The most popular defensive formation used by teams in Contra Costa County is the 3-downline formation. This formation typically consists of one nose protector head up and two defenders head up above tackles (4 technologies). It is a common and historically significant formation in American football, and it is also used in soccer to describe how a team's players position themselves on the field. In attack, the formation must include at least seven players on the line of strike, including a center to start the play with a click.
The nose tackle can also affect pass coverage, which is why it is often used in Neale's defense and the Shurmur variant. In this formation, linemen usually line up directly in front of the offensive line, while linebackers shoot into the gaps. The Chicago Bears took advantage of this defense during their 15-1 season in 1985, which culminated in a 46-10 win over New England in Super Bowl XX. The formation was also used extensively by Fielding Yost's Michigan Wolverines in their early days, and was the base formation of the New York Giants led by Benny Friedman in 1931. Corners and preventive defense security teams often focus on defending the goal line at the expense of the receivers in the midfield. In its early days, it also used a loophole in high school regulations that allowed players who wore any number in uniform to play in an ineligible or eligible position, further increasing defensive confusion and allowing greater flexibility among players who changed positions between plays. The kneeling or victory formation developed in the 1978 NFL season after The Miracle at the Meadowlands, a failed last play of a game between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles that resulted in a fumble and a crucial score in the last second.
This formation has the advantages of 4-line versus players, with the ability to connect the fastest defensive ends mentioned in the 4-3 defense. The wild card is basically a career formation in which an athletic player (usually a runner or a catcher who runs well) replaces the team's regular quarterback in a shotgun formation, while the quarterback is lined up wide as a flanker or is replaced by another player. However, since defense is normally used only in the last seconds of a game, when the defensive team only needs to prevent the attacker from scoring a touchdown, giving up a few meters in midfield is inconsequential. The main use of training in recent years has been as an unexpected wrinkle that tries to confuse the defense into mislining up or ruining tasks in covering passes. In most cases, quarterback formations have a score of 3-1—7 or a 4-0-7; the New England Patriots have used a 0-4-7 score in some cases without a player from the bottom line. In the NFL, this formation was the basis of the run-and-shoot offense, which was popular in the 1980s among teams like the Detroit Lions and Houston Oilers, but which has since fallen into disuse as a primary offensive philosophy. This defense was also philosophically equivalent to Knute Rockne's Notre Dame offense devised in 1930s since it used an unbalanced field and complex pre-click movement to confuse rival offenses. Some teams have successfully used this formation to play passes, including the New England Patriots who used linebacker Mike Vrabel as a tight end to catch touchdown passes in both Super Bowl XXXVIII and Super Bowl XXXIX - two of their ten passes completed (all with annotations) for fourteen goals.
