So for a while I've been planning to chart the Jets offensive and defensive pre-snap formations this year and post a summary each week. I don't know of any site other than perhaps Football Outsiders that does this sort of thing and makes their data available. Unfortunately, the FO data is not free and I also don't really care for the style that they use, so I decided I'd just start doing it myself and see how I can develop a technique and maybe grow this into something bigger.

Anyway, this idea started with a charting project I was working on this summer to chart the 2014 Jets defense. I got thru most of the season (eleven and a half games), saw enuff to realize that we had indeed ran a lot more 4-3 than 3-4 base defense and then kind of lost steam. The preseason started and I obviously got distracted by the shiny new football games. Maybe I'll get back to that at some point and maybe I won't. If anybody is interested I wouldn't mind working together to go back and complete it in a more thoro fashion at some point.

That's neither here nor there now tho - this season just started and altho I've been busier than usual this week, I found time enuff to chart the pre-snap alignments of every player on every offensive play. I hope to do this each week of the season for both the offense and defense, hopefully earlier in the week than this as well. I will try to get to the defense before Monday's game, but figured I should start by posting what I've got. Since I haven't really come up with a good way to summarize the data, I am just going to dump my table below for now and welcome any suggestions. My hope is that some of the enterprising GGN members around here will find the data interesting enuff to play around with and come up with something of their own to share. And of course I will welcome any suggestions to improve what I've done.

First a little explanation on the notation since I realize it won't be all that obvious what I've done. Here's an illustrated key for how I labeled each position on the field.

The vertical line on the right represents the numbers and the short horizontal lines in the middle and left side represent the hashes - just to give a little perspective to my rather crude drawing. QB (quarterback), FB (fullback) and TB (tailback) should all be self explanatory. The lowercase "r" I used to indicate an alignment to the right side of the formation (actually in the table below it's "lt" and "rt" added to the positional label but crude as the drawing is I have already become fond of it and don't feel like adding that kind of detail - I think you all can get it). The "qFB" alignment is almost always from when you see a back go into motion and settle between the guard and tackle as a lead blocker - in practice not much different from the H-back position but does give a good indication of whether the player was in motion at the snap. Speaking of the H-back, I made a distinction between H-back (HB) and Wingback (WB) - the H-back is off the line but lines up next to the tackle's shoulder while the Wingback lines up next to the tight end's shoulder. I sometimes also used the Wingback slot for a more of a slot receiver when the tight end was absent. Then there's the FE (Flexed End) and the hFL (h-Flanker) - the slot receiver positions. Out wide, the SE (Split End) and the wFL (w-Flanker) - the two wide receiver positions. Some of these positions especially out in space are more vague than others but this should give you a good idea of what I was thinking of.

Just a note or two before I dump the table. The most common formation was a single-back, three-wide set with Marshall and Owusu out wide and Decker in the slot. This personnel was used with either a tight end or an h-back, but more often it was the h-back and most of the time that was simply Cumberland or Kellen Davis. Both those tight ends saw time in the Y position as you will see but their primary role was the one Jace Amaro was apparently going to hold down. One other thing of note is that Marshall spent his time almost exclusively on the outside, playing nearly every snap, while Decker spent the majority of his time in the slot. Nearly all these formations seemed to have a balanced run/pass execution which I did not take note of in my table but perhaps should in the future. One thing I would definitely like to include for future weeks is some statistical breakdowns - just have to think how I will do this and what categories to use.

So here below is my spreadsheet for all 61 offensive plays from last Sunday's matchup with the Browns, including the final kneel down at the end of the game. It's kind of a wide table so I suggest copying it over to a spreadsheet program of your choosing if you want to play around with it or just want to get a good look at it. The field collumn is just to indicate which side was the wide-side of the field - "L" for left and "R" for right (as in the drawing above) and "C" for when the snap was centered. I also included a "Notes" collumn at the end which mainly consists of noting any pre-snap motion by a back - it's kind of inconsistent language but I figure it's not that important. Anything else confusing feel free to ask and I'll be happy to explain what I did. And of course suggestions are welcome as well.

Also, feel free to throw any suggestions on how I should label the positions for the defensive side. I've got a pretty good idea of how I want to do it, but would appreciate any input. Defensive formations are in general a lot less structured so I might get a bit creative with it.