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Gameplan

Welcome back to The Call Sheet! Our Foundations of Football series continues with mirroring topics for each side of the ball. Here’s our gameplan for today:

• Cover 2

  • Offensive Personnel Groups

  • Defensive Personnel Groups

• Quick Game

Cover 2

Offensive Personnel Groups

Personnel groups are often mentioned during broadcasts to provide viewers with context during a football game. However, commentators are restricted by a lack of time before the ball is snapped. Thus, they can only mention the personnel group by name (e.g., 11 personnel) and quickly explain that the nomenclature derives from the first number representing the number of running backs on the field and the second representing the number of tight ends.

Since broadcast teams don’t have the space to elaborate, I’ll explore the most common personnel groups and some formations to set you up for a more enjoyable viewing experience on Saturdays.

Let’s cover some basics.

As you already know, the nomenclature for offensive personnel groups is based on a number system (the number of running backs and tight ends on the field). Here’s a quick breakdown of personnel groupings:

Barring any special plays designed explicitly for a gameplan, the quarterback will always be accompanied by five skill position players, the mix of which will vary based on the personnel needed to execute a given play.

“That’s great and all, but can I see a popular formation for some of these personnel groups?”

For the sake of brevity, I’ll share the five most common (10, 11, 12, 20, 21) with their corresponding basic formations, highlighting running backs in red, tight ends in yellow, and receivers in blue.

Note that college football’s most intricate and successful offenses rarely use basic formations. The best offensive minds in today’s game (e.g., Steve Sarkisian, Lincoln Riley, Andy Kotelnicki, etc.) manipulate the combination of personnel and formations to stress the defense and create mismatches for their offense. Speaking from experience, an offense breaking the huddle in 12 personnel but lining up in a 10 personnel formation immediately leads to heart palpitations for defensive coaches.

While broadcasters, viewers, and defenses refer to offensive personnel by the numbering system, many offenses across the country have names for each group. For example, the first head coach I worked for referred to 20 personnel as Trio (a nod to the three receivers). He also had Skinny Trio as a personnel group, which was still 20, but he leveraged two true running backs rather than a running back and a full back.

Defensive Personnel Groups

Television broadcasts of football games rarely mention defensive personnel groups, mainly because most viewers aren’t focused on that side of the ball. Additionally, defensive personnel depends on the offense and situation (e.g., if the offense is in 10 personnel on 3rd and long, you’ll likely see the defense with five or six defensive backs on the field).

You’ll typically hear the words Base or Nickel mentioned about the defense. However, those terms are far too broad to capture who is on the field. A “Base” defense means something utterly different from coach to coach, as they all have their preferences (e.g., Nick Saban preferred a 3-4 base defense, but Gary Patterson lived in the 3-3-5).

Similar to offenses, the standard way of referencing defensive personnel is by the number of players on the field for two or three position groups.

The only situations where a third number is used are when the number of defensive backs reaches 5 or 6. However, those personnel groupings are typically called Nickel (5 defensive backs) and Dime (six defensive backs) defenses.

Let’s look at some pictures of common defenses (3-4, 3-3-5, 4-3, 4-2-5, 4-1-6) with the defensive line highlighted in red, the linebackers highlighted in yellow, and the defensive backs highlighted in blue.

Just as offensive coaches have a set terminology for their personnel groups, defensive coaches also do. The defensive coordinator I played and first coached for had the following names for the groups depicted above:

3-4 = Odd
3-3-5 = Okie
4-3 = Regular
4-2-5 = Nickel
4-1-6 = Dime

Occasionally, we would also had a Big Nickel personnel group that leveraged a third safety in the 4-2-5 rather than a third corner as the extra defensive back. Remember, defensive personnel groups depend on the offense and situation.

Quick Game

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