Offensive Line Positions: Tackle, Guard and Center Explained
The five offensive line positions in the NFL, from left tackle to right tackle: what the center, guards and tackles each block, and what the rules forbid.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Updated NFL Positions & Schemes22 min read
- Positions on the line
- 5
- NFL jersey numbers
- 50-79
- Downfield limit before a pass (NFL)
- 1 yard
- Offensive holding
- 10 yards
Five players on every NFL offensive snap wear a number between 50 and 79, are forbidden to catch a forward pass, and will not appear in the box score unless they commit a foul. From the quarterback's left to his right they are the left tackle, the left guard, the center, the right guard and the right tackle. Those are the offensive line positions, and the names have not changed since the 19th century.
The short version of who does what: the center snaps the ball and organizes the blocking; the guards, on either side of him, handle the heaviest defenders in the tightest space and are the linemen most often sent running to lead a play; the tackles, on the outside, block the fastest pass rushers with nobody beside them to help. On a run all five try to move defenders out of a lane. On a pass all five retreat and form a wall around the quarterback. Everything below is detail on those two sentences, including what the Official Playing Rules of the National Football League let a lineman do and what they do not.
The five offensive line positions and what each does on a run and on a pass
| Position | Where he lines up | On a running play | On a passing play |
|---|---|---|---|
| Left tackle | Outside the left guard | Seals the edge or cuts off the back side | Blocks the edge rusher on the quarterback's blind side |
| Left guard | Between the left tackle and the center | Double-teams, pulls, climbs to linebackers | Holds the inside of the pocket against a defensive tackle |
| Center | Over the ball | Snaps, then blocks a nose tackle or reaches a linebacker | Snaps, then helps whichever guard needs it |
| Right guard | Between the center and the right tackle | Same menu as the left guard; often the puller on power plays | Holds the inside of the pocket |
| Right tackle | Outside the right guard | Frequently the lead blocker on strong-side runs | Blocks the edge rusher on the quarterback's front side |
The split between inside and outside is the first thing to understand. The three interior linemen play in a crowd. Defenders are a foot away at the snap, collisions happen at once, and the contest is about leverage and raw strength. The two tackles play in space. Their man may be lined up two or three yards outside them, coming at a sprint, and the contest is about footwork and reach.
A lineman's two jobs pull in opposite directions. Run blocking is aggressive: fire forward, get under the defender's pads, move him. Pass blocking is the reverse. The lineman gives ground on purpose, stays balanced, and lets the rusher come to him. A player who is very good at one is not always good at the other, and a line built entirely of maulers will struggle on third-and-long.
The center: the snap, the line calls and identifying the Mike
Nothing happens until the center moves the ball. He has to deliver it accurately, either into the hands of a quarterback crouched behind him or five yards or more through the air to one standing in the shotgun, and then block a man who has been watching his hand for the first twitch. He starts every play at a disadvantage and is expected to win anyway.
His larger job happens before the snap. The center is the one lineman who can see the whole defensive front evenly, and most offenses make him the line's dispatcher.
- Read the frontHe counts the defensive linemen, notes whether anyone is lined up directly over him and checks how many defenders are near the line.
- Declare the MikeHe or the quarterback points to one linebacker and calls out his number. The protection is counted from that man.
- Make the line callA one-word call tells the guards and tackles which way the line is sliding or who is working together on a double team.
- AdjustIf a safety walks down or the linebackers shift, the call changes, sometimes twice, before the ball moves.
- Snap and blockHe delivers the ball on the count and steps into his assignment with his free hand already up.
A general sequence. In many NFL offenses the quarterback makes or overrides the Mike declaration, and the terminology differs from team to team.
Why "52 is the Mike" matters
The declaration is not a guess about who plays middle linebacker. It is an accounting device. A pass protection assigns the five linemen to the four down linemen plus one more defender, and "the Mike" is the name for that fifth man. Whoever is declared, the line is responsible for him. Any rusher beyond the ones the line has claimed belongs to the running back, or to the quarterback, who has to throw before that rusher arrives.
Point to the wrong linebacker and the count is off by one. The usual result is a defender running at the quarterback with nobody assigned to stop him. Who has the final word differs by team: some offenses leave it to the center, and many give it to the quarterback, whose side of that conversation is described in our guide to what a quarterback does before the snap.
The guards: pulling, trapping and anchoring the middle of the pocket
Guards do the least glamorous work in a group that has none. They are also the linemen who move the most.
On a pull, a guard takes a step back from the line at the snap, turns, and runs parallel to it behind the center to block a defender on the other side of the formation. Power, counter and many sweep plays are built around a pulling guard arriving at the hole a half-step before the running back does. On a trap, the offense leaves a defensive lineman unblocked on purpose; he charges upfield untouched, and the pulling guard hits him from the side. Each of those plays has its own section in our guide to power, counter, trap and the other running plays.
Pulling asks for an unusual athlete. He has to weigh more than 300 pounds, get out of a three-point stance backward, run 10 yards sideways through traffic and hit a moving linebacker squarely. Guards who can do it well are why some offenses run the ball better than their talent elsewhere would suggest.
When they are not pulling, guards work with the center. Two of the three interior linemen double-team a defensive tackle, drive him backward, and then one slides off to block a linebacker. Against a 330-pound nose tackle this is the only way to get movement at all.
The anchor
In pass protection the guard's assignment is simple to state. Do not get pushed backward.
A quarterback can escape pressure from the outside by stepping forward into the pocket. He cannot step forward if a defensive tackle has driven a guard into his lap. Pressure up the middle is also the shortest route to the passer, and it arrives in his line of sight, which forces hurried throws even when it does not produce a sack. The interior rushers who create it, and the alignments they use, are described in our guide to defensive tackles, ends and nose tackles.
"Anchoring" is the skill of absorbing a bull rush: sinking the hips, getting the feet under the body, and stopping a charging man's momentum within a yard or two. The rise of dominant interior pass rushers over the last decade, Aaron Donald foremost among them, pushed teams to value guards who can do this far more than they once did.
The tackles: the pass set, the kick slide and blocking alone in space
Watch a tackle on a passing down. At the snap he does not go forward. He goes backward and outward on a diagonal, pushing off his inside foot and sliding his outside foot back, again and again, staying square to the line of scrimmage and keeping his weight centered. That retreat is the kick slide, and the whole movement is called his pass set.
The aim is to reach a spot before the rusher does. An edge rusher is trying to run an arc around the tackle to the quarterback, who is standing seven or eight yards behind the line. The tackle has to get enough depth and width to cut that arc off, then strike with his hands and steer the rusher past the pocket. If he sets too shallow, the rusher runs around him. If he oversets to the outside, the rusher plants and comes back underneath. Bail out too far and a bull rush catches him with his weight on his heels and walks him into the quarterback.
He is solving all of that against the best athletes on the defense. The players lined up across from tackles combine size and speed in a way few others in the sport do, and our guide to what an edge rusher is covers their side of the matchup. The tackle usually has no help. The guard next to him is occupied, the tight end may have released into a route, and the phrase coaches use for the situation is "on an island."
In the running game tackles are the edge of the wall. On a play run outside them they have to reach a defender lined up on their outside shoulder and pin him in. On a play run inside they turn their man out and widen the lane. On plays going away from them they cut off backside pursuit, an unglamorous block that decides whether a four-yard gain becomes 14.
The blind side: why left tackle became the premium spot, and how right tackle caught up
A right-handed quarterback throws with his left shoulder pointed downfield. As he sets up, his chest faces the right sideline and his back is to the left. A rusher coming around the left tackle is behind him.
That is the blind side. A quarterback can see a rusher from his right and can slide away or get rid of the ball. He cannot react to one he never sees, so hits from the blind side tend to be the ones that cause fumbles and injuries. Defensive coordinators understood this early and lined up their best pass rusher on that side.
The player most associated with it is Lawrence Taylor, the New York Giants outside linebacker who entered the league in 1981 and whose speed off the edge forced offenses to rethink who played left tackle. On November 18, 1985, in a Monday night game at RFK Stadium, a sack involving Taylor ended the career of Washington quarterback Joe Theismann. Michael Lewis opened his 2006 book "The Blind Side" with that play and used it to explain why left tackles had become among the highest-paid players on any roster.
For about two decades the positions were valued very differently. The left tackle was the pass protector, drafted early and paid accordingly. The right tackle was a run blocker who could be bigger and slower.
Why the gap closed
That hierarchy has mostly broken down. Several things did it.
- Defenses stopped keeping their best rusher on one side. Many of the most productive edge rushers of recent years have lined up predominantly over the right tackle, and others move from snap to snap looking for the weaker blocker.
- Offenses throw far more often than they did in 1985, so the right tackle is pass blocking on most of his snaps too.
- Quarterbacks get the ball out faster and work from the shotgun, where they can see more of the rush.
- For a left-handed quarterback the blind side is the right side, and the right tackle has the job that the name was coined for.
The honest summary is that a weak tackle on either side now gets found within a quarter. Teams still tend to put the better pass protector on the left when they have a choice. They no longer treat the right side as a place to hide a limited player.
Run blocking in five words: drive, down, reach, combo and pull
Running plays have hundreds of names. The blocks inside them come from a short list, and an announcer who says a lineman "got a great reach" is using one of five terms.
| Block | What the lineman does | Who throws it most |
|---|---|---|
| Drive | Fires straight ahead and moves the man in front of him backward | Any of the five, on inside runs |
| Down | Steps toward the center and blocks the first defender to the inside, using the angle | Tackles and guards on the play side of power and counter |
| Reach | Steps laterally to get his head outside a defender who is already aligned outside him | Tackles and centers on outside zone |
| Combo | Two adjacent linemen double-team one defender, then one leaves for a linebacker | Center with a guard, or guard with a tackle |
| Pull | Leaves his spot, runs behind the line and blocks a defender somewhere else | Guards most often; tackles and centers in some schemes |
Offenses combine these in two broad ways. Gap schemes such as power and counter use down blocks on the play side, which give the blockers good angles, and bring a puller from the back side to supply an extra man at the hole. Zone schemes have all five linemen step in the same direction and block whoever shows up in their area, with combination blocks sorting out the defensive linemen and linebackers on the fly. Why zone blocking spread through the league, and what it asks of a lineman's feet, is the subject of our explainer on the zone blocking scheme.
The reach is the hardest of the five. The defender is already where the lineman needs to be, and the lineman has to beat him there laterally from a stance, without holding. On outside zone the center may have to reach a nose tackle who is shaded to the play side, a block that looks impossible on a diagram and is the reason quick, undersized centers keep finding jobs.
The combo is the most important. A double team that moves a defensive tackle two yards off the ball and still gets a blocker onto the linebacker is the difference between a running game and a collection of two-yard gains. It depends on the two linemen reading the same linebacker and agreeing, without speaking, on who leaves.
Pass protection: man, slide and half-slide schemes and the shape of the pocket
The goal of pass protection is a pocket: a rough horseshoe of blockers with the quarterback standing in the open end. The tackles form the sides by pushing edge rushers wide and deep. The interior three form the front by holding their ground. A good pocket has a firm middle and soft edges, so the quarterback can step up into it.
How the five linemen are assigned to rushers is the scheme.
| Scheme | How the line is assigned | What it is good at | Where it is exposed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Man, often called "big on big" | Each lineman takes a specific defensive lineman; the back has a linebacker | Keeps linemen on linemen, and backs off the biggest rushers | Stunts and twists, where the assigned man goes somewhere unexpected |
| Full slide | All five step the same direction and block the gap to that side | Simple, hard to confuse with movement | Leaves the edge rusher on the side away from the slide for a back or tight end |
| Half slide | One side of the line slides as a zone and the other side blocks man | Handles most four-man rushes and many blitzes | Depends on the center setting the slide the correct way |
| Maximum protection | A back and a tight end stay in, giving seven blockers | Time for deep routes | Only three receivers are out in the pattern |
Half slide is the workhorse in the NFL. The center's Mike declaration and line call set which side slides and which side is in man, and the running back is given a rusher to watch on the man side.
Who has the blitzer
Five linemen and one back can block six. When the defense sends a seventh, or sends six from places the protection did not expect, somebody is free. The line does not solve that problem. The quarterback does, by throwing to a receiver who has adjusted his route to be open at once, known as throwing "hot."
So protection is a shared task. The linemen are responsible for the rushers the call assigned to them, the back for his, and the quarterback for the one nobody has. When a sack follows a blitz, the fault may lie with any of the three, and it is often not the lineman standing nearest the wreckage. The numbers game from the defense's side is laid out in our explainer on blitz packages.
Passing off stunts and twists: why an offensive line is judged as a unit
Defensive linemen do not always rush straight ahead. On a twist, two of them trade paths.
- The penetrator goesThe defensive tackle slants hard to the outside, into the offensive tackle's body, trying to occupy two blockers.
- The looper waitsThe defensive end takes one step upfield, then swings back inside behind the tackle toward the gap the guard has just vacated.
- The guard feels itThe guard, who started on the defensive tackle, recognizes his man leaving at an angle and stops following him.
- The switchThe offensive tackle takes over the slanting defensive tackle. The guard comes back inside and meets the looping end.
- The resultDone on time, both rushers are blocked. A half-second late and the looper has a free run up the middle.
Describes one common stunt, with the defensive tackle going first and the end looping inside. Other stunts reverse the order or involve linebackers.
No individual technique beats a well-timed stunt. Two linemen have to see the same thing in the same instant and trust each other to act on it, usually with a call no louder than a grunt. A guard who chases his original man leaves a hole. A tackle who does not take the exchange leaves his guard blocking two people.
This is why coaches talk about continuity more than about talent. Five linemen who have played 20 games together have seen each stunt many times and have settled who says what. A more gifted group assembled in September will get sacked on plays the first group handles without thinking.
And it is why grading one lineman in isolation is so unreliable. A guard who looks beaten may have been left alone by a tackle who missed a switch. The line gives up a sack or it does not, and the fairest way to judge it is the way defenses attack it, as five players who succeed or fail together.
What offensive linemen may not do under NFL rules
The restrictions on linemen are what define the position. Take them away and a tackle is just a large tight end.
The numbers. In the NFL, offensive linemen wear 50 through 79. A player wearing one of those numbers is presumed ineligible to catch a forward pass on every snap. The league has sorted numbers by position since 1973, and although the ranges for other positions were widened in 2021, the linemen's range stayed at 50 through 79, the block officials use to tell at a glance who is ineligible.
No catching a forward pass. An ineligible player who is the first to touch a forward pass has committed illegal touching, a five-yard penalty. Once a defender or an eligible receiver has touched the ball, anyone may catch it, which is how a guard occasionally ends up with a reception on a tipped pass.
No going downfield on a pass. On a play where a forward pass crosses the line of scrimmage, an NFL lineman may not be more than one yard beyond the line before the ball is thrown. The college rulebook allows a lineman more room than that before the pass, which is a large part of why run-pass option plays look more aggressive on Saturdays. The foul, its exceptions and how officials judge it are covered in our guide to the ineligible receiver downfield penalty. The restriction does not apply when the pass is caught behind the line, which is what makes a screen legal.
No holding, no early movement. A lineman may use open hands inside the defender's frame; he may not grab and restrict him. He may not flinch after he is set. Why holding is called on some plays and not on others that look identical is taken up in our explainer on the holding penalty.
The chop block, in which one lineman hits a defender low when a teammate is already engaged with him high, was banned outright by the NFL in 2016.
The tackle who reports as eligible
There is one way around the number. A player wearing 50 through 79 may tell the referee before a play that he is reporting as an eligible receiver. The referee announces it to the defense, and the player must then line up in an eligible position: on the end of the line or in the backfield.
It produces some of the game's stranger highlights. On October 23, 2000, New York Jets tackle Jumbo Elliott caught a three-yard touchdown pass from Vinny Testaverde in the final minute of regulation to tie a Monday night game the Jets had trailed 30-7, and they beat Miami in overtime.
It also produces arguments. On December 30, 2023, the Detroit Lions scored an apparent go-ahead two-point conversion at Dallas on a pass to tackle Taylor Decker. The officials ruled that a different lineman, Dan Skipper, was the one who had reported, which made Decker an ineligible receiver, and the conversion was wiped out by penalty. Detroit lost 20-19. The players involved disputed the officials' account. The mechanism is simple; the communication, in a loud stadium with three linemen approaching the referee at once, is not.
Build by position: long-armed tackles, squat guards and what teams measure
All five are enormous. Most NFL starters weigh somewhere above 300 pounds. Within that, the positions favor different shapes.
Tackles are the tallest, commonly 6-foot-5 or more, and the measurement scouts fix on is arm length. A tackle wins by making first contact, getting his hands on the rusher's chest before the rusher can get into his. An extra inch of reach is an extra inch of the arc the rusher has to run. Thirty-four inches is the figure most often quoted as the ideal for a tackle, with 33 treated by many teams as a floor. These are conventions and teams break them for a player they like.
Guards are built lower and wider. Height is of less use in a space where the defender is already touching you, and the lower man usually wins a leverage fight. A college tackle whose arms measure short is routinely projected to guard for this reason. Zack Martin played left tackle at Notre Dame, was drafted by Dallas in 2014 and spent his career as one of the best guards in the league.
Centers are typically the lightest of the five. They need the quickness to snap and step in one motion and the short-area agility to reach defenders shaded to either side. What teams look for most is hard to measure with a tape.
Height, weight, arm length and hand size are all recorded each winter at the scouting combine, along with the timed drills.
One caution: measurables predict where a player lines up better than they predict whether he will be any good. Balance, hand placement and the ability to recover from a bad first step are what keep linemen in the league, and none of them shows up in a spreadsheet.
The sixth lineman and the swing tackle
A team has five starters and cannot dress a backup for each. Game-day rosters force a compromise.
- 5Linemen who start
- 8Linemen a club must dress to use the 48th spot
- 48Active players allowed with eight linemen
- 47Active players allowed with fewer
From the 2020 NFL-NFLPA collective bargaining agreement. A club may dress a 48th player only if at least eight of its active players are offensive linemen.
Before that agreement most teams dressed seven linemen, which meant two injuries in a game left nobody. The eighth spot eased that. It did not end the arithmetic: three reserves have to cover five positions.
So backups are chosen for versatility. The swing tackle is the reserve who can play either left or right tackle and is the first man in if a starter on either edge goes down. The interior equivalent is a backup who can play both guard spots and snap the ball at center. A lineman who can only play one position has to be a starter to be worth a game-day uniform.
The sixth lineman is a different idea. In short-yardage and goal-line situations, an offense may bring on an extra tackle in place of a tight end or receiver. This is the jumbo package. He reports as eligible, because he is lining up where a tight end would, and the referee announces him. Almost always he is there to block: a 320-pound man on the end of the line in place of a 250-pound one. Now and then he is the target, which is where the plays in the previous section come from.
A lineman who has reported as eligible cannot simply return to an ineligible spot on the next snap. Under the NFL rule he normally has to come out of the game for at least a play before he lines up as an ordinary lineman again. The rule exists to stop offenses from disguising who is eligible by shuffling the same man back and forth. The players a jumbo package replaces are covered in our guide to what a tight end does.
Where the names tackle, guard and center came from
All three names predate the forward pass, and two of them describe a job the players no longer do.
American football grew out of rugby in the 1870s. In 1880 Walter Camp persuaded the college rules convention to replace the rugby scrum with a line of scrimmage, with one team in undisputed possession and a player putting the ball in play backward. That player stood in the middle of the line and was first called the snapper-back. He originally heeled the ball back with his foot. The hand snap came later, and with it the name center, which described nothing but where he stood.
The players on either side of him were the guards. The usual explanation is that they guarded the center, who was exposed while he handled the ball.
The tackles, by the usual account, are named for defense. Until the middle of the 20th century the same eleven men played both ways, and the players at that spot on the line were positioned to make a large share of the tackles when the other team had the ball. The name stuck to the position on offense too, where a tackle has not been allowed to tackle anyone for well over a century.
Two rule changes fixed the line in its present form. In 1910 the college rules required seven men on the line of scrimmage, ending the formations in which guards and tackles lined up in the backfield to get a running start at the defense. And free substitution, made permanent by the NFL in 1950 and settled in the college game in the mid-1960s, allowed players to specialize on one side of the ball. Chuck Bednarik, who played center and linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles through the 1960 championship game, is remembered as the last of the full-time two-way players.
After that, an offensive tackle only blocked. The name stayed anyway. The rest of our coverage of the sport, from rules to tactics, is gathered on the American football hub.