Why Am I Standing Here? Malzahn's Most Used Formations

What's in a formation?

Football is a game with many arbitrary rules. Why four downs to get 10 yards? Why not five to get 15? Each team can field 11 players. Why not 12 or 13, Tennessee?

Arbitrary rules also dictate the basic structure of offensive formations. Of the 11 on offense, four must be in the backfield, or behind the line of scrimmage. That leaves seven that must be on the line. Obviously, one of the players in the backfield is the passer (who may or may not actually be the quarterback), but the other 3 are eligible to receive a pass. Of the players on the line, each one on each end is also an eligible receiver.

Seven are on the line, and the X and Y are on the ends, so they are eligible receivers.
Everyone is the backfield is an eligible receiver.

Easy as 1,2,3... & 4,5,9

In both of his interviews this fall camp, [Corey] Grant has said he's still getting some time at the "4," the tailback position in Auburn's hurry-up, no-huddle offense.

What did Grant mean by "time at the 4"?

Gus Malzahn wants to run his offense at as fast a pace as possible. But faster communication is needed to achieve faster pace. Since his time as a high school football coach, Malzahn has developed a system that allows the play calls to be communicated from the sideline that is easy to understand for the offense and hard to decipher for the defense.

One aspect of this communication system is the skill position numbers. Traditional skill position designations are letters. The quarterback is QB (duh), the split end is X, the tight end is Y, the flanker is Z, the fullback could be F, and the tailback could be T. A typical formation would look like this.

Malzahn uses the following numbers for the skill positions. The quarterback is the 1, the split end is the 9, the tight end is the 5, the flanker is the 2, the H-back is the 3, and the running back is the 4. Now the typical formation looks like this.