Question About Motioning TE on Running Plays

There’s a million reasons that might explain it.


As someone above said, they might be doing it to see whether a defender comes with him - which can be used to gauge whether they’re in man-to-man versus zone, or even more generally just to see what “rules” the defense is using on that play (which can give them a sense of what to expect). In keeping with that, it could be that we’re not necessarily even set to definitively run the ball until after we see what that defender does.


It also may be that the run is going to the opposite side, and we think having the TE to seal the edge will help us more than bringing the extra guy will hurt us (since in this case he’d have to have a pretty long pursuit in order to make a play).


Even if we’re not running away from that side, it could just be that we think the TE gives a better boost to our blocking than the extra guy gives to their run fit.


It could also be nothing at all to do with that particular play - but rather an attempt to establish a tendency that we can later break to create a mismatch/advantage on some play later on.



Etc etc etc