Where Did This Come From?

June 17, 2026

By Noonefromtampa

When watching football do you wonder sometimes where did a particular formation come from? It could an offensive or defensive concept or even a play. This week we will look at some common concepts and delve into their origins.

I-Formation

Once the backbone of many NFL offenses of the 1970’s and 1980’s, this formation brought a lot of success to many coaches.

While the original I-formation has probably been around almost as long as the game of football, the modern version with a deep-set tailback originates in the 1950s. Two coaches are credited with developing this formation, Tom Nugent and Don Coryell.

Yes, before he became famous for “Air Coryell”, Coryell developed and introduced it to USC head coach John McKay. McKay went on to build a powerhouse program at USC which produced future NFL running backs like Mike Garrett, O.J. Simpson, Charles White and Marcus Allen.

The offensive line coach at USC was one of Coryell’s proteges, a coach named Joe Gibbs.

While not so much in favor today, most coaches still have plays designed around the I-formation for short-yardage or goal line situations.

West Coast Offense

New York Giants head coach Bill Parcells used this term derisively when talking about the San Franciso 49ers, but the media really made the term stick. Bill Walsh was the head coach of the 49ers team, but he developed this offense when he was the offensive coordinator of the Cincinnati Bengals, to compensate for a quarterback who lacked arm strength.

Sometimes people mix up the Air Coryell vertical passing game with Walsh’s offense that features short horizontal passing that emphasize yards after catch because the San Diego Chargers and 49ers are both West Coast teams. The two offenses could not be more different. Walsh famously called up Paul Zimmerman of Sports Illustrated when he referred to the Walsh system as a West Coast offense. Walsh preferred the distinction be made between the Coryell system and the Walsh system.

The Walsh system is the most prevalent offense used in the NFL today and probably has the largest and widest coaching tree in NFL history. What started with Walsh in the 1970’s is still present today through the likes of Klint Kubiak, Sean McVay, Matt LaFleur and Kyle Shanahan.

The 4-3 Defense

This defense was devised by Tom Landry when he was the defensive coordinator for the New York Giants in the 1950s. In the 1940s, the offensive genius in football was Paul Brown of the All-American Football Conference, a rival to the NFL. He had developed a vertical timing passing attack that was novel in the day.

When the Browns moved to the NFL in 1950, they played one of the top teams at the time, the Philadelphia Eagles, and beat them 35-10. Steve Owen, the Giants head coach, came up with the “Umbrella” defense which was a 6-1-4 structure where the ends on the line could drop into coverage. He did this specifically to counter the Browns offense. The only two losses the Browns had in 1950 were to the Giants.

A number of NFL teams switched to the 5-2-4 Eagle defense to counter the Browns offense. However, the lack of a player in the middle of the defense, led to Paul Brown exploiting that. By 1956, Landry had evolved the Umbrella defense into the modern 4-3-4 defense with three linebackers, including one to take away the middle of the field. After the Giants won the NFL Championship game in 1956, other NFL teams started taking notice of this new scheme and the adoption of it started. Moving from the 5-2 Eagle to the 4-3 was easy to do by converting the middle guard lineman position to a middle linebacker position.

The 4-3 defense became the standard in the NFL for a number of years with Hank Stram and Landry further adapting it with “stack” and “flex” variants which refers to specifically how certain players align against various offensive formations.

The 3-4 Defense

In the 1940s there were two variants of the 5-2 defense, the 5-2 Eagle, as mentioned above ,developed by the Philadelphia Eagles and the other variant was the 5-2 “Okie” developed by famous Oklahoma head coach Bud Wilkerson.

The difference between the two were how the defensive lineman aligned and the responsibilities of the linebackers. The Eagle system was an aggressive one-gap system designed to stop the run and force teams into passing situations. The Okie system was more of a two-gap system which was designed to force runs inside to the linebackers and also let linebackers drop into coverage on pass plays.

It was from the 5-2 Okie that the 3-4 developed to combat teams running the I-formation. The 3-4 defense has linemen who try and control the line of scrimmage which allows linebackers to flow downhill to the point of attack plus gives players a few keys to read to simplify player responsibilities. As the league has become more passing oriented, the 3-4 defense has given coordinators the flexibility to disguise which players are part of the pass rush or who is going to blitz on any play. Over half of NFL teams run a variant of the 3-4 defense today.

Tampa 2 Coverage

This coverage is linked to Tony Dungy and Monte Kiffin when they were with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Tampa 2 is a variant of Cover 2 pass coverage where the middle linebacker gets deeper to disrupt certain pass routes commonly used in the Walsh system such as slant, hook or dig routes. The safeties have the two deep zones and the two outside linebackers and cornerbacks have quarters coverage underneath.

Dungy himself admits he picked up idea of the deep dropping middle linebacker from his coach when he played for the Steelers in the 1970’s “Steel Curtain” era. Bud Carson deployed Hall of Fame linebacker Jack Lambert in deeper drops during pass plays. He discussed the concept with Kiffin and the Tampa 2 was born. The Bucs used Hardy Nickerson and Shelton Quarles in the middle during Kiffin’s time with Tampa. Many teams use the concept but not many execute quite as well as the Bucs did in their 2002 Super Bowl season.

Sail Concept

How do you attack a Tampa 2 or any Cover 2 coverage? Hal Mumme and Mike Leach who developed the “Air Raid” offense in various college coaching stops came up with the Y-Sail concept to combat Cover 2 coverages.

The concept gives the quarterback a triangle read between a short Flat route, and intermediate Sail (corner) route and a deep clear out route (Post, Slant, or Corner). The primary route is the Sail route which can be run by either a wide receiver or tight end.

The idea is to flood one side of the defense to try and force it into making a coverage mistake. Fail to cover the deep route properly, easy touchdown, fail to cover one of the underneath routes, the defense could be giving up a “chunk” (big yardage) play.

Kyle Shanahan ran the Sail play frequently when he was Washington’s offensive coordinator under his dad Mike. It simplified the reads for Robert Griffin III down to half the field. Most NFL offenses today have some form of the Sail concept in their playbook because as the tried-and-true cliché says ,t”he NFL is a copycat league”.

Wrap-Up

As you can see, offenses and defenses go back and forth with new concepts and the ways to challenge the new concept. Schemes evolve, adapt and change through the years but some basic concepts keep returning in slightly different forms with teams trying to find new advantage over their opponents.