 So, as you quickly discover as you start to watch football, a large part of the sport is about the offense trying to do things that the defense won't expect because they're trying to keep the defense off balance and because they want the offense wants to have that big play so they can gain a lot of yards and even score. So this means that there's a great deal of preparation that will go into the different formations. This is the way that the offense will line up and the directions then during the play which way is the running back on a run what route will the receivers run and to do all this and so while you actually gain the yardage while the all the action occurs during the play which is after the ball is snapped the team has to be the offense has to be lined up correctly before the ball is snapped to make sure that they'll be able to execute that play that they have designed. So let's look at the things the offense is allowed and not allowed to do before the ball is even snapped and so whenever you watch a game it might be confusing you guys running back and forth and people moving and some people aren't allowed to move and others are. So let's go over all the things that they can do in this video. So the first thing is these three stipulations is that at the snap the offense must have seven or more players on the line all players who aren't on the line must be at least one yard behind it and then no player can be out of bounds which that last one makes a lot of sense to you know imagine what a team tried to do that they had to put that rule in there but so that's pretty easy to understand but let's look at these these first two particularly this first one what does what does the line mean what does this mean to have a player on the line so a player of team A is on his line and in this situation team A is just what the rule book the NFL rule book is calling the team on offense team B will then be the team on defense so player of team A is on the line when his shoulders are facing team B's goal line so you have to be kind of looking at your goal line where you're trying to go can't be turned around or turn sideways to if he is the snapper the no part of his body is to be beyond the line so we know that already because everybody has to be beyond the line of scrimmage or behind the line scrimmage just because you're snapping the ball doesn't mean you get to be in front of it and then if you are not snapping if you're not the center which is be the majority of the players his helmet must break the vertical plane that passes through the belt line of the snapper and so remember here we need seven of these guys to be on the line so we did one would obviously be the snapper and then the other six need to be up pretty close to the line basically is what we're saying here so let's look at this with a little with a few photos so we can see here our line of scrimmage is where the ball is so that lines coming across here and so then we have the the belt of our snapper so obviously this guy here in the middle with the ball see how he is positioned himself behind the ball because he can't be in front of it and then the angles a little off in this picture but you can see here that most of these guys do are in front of that belt line of the snapper so all of these guys all the offensive linemen here five offensive linemen including the center and then we have our tight end and then the our wide receivers feet are there so these this team has seven guys up on the line just like they are required to another picture I think this was a game that the Navy football team was playing and in this situation it looks like they are kind of pushing the boundaries here because if we have our line right here or line of scrimmage and then the belt of the center is coming across here and so again the angle of the picture is a little off but they have obviously this receiver here is one two three the center and then four five I guess this guy in the end he he seems like he's behind the line so if I was the referee on this play I might be tempted to call that a penalty but then we do have this receiver down here so then and then you could see behind maybe not with all these lines over top of it the center is here and then right behind him is the quarterback although keep in mind the quarterback does not have to be on the line it because each team will have 11 players and so only seven of those 11 need to be on that line so those are the basically what you have to fulfill before the ball is snapped you might be confused about if you watch the game and you've seen players on the offense moving around before the snap what is that all about so we'll look at that one how players can it can't move in the next video