Football position question

I thought Flozell just laid on top of people.

 

That isn't hard.

 

Probably stems back to when players were real men, and played both ways.

 

I'll bet they had to make a lot of tackles when Ryan Leaf was quarterbacking the Chargers (rim shot).

 

Can I borrow one of your pain pills? Can I?
-Ryan Leaf

 

Yeah, we ran the FB as the two back as well, I think it all depends on how your offence is designed how the play calls go. Different teams run different hole numbers too - some offences go 1,3,5,7 to the left, 2,4,6,8 to the right, and others just go straight from one side to the other.

 

Not sure if this matters: The positions in rugby union share a lot of the same names as American football.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rugby_formation.svg

They play with a fullback, two halfbacks and a pair of flankers. I had always assumed some American football positions took names from their rugby counterparts, but I could be way wrong.

 

The nomenclature, I believe, goes back to the days of the Pop Warner's single wing offense where you had a tailback, full back, quarterback and wingback. The tailback was the furthest from the line of scrimmage, directly behind the center with the fullback a step or two closer to the line and the quarterback closest to the offensive line with the wingback split outside the tight end on the strong side of the offensive line. The ball was snapped to either the tailback, fullback or sometimes the quarterback.

My dad, who played college ball in the leather helmet days, claimed the fullback was the biggest and always full of himself. The tailback was deeper than the fullback, a bit like the tail of a dog. The quarterback was generally a quarter as tough as the fullback and the wingback ran as if he had wings on his feet.

Or so he claimed.

 

If you don't use the blue font, someone's going to think you're serious ...

As for the numbers, I played in a Wing-T in high school, and halfback was the 4 back, fullback was the 3 back and the wingback was the 2 back.

 

A little off-topic here, but I think this pertains to the conversation. About 10 years ago, I covered who I believe to be the best high school football player I've ever seen (and I've covered guys who scored touchdowns on Monday Night Football).

He was a tailback who averaged 225 yards per game and played on a team with a wet-behind-the-ears sophomore quarterback and without any viable wide receivers. Everyone in the stadium knew this kid was getting the ball on every play, and the worst game he had all season was like 160 yards.

Anyhoo, to exploit this kid's talents, midway through the season the head coach drew up an "inverted wishbone," offense, with him lining up at tailback with fullbacks flanking him on the left and right in front of him. It was genious. Team went 8-2 basically with one player carrying the entire load. He was one of the best high school players most people never have heard of.

(Back on topic) What numbers would you classify the backs in this offense with?

 

Spread Offenses don't use the FB/ HB terms -

typically the HB is the F- back for feature back and the FB is the H - Back