Emotions in Motion: Why almost everything in the NFL happens before the snap

More and more, NFL offenses are using pre-snap motion to set defenses on edge. Here’s how it works.

In Part 1 of the “Emotions in Motion” series, Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar takes an in-depth look at the NFL’s increasing use of pre-snap motion, and how it’s changing the ways in which offensive and defensive football are played. 

One of the biggest plays in the 49ers’ 26-21 Week 17 win over the Seahawks last season was a 49-yard pass from quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo to fullback Kyle Juszczyk. On the play, tight end George Kittle motioned from left to right pre-snap, which gave Garoppolo the indicator that Seattle was playing zone defense in its usual base (three-linebacker) alignment. Juszczyk was aligned in the right slot — fullback displacement has been a hallmark of head coach Kyle Shanahan’s playbooks for years — and as the ball was snapped and Kittle moved back to the left side for a backside blocking assignment.

Garoppolo was able to spot a weakness in Seattle’s defense that he could exploit — Juszczyk covered by linebacker Mychal Kendricks, who was preoccupied to a point by Kittle’s presence aligned to the right side of the formation. Because of that preoccupation, Juszczyk had a free release to head upfield, and though he certainly wasn’t going to challenge Tyreek Hill in any footraces, he was able to run free against a defense that had been forced to react late as a result of Shanahan’s ability to design and implement motion and displacement concepts to the detriment of every defense he faces. Kendricks followed Juszczyk outside, but it looks as if the intention was for Kendricks to cover the flat, while the 49ers extended Juszczyk downfield. Kittle motioning back to the left side also took linebacker Bobby Wagner out of the picture — as a hook/curl defender, he had nothing to defend. Whenever you can remove your opponent’s best defensive player from the equation, you have an obvious advantage.

“I would say that Kyle’s the best at that right now,” former NFL quarterback and current ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky recently told me. “Kyle takes people out of the play without doing anything other than motion and alignment. I’ve said this – Kyle’s the best mathematician in the NFL.”

Of course, the 49ers took Shanahan’s brilliant offense and Robert Saleh’s radically re-energized defense all the way to Super Bowl LIV, where they lost in late-game fashion to Andy Reid’s Chiefs on this particular play.

Not that any of this is new. Pre-snap motion has been around for decades — Tom Landry did as much as anyone to develop it with the Cowboys in the 1960s and 1970s, and Bill Walsh was not above availing himself of the concept with the 49ers back in the day. In a

If you want to see another play in which the quarterback heads right as the guards head left, leaving an open target against a confused defense, this is a good example (Thanks to John Tunney of the excellent Pro Football Journal blog for the highlight pull).

In an NFL where defensive front versatility is the order of the day and coverage schemes are more advanced than they’ve ever been, it behooves those who design offenses to bring to the table anything possible to plant their flags in the turf. Pre-snap motion, which is used to varying degrees throughout the league to varying degrees of effectiveness, has become a mandatory construct among many of the most effective offenses.

But none of the public subscription-based football metrics services — not Football Outsiders, not Pro Football Focus, and not Sports Info Solutions — make pre-snap motion charting-based stats available, and therefore, we as football fans and and football analysts have no way of knowing the exact effectiveness of the methodology. The first real reference I saw to pre-snap motion in an analytical sense was in Warren Sharp’s 2020 Football Preview, and Sharp laid it all out in compelling fashion.

Per Sharp’s charting, NFL teams used pre-snap motion in the first three quarters of games on 39% of passes, 49% of rushes, and 43% of all plays in the 2019 season. The 49ers led the league with pre-snap motion on 66% of their passes, followed by the Patriots (65%), the Titans (63%), the Ravens (57%), and the Chiefs (53%). Two of those teams made the Super Bowl, the Ravens were the AFC’s number-one seed, the Titans made it to the AFC Championship game, and the Patriots ranked 11th in Football Outsiders’ Offensive DVOA metrics despite a receiver group that couldn’t bust a grape.

However, they used pre-snap motion at below average rates, yet saw much more improvement when passing with pre-snap motion. Look at the comparison vs the league average with the advantage gained by using pre-snap motion prior to passes.

Per Sharp’s metrics, teams had 0.2 more yards per attempt, a 3% success rate increase, and 0.02 more EPA per attempt. The Vikings, who used the 20th-most pre-snap motion on passing plays last season, saw a bump of 1.6 in yards per attempt, a 6% success rate bump, and an increase in EPA per attempt of 0.25. The Buccaneers, who could have desperately used anything to make Jameis Winston more efficient in 2019, used pre-snap motion on just 37% of their plays, one of the lowest rates in the league. The league average was 40%.

With Tom Brady now on board in Bruce Arians’ offense, expect a big uptick. Brade has utilized pre-snap motion for years to help discern coverage concepts, to isolate and remove specific defenders, and to give his receivers an advantage that their physical gifts don’t always present. One the Bucs have a new sense of pre-snap trickeration and Brady has Mike Evans and Chris Godwin to throw to… well, things could get interesting.

When talking about the specific schematic advantages of pre-snap motion, most people will point to the ability of the quarterback to read man versus zone coverage based on the motion defender. If the defender follows the motion receiver through the formation, it’s generally man. If the defender stays put and hands the responsibility through the formation, it’s generally zone.

But defenses are starting to show dummy man/zone looks, and as Orlovsky told me, that’s not the ultimate advantage for quarterbacks — or, for that matter, anybody on the offensive side of the ball.

“Yeah, I think we’re all past man vs. zone,” he told me. “We’re kind of beyond that. The big thing was creating leverage on certain players. That’s a big deal. You could get certain guys – when you line up in your formation, and you’re moving your personnel, you can get certain [defenders] to move where you want them. When you use motion, and you kind of know how your opponent will respond, you will call certain plays to be run at certain guys.

“We’re seeing more coaches understand that… motion doesn’t have to be married to man/zone. It could be to try and get your run game to be run at certain people. Or, to try and get your passing game directed at certain people, whether it’s man or zone. Because if that nickel defender doesn’t kick over to trips, you can have your slot receiver working on a safety. So now, just off motion, even if it’s against a zone defense, you have really created an advantage. That safety really wants to play the run more than he wants to play the pass. So, it’s really about trying to create advantages, whether it’s via leverage, or via fits in the run game. I think we’ve seen great growth on that in the NFL.”

Pre-snap motion also creates specific advanatges in the run game — it’s a big reason the Ravens had the NFL’s most schematically evil rushing attack in the NFL last season.

Ravens offensive coordinator Greg Roman has been brilliant at cooking up different kinds of motion concepts, which is the next level of this — when offensive minds continue to realize that it’s the complexity of motion that really puts defenses on a string — as the Ravens, 49ers, and Chiefs already have — the advantages grow in an exponential sense.

“I don’t necessarily care if an offense motions,” Orlovsky said, putting his defensive coordinator hat on. “But when they have different motions, that’s when I’ve got a problem. [Remember when] Chip Kelly was the greatest thing in the world because he played with tempo? Well, defenses caught up and started playing with tempo. Then, the great coaches, Sean McVay being one of them, they’ve got all different kinds of tempo. They’ve got stupid-fast tempo, then the fast tempo, then the ‘okay no-huddle’ tempo, then the slow tempo. That’s what screws with defenses. Because then, you don’t know. You’ve got to be ready all the time. That’s when you’re on your heels, and you’re guessing rather than dictating. Those offenses that are constantly changing the way they’re doing the motion – for defenses, you can no longer feel confident in what you’re doing. You are always going to be a step slow.”

In part 2 of the “Emotions in Motion” series, we’ll get into more specific examples of run and pass motion concepts that have taken over the NFL. In Part 3, we’ll talk about what defenses need to do to put a cap on these particular innovations.