Three to one side, and a defence one short

Shotgun trips right, a american football formation drawn in Playmaker: 11 of our players on the pitch. — Left tackle — 1 of 11

American football · Formation · 11 of your players

Shotgun trips right is a counting problem handed to the defence before the snap. Three receivers on one side of the ball, one on the other, and eleven defenders that no longer divide evenly.

Open in Playmaker

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

Where the eleven stand

The line is the usual five, spread across the 25 at two and a half yard splits. The quarterback is five yards behind the centre, which is a real shotgun depth rather than an exaggerated one, and the running back stands beside him, four yards to his right.

Everything else is right. The outside receiver is on the line, under four yards from the sideline. The middle and inside receivers are a yard off it, six yards from each other and six yards from the right tackle, so the three of them ladder out from the formation in even rungs. The split end is isolated on the left, twenty-three yards from the centre with nobody within twenty of him.

The question it asks

A defence has eleven players and the same arithmetic problem every week: seven near the line, four in the secondary, and now three receivers one side of the ball and one the other. Somebody has to move.

Walk a linebacker out to the trips and the box is down to six, with a back beside the quarterback and a run available against it. Leave him inside and three receivers are being handled by two defenders and a safety who has a long way to come. Roll the safety over instead and the split end on the left is one-on-one with no help on the field.

Trips does not beat coverage on its own. It makes the defence choose in front of the quarterback, before the snap, in the place he is already looking.

What to build off it

Draw the answer to each choice. Three pictures: linebacker out, safety rolled, nothing moved. One play beats each. That is a plan rather than a play.
Make the back a receiver. He is beside the quarterback, not behind him. Send him to the empty left flat and the rotation to the trips is suddenly wrong.
Space the ladder honestly. Six yards is what the drawing says. Squeeze the three to three yards and the routes run into each other; push them to ten and the outside man is on the sideline with no room to work.
Backside means backside. Give the split end a route on every one of these, including the ones he never gets. The safety who has to respect it is why the rest works.

Open it in the designer, put the coverage you expect on the field, and find which of the three receivers is genuinely unaccounted for.