The Formation Hit Chart

The Formation Hit Chart may be as old as the game of football itself.  Requiring just pencil and paper, Formation Hit Charts come in many variations. 

Many of today's coaches use something similar to one of the forms below.  In the first variation, a chart with 6 boxes is prepared for each formation. Each row of boxes includes identical formation illustrations, with one showing the Formation Strength to the Right and another showing Formation Strength to the Left.

The result is a template that, when completed, looks like this:. The red X's were added to emphasize the point that in this particular game, this particular team used the formation that is charted from only 2 of 6 possible formation/hash combinations. In this particular case, Twins was the second most used formation of the team.

Formation Hit Charts become more relevant when more than one game is charted. A simpler variation of the Formation Hit Chart is shown below. This one does not include the hash, and therefore can be completed more quickly - even during a game as it progresses.

The result is something like this :

Each form has its purpose.  Football scouting software can be used to generate tendency reports that reduce the time required to prepare formation hit charts like this.