For any given play in American football, there could be 4-6 eligible receivers. How do the players know when the ball is being thrown to them?
Generally, they don’t - as you point out, every receiver has some chance of being the target. But on some plays they may recognize that they are more of a “primary” receiver or have a higher chance of the ball going to them.
This is especially the case in makeshift situations. For instance, in the 2014 season, (as was later published in a blog post or Twitter by Tony Romo,) the Cowboys had a play called “Tennessee” that was meant to be a simple, emergency play - just throw the ball to Jason Witten to get a first down (unless someone else, for some reason, really was a better target.) The play simply called for Witten to get downfield beyond the first-down marker and then either break right or left, depending on what the defender assigned to him was doing. This was the sort of play you call when the QB doesn’t have time to come up with a ‘proper’ play when he must adjust the play pre-snap but has mere seconds to do so and can’t think up something. (Romo was describing how he used it on a crucial 4th-and-6 against Detroit in a playoff game when the Lions showed him an unusual defensive formation that forced him to change the intended play but he had no time to think up something else, so he defaulted to “Tennessee”.)
On another famous instance, in the 1997 AFC Championship Game, John Elway (Broncos QB) told Shannon Sharpe in the huddle, “Get open.” Sharpe said in confusion, “That’s not a play.” Elway said, “It is now, get open.” So Sharpe ran about ten yards downfield, past the first-down marker, caught a throw from Elway, and the Broncos converted.
On some plays, a receiver may be nothing but a decoy, meant to draw defenders away. But even a “decoy” may actually wind up with the ball if he ends up wide open downfield and the quarterback sees no reason not to chuck the ball to him.
And a QB often cycles throughout targets of choice. Many times, a running back is the final backup option. The running back’s job is to block opposing defenders and provide protection for the QB, but at a certain point, say, 3-5 seconds after the snap, if the QB still hasn’t found a receiver to throw to, the running back is then expected to start running right, left, or downfield and become the QB’s target to throw a short dump-off pass to.
Lastly, it depends on individual matchups, too. If a receiver is being double-teamed or has a superglue opponent like Deion Sanders on him, he may recognize that it’s not all that likely that the QB will throw to him on that play. But if someone like Jerry Rice or Randy Moss finds themselves lined up against some rookie seventh-rounder cornerback one-on-one, they will be smelling blood in the water and they know their QB will, too.
For the most part, they know that they’re getting the ball thrown to them when the QB throws the ball to them. As @Velocity said, plays are complex and the eventual receiver is dependent on a number of factors. The defensive assignments give a clue to what may be favorable matchups, but those can shift as the play moves on. QBs often have a progression where they’ll go through their available receivers one-by-one until they find someone open or someone they can throw open. That progression may be interrupted by an edge rusher in their face so even if someone is open and the QB would like to throw to them, they never get the chance.
That’s why coaches will tell players to play until the whistle blows. You don’t take a play off because even if the probability is low that you’ll be the target, it’s never 0.
There is often a primary target in a passing play but the quarterback’s job is to find an open receiver and get the ball to him. Vince Lombardi used to say “If you put the ball in the air 3 things can happen and 2 of them are bad!”, so the quarterback’s job also is to avoid those bad things so if he throws at all it’s going to an open eligible receiver who may have no idea it’s him until the ball is coming in over his shoulder.
Just to clarify, it’d be “five to six” eligible receivers.
- The five interior linemen are never eligible receivers.
- Five other players are always eligible receivers: the two players who start the play at each end of the offense’s formation on the line of scrimmage (typically these are wide receivers or tight ends), and every player who starts the play in the backfield, except for the quarterback.
- However, if the quarterback starts the play not under center – that is, in a “shotgun” or “pistol” formation, where the center needs to snap the ball through the air to him – then the quarterback, too, is an eligible receiver for that play, even though he likely would be the one throwing the ball, rather than catching it.
Why would a receiver need to know? All they need to know “get open and you might get the ball.”
They need to know that the rest of the team is working to get them in particular open. There’s no knowing what will happen once the play starts, but they start out with a plan. The receivers are trying to end up a particular place the QB will be throwing to, maybe without even seeing them. Other receivers may be drawing defense in away from the intended receiver, they have to know that role. It’s not street ball where you just say “Everybody go deep!”.
How does a receiver act with the knowledge that he’s a tertiary receiver that differs from when he knows he’s the primary?
He may be free to find any open spot on the field instead of trying to reach a specific point on the field. He can make fake moves as if he is about to catch a ball to draw defenders away from the primary receiver. He may run as much as possible with no other purpose than to tire out the defense. He may be running slowly or moving in a particular manner in order to fool a defender on the next play or a play later in the game. Receivers are the natural prey of linebackers and knowing their primary goal is not a reception the receiver may take an opportunity to accidentally gain some revenge for a past hit.
Seems rather similar to his behavior if he is the primary.
They’re all receivers, it’s not going to change much. Getting the ball in the hands of a primary receiver in the manner intended is the top priority of a pass play. If that isn’t going to work then anything and everything else that doesn’t result in the loss of yards is next on the list.
The longer the QB holds the ball, the more likely the #3 receiver will be getting it. He may need to start thinking in terms of helping an under-pressure QB by working his way back toward him. If he knows he’s option 3, and it looks like the ball will be going to 1, he can also look to position himself in a good down position to block after the catch.
The best QB-receiver combos would both be reading the defense at the line of scrimmage, so the primary receiver will know with more certainty whether the ball is likely to come to him, and he can adjust his route to the coverage. And in those best pairs, the QB will also know how the receiver is going to adjust.
How does he do that? He’s not already planning to run the best route he can?
It’s not just “run the best route.” In modern NFL passing offenses, receivers are typically expected to potentially adjust the route they are going to run, prior to the snap, when they see what the defense’s coverage scheme is likely to be – this is based on how the defensive players line up against the offense, and how the defense reacts to any changes in the offensive formation, and how they react to a player going in motion prior to the snap.
Of course, the key is that both the receiver and the quarterback see the same thing, and make the same mental adjustment, so that they are both on the same page, and the quarterback knows which route is actually being run.
One version of this is the Option Route where the receiver will break either in or out depending on how the defense responds once the ball is snapped. That means the receiver and QB need to see the play the same way because the ball may be in the air before the receiver actually makes his cut.
And if the QB chooses another option or the play is disrupted, the receiver may have another assignment after his route is complete.
Let’s say a receiver runs at his cover guy, fakes a step outside then runs inside. And in 3 different situations, 3 different things happen:
-
The cover guy isn’t fooled and steps right with the receiver and sticks like glue.
-
The cover guy is fooled, reacts to the outside step, and the receiver is able to get separation as he runs ahead.
-
The cover guy is so startled that he trips himself up trying to recover to the surprise run inside and falls on his face, and the receiver runs completely uncovered.
You can probably expect that the route might be done a bit differently each time based on the circumstances, and that’s just based on the way that the route starts.
There’s only one real answer. It depends.
Some plays will have a designated receiver. He’s the only guy likely to get the ball and the play is 100% designed to get him the ball. If something goes sideways, the QB is instructed to throw the ball into the bleachers. These kinds of plays are not generally a standard part of an offensive scheme, but every coach has a handful of them in the playbook. They are created for very specific situations or to leverage special players.
On the other end of the spectrum, plays can have almost no preferred receiver. They are called in the huddle and the QB makes an assessment based on the alignment of the defense. Then the QB instructs a player to go into motion, changing the formation, hoping to get a different response from the defense. The QB changes his assessment, and the targets change again. Then the ball is snapped, and the defense reacts or blitzes, and the QB needs to adjust again. The ball is going to the player based on a series of cascading if-then logic trees. Usually, the receivers are making the same analysis and arriving at the same unspoken conclusions as the QB, so both the QB and receiver know who is getting the ball around the same time, usually about a second after the snap. But of course, that’s imperfect, and the QB might diverge from the scheme and throw to someone else for a hundred different reasons. In this case, it’s as much a surprise to the receiver as it is to the defense (which can be its own advantage).
There’s a hundred thousand shaded variations in between those two examples.
Also, a defensive offsides penalty greatly changes things. Since it’s a free play (literally nothing bad can happen to the offense from that moment on,) every receiver should streak deep downfield as far as they can and the QB should chuck it up deep, hoping for the biggest possible gain.
Since this is the Dope, I’ll point out that if you are a fan watching and cheering that nothing bad can happen to your team as the offense in this situation, this is when your QB is going to get hit hard and concussed by the pass rush.
(Especially if you’re a Dolphins fan.)