What do you call on fourth and one in 11v11 tackle football?
Run it. In 11v11 you have five linemen and a legal double team, which makes a one-yard run the highest-percentage play in football by a distance no passing concept comes close to. The pass concepts below are what you call when the defense sells out to stop it, not what you call first.
Three answers, in the order to try them
- Start here, and mean it
Power
Start here, and mean it
Five linemen, a double team at the point of attack and a back falling forward. Conversion rates on this are not close to any throw you could design, and the only reason to do anything else is that the defense has sold out to stop it.
- If they load the box
Waggle
If they load the box
Nine defenders near the line means single coverage behind them and nobody deep. The run fake holds the linebackers for the half second it takes a receiver to get behind them, and this is the down where the fake is most convincing because the run is genuinely what you wanted.
- If you want the safe throw
Stick
If you want the safe throw
A receiver sitting at the marker with a route breaking away, thrown on rhythm. The same idea as the flag pages, with the crucial difference that here you are choosing it over a run rather than because a run is illegal.
What changes at this size
This is a running down, and the other pages are not
It is worth being blunt, because the rest of this section is about passing and this page is not. At eleven a side, fourth and one is converted by blocking: five linemen, a tight end, a double team at the point of attack and a back falling forward. Conversion rates on that are not close to any throw you could design. Everything below is therefore conditional on the defense doing something about it, which good defenses do. They walk a safety down, put nine men near the line and dare you to throw. That is the only circumstance in which these calls are correct. The reason the 5v5 and 7v7 pages look nothing like this one is not emphasis, it is rules: those formats forbid blocking entirely, so they have no running down at all and every fourth and one is a passing down by default.
When not to call it
Do not throw it because throwing is more interesting
This is the down where coaches talk themselves out of the highest-percentage play in football. If they have not loaded the box, hand it off.
If your line is being beaten
Power stops being the answer the moment the double team cannot move anybody. Watch the first one, and if it went nowhere, the play-action off it will not fool anybody either.
Take it to your team
Draw your plays in the free flag football play designer, collect them in the free playbook maker, and print play cards so every player knows them come Saturday.
Draw any of these in about a minute
Open the designer, change the routes, save it to your playbook.
Open the designerRelated questions
What do you call on fourth and one in 11v11 tackle football?
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Coach Ray Carroll
Coaches 5v5 flag football from kindergarten through 7th grade in San Mateo and San Carlos, California, and built RC Football to design, teach and print the plays his own teams run.