Three yards out, with the end zone in the picture

Goal line heavy, a american football attack drawn in Playmaker: 11 of our players on the pitch. — Left tackle — 1 of 11

American football · Attack · 11 of your players

Goal line heavy is the one formation where the whole diagram fits between the ball and the score. Nine blockers, three yards to travel, and a defence with nowhere left to retreat to.

Open in Playmaker

Opens on a american football pitch with the shape already drawn. Free, no signup.

Three yards, and everything in frame

This one is drawn on the three-yard line rather than the 25, with the end zone shaded above it in the same picture. Seven players are on the line of scrimmage: five linemen and a tight end on each end of them, spanning about sixteen yards of the middle of the field. A wing back stands two and a half yards behind the right tight end and four yards outside him, which makes eight blockers before the backfield is counted at all.

In the backfield, the quarterback is three yards back, the fullback at six and the running back at nine. That is nine bodies whose first job is to move somebody, and one of them will end up carrying the ball.

Why the depth looks wrong and is not

The running back is nine yards behind the line of scrimmage and the goal line is three yards in front of it, so he is twelve yards from a play that needs to travel three. That is deliberate. He has to be at full speed at the exact moment the fullback arrives, and a back who starts two yards off the line is still accelerating when he reaches the pile.

The defence has the opposite problem, and it is the reason the formation exists. There is nothing behind them. A defence cannot play with depth on its own goal line, so its linebackers stand in the gaps instead of reading them, and any gap that does open is a touchdown rather than four yards.

What to argue about before Sunday

Which tight end is the strong one. The wing back declares a side. Draw the run away from him and see whether the count still works.
The play the picture sets up. Nine blockers is also a formation where two eligible receivers are uncovered. Draw the fake, the fullback into the flat and the tight end on a corner route, all off the same first step.
Second and goal, not first. This is drawn on the three. Redraw it on the one and look at how much less room the wing back has to work in.

Take goal line heavy into the designer, draw the short-yardage run you actually trust, then draw the pass off it and save both under one name.