diagrams 2A and 2B). 

    The rest of our movements are single shifts or motions and can be pieced together to form a series of movements that will allow us to run multiple concepts. Within that series of movements, we want to have the ability to run at least four to six of our base concepts in order to avoid becoming predictable in any way. 

Cluster or Bunch Formation:

    We have the ability to get to a cluster or bunch formation out of an array of different ways. We have found this to be advantageous because teams have the ability to adjust defensively to the cluster when you just line up in it.  When you move or shift to get to it, this makes it more difficult to identify and defend (See Diagrams 3-A, 3-B, and 3-C). 

    We can run a large number of our base concepts out of these series of movements and they have been very beneficial for our offense. Another way we have applied pressure on the defense and have caused them to play base defense or check out of the original defense called is to get to an empty backfield out of multiple formations and personnel groupings. 

    We have the ability to shift our way to an empty backfield out of a two-back or one-back formation. Most defenses have empty checks ready but showing the potential to send five receivers out play after play can be stressful on any defense. 

    Using our running back shift and motions, we can start in Flex (2x1) and get to an empty backfield (3x2) with the strength either way. We will utilize our quick passing game and a variety of runs out of the empty set (See Diagrams 4-A and 4-B).  
 
    We can start in a deuce set (2x2) and by using our running back shift or motion we can get to an empty set (3x2) with the strength either way (See Diagrams 5-A and 5-B).