 If you turn a football game on on TV, the announcers might be saying something like the quarterback is in the shotgun position or they're in a double back set and it can get kind of confusing as to what they're talking about. So in this video I want to take a look at the most common offensive formations and what they look like. The offensive team can either pass or run from any type of formation and all of them have 11 players on the field so I suppose none of them would be any more complicated than any other but you could probably call the eye formation the most basic offensive formation. The basic eye formation consists of two wide receivers, two running backs and one tight end. The running backs will line up with the full back behind the quarterback and the half back behind the full back. The tight end is on the end of the offensive line and the wide receivers are out wide so you can see how the quarterback and the running backs form this eye. There are a few variations that you can make on the formation while keeping this eye like pulling one of the wide receivers in to be a second tight end or the full back can slightly shift to the left or the right side and this would be called an offset eye. One thing to note here is that the quarterback is what we call under center which means he's directly behind the center so whenever the center snaps the ball he's essentially handing the ball to the quarterback. We'll come back to the alternative for being under center in a minute. Right now let's look at another formation that's pretty similar to the eye formation and this is called the proset formation which is similar to the eye formation except that the running backs are positioned to either side of the quarterback in the backfield and again we can have a variation on this where the wide receivers are shifted or even line up one way and then go in motion before the play. The next formation is called the single back set which just means that there is one running back and so again there can be a lot of variations that are used. Maybe a team has two tight ends or two wide receivers or more commonly one tight end and three wide receivers and if there are three wide receivers then this guy here who isn't at the end of the line and he isn't out wide he is called the slot receiver or he's said to be in the slot. The last formation that we'll look at with the quarterback under center is called the trips formation which also uses three or sometimes four wide receivers. In the trips formation three wide receivers will line up on the same side of the field and possibly there will be a tight end over here too so it can get pretty crowded and confusing for the defense as to how they're going to cover all these receivers although of course the offense also runs the risk that these guys could run into each other and they confuse themselves just the same. You also notice here that there is nobody lined up behind the quarterback so we would say that this formation has an empty back field. Now one common variation that we'll see with the trips formation is that the quarterback will not be under center and if he's not under center then he will be in the shotgun formation. So when you hear that a quarterback is in shotgun it means that he is a few feet behind the center rather than right up behind him. So rather than handing the balls for the quarterback center will actually snap the ball back a few feet through the air to him. Here's a great picture here with Aaron Rodgers of the Packers receiving the snap from the center while he's in the shotgun position rather than being right up behind him and what this does is give the quarterback a little more reaction time. If the quarterback is under center he will get the ball from the center and he'll take a few steps backward really quickly which we would call dropping back and so he could take a three step or a five step drop depending on how quickly he wants to throw the ball. What moving into the shotgun essentially does is removes this need to drop back because the quarterback is in essence dropped back before the ball was even snapped. So lining up in the shotgun formation makes it easier to pass and is often used by teams on passing plays but it doesn't have to be so there can be a running back as we saw in that photo or two beside the quarterback while he's in shotgun and so that after the quarterback gets the snap he can just turn and hand the ball off to his running back. Now this isn't all of the formations that can be used there are plenty more because remember the offense wants to throw the defense off any way they can. Teams will have their favorite formations that they use most often but they're going to constantly be moving guys around and mixing things up one way or another so hopefully that'll be enough of an intro to formations to know why the offense is always lining up differently before every play. So now the next time you watch a game you try to identify is the quarterback in shotgun or is he under center are they using eye formation more than a single back set? Thanks