Sharing thoughts and insight on football, leadership, and the game of life
Saturday, August 5, 2023
Call The Touchdown Play
There are two things every man thinks he can do. Every man thinks he can run the BBQ grill, and every man thinks he can call offensive plays. Most people don't understand the preparation that offensive coordinators put into calling plays. They think its like Madden, where you click a button and the play is executed perfectly. Most people don't understand what goes into installing and building an offense, or the work that goes into preparation. Everyone wants to call the touchdown play, and hopefully I can give you some insight today that will help you all more touchdowns.
What I want to help you with today is being more efficient with your game planning, and ultimately, using your preparation to call more explosive plays. A lot of coaches I talk to and work with are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data that is available, and they get overwhelmed. That can be a difficult struggle when you are trying to prepare a game plan. There is so much data, that it becomes difficult to know what is important.
I talk to coaches who love my game planning resource. They love how it helped them to be more organized, but they sometimes struggle with the call sheet. They don't know what to put in the call sheet, or how to manage it during a game. That struggle comes from not having easily accessible data that you can easily understand. Data always tells a story, but there are times I felt I was illiterate.
A big part of great play calls is about having great data. I am going to make a much better play call if I know what the defense is going to do. If I know when they are going to bring pressure, I am going to make a better play call. If I know what coverage they are going to play on a particular down and distance, I will give us a better chance of calling the "touchdown play."
For several years I spent hours on end putting together excel spread sheets and trying to manipulate the spreadsheets to determine what a defense is going to do. In 2018 I ran into Danny Davis, who was a field artillery officer. He was taking data and analytics used in the military to make strategic decisions, and working on applying that to football. We got hooked up with him, and it revolutionized what we did. I want to show you how it saved us hours on the weekends, while giving us actionable data that helped us become more explosive.
The data we got from Danny gave me a very clear picture of what we were going to see from our opponent. We were able to know what front they were going to be in, what pressure they were bringing, where they were bringing it from, and what coverage they were playing behind it. It helped us call more touchdown plays, without having to spend hours putting the data together.
He built two dashboards for offensive coordinators that helped me to desegregate the data in a way that it made sense. It made it easier to understand what the data meant, and more importantly, gave us a much clearer picture of what the defense was going to do. No longer did I need to filter, sort, use VLookup, or any other excel function. I wanted to share this with you to help you to be a better play caller this season. If you want to schedule a demo with Danny, Click Here
Before I fill out my call sheet, we need to enter the data into our video program. We are going to enter all of the typical data, Down, Distance, Hash, Yd Line, Play Type, Result, Gain Loss, etc. We need that data to be able to build tendencies. The next part of labeling is we are going to add the formation, motion, and play name for every play run against the defense we are scouting. The reason we do this is we want to be able to look at what defense they played against each formation.
Once we label those three columns, we are then going to label the defensive information. We create some custom columns to get the data we need. We label the Front, Stunt, Blitz, Coverage, and then # of Blitzers. We then add some blitz direction data. To/Away is to the back or away from the back. Strong/Weak is strong or weak. Field/Boundary, is a blitz from the field or boundary. Those columns only get labeled if they blitz a second level player.
We divide and conquer to input the data, and we try to do at least three games. We want at least 180 plays if possible. The bigger the sample size, the more reliable the data becomes. Once we enter the data, we export the data to an excel spreadsheet from our video program and upload it into Recon. Once the data is in Recon, the magic happens.
This is what the Blitz Dashboard looks like, giving us a complete picture of the defense. This was from an opponent that we had broken down four games on. On the left we can see how many times they were in each field zone and what hash they were on, and we can see how many times they faced each down and distance situation. In the middle, we see their coverage and stunt percentages. On the right we see the number of times they brought 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 rushers. On the bottom right shows where the pressure came from. They are an odd front team who bases out of 1 high.
The overall picture is nice, but the real benefit comes when we start to break the data down further. When I click on 1st and 8+, the data populates only showing the first and 8+ calls. Vs. an odd front team we don't count a 4 man pressure as a blitz, unless they drop a defensive lineman. We count 5 or more as a blitz.
This is what we are going to put on our 1st and 10 section of the call sheet. On 1st and 10, our opponent plays cover 3 and cover 4. They play man coverage 23% of the time. They bring pressure from the field. This helps me to know which way to set our protection. I know where the extra player is going to come from in both pass protection and in the run game. This helps us to be able to script situations in practice. I can then enter their Blitz Percentages and Man Cover Percentages on the 1st and 10 section of the call sheet. Knowing that they play zone over 75% of the time helps me to know that I need to script more zone beaters than man beaters.
Above is a sample of the call sheet as we begin to fill it in. Because I know what the defense is most likely going to do on 1st and 10, I am able to script calls that we have a high probability of success. As you can see, I took the data off the Recon Dashboard and entered the blitz % and man % for each Down and Distance.
Let's look at 3rd down and 8+. I simply click the 3rd and 8+ button to see their blitz percentages. They had 19 total plays in 3rd and long situations. They brought 5 or more 12 times. They played man coverage 68% of the time.
Looking further, I see that on 3rd and 8+ they bring pressure from the boundary. This is different than their 1st and 2nd down tendency. This tells us we need to set our protections to account for boundary pressure on 3rd and 8+, and I need to call more man beaters. Also, we will look at incorporating a screen or two into our 3rd and long script. We will want to attack the boundary with our screen, as that is where the pressure tends to come from.
Knowing the tendencies of the defense helps us to know with a high probability of what the defense is going to do, which helps us to be able script calls that will be successful. As you can see, we first entered the blitz and man percentages, then started building our script based on hash.
We go through this process looking at down and distance tendencies to fill out our situational scripts. I am going to highlight anything that is a must call.
In addition to looking at down and distance tendencies, we can look at field zone tendencies. What does the defense do when they have you backed up? What do they do in the red zone? Below shows this opponent when they have the offense backed up. The left side shows all backed up plays. Then I clicked on the 5 man pressures, and it showed me they brought those on 3rd down (pic on right).
They play zone and bring 3 or 4 on 1st and 2nd down. On 3rd down, they bring pressure, and the pressure comes from the field. Again, this helps us to build our call sheet for Coming Out situations. We aren't guessing what to call. We know what to call based on their tendencies. Below is what our backed up calls looked like.
The situation dashboard is valuable for us to be able to build our call sheet based on tendencies.
The next dashboard Recon built gave us frequencies. It showed us all of the formations they faced and how many times they faced those formations, as well as every defensive call, from most called to least called. It also showed us the coverages they played based on the number of blitzers. This greatly helped us to understand what they were going to call most frequently.
This gives us a clear picture of what they are comfortable facing, and what calls they make most. This serves a couple of valuable purposes. First, this helps us to determine what we defensive calls we need to script for our scout team in Inside Run, 7-on-7, and Team. We don't need to script every defensive look. We want to script the defensive calls we are most probable to see. We could then break this data down further.
If I click on a formation, the defensive call list will populate, showing us what they run against the selected formation. The picture below shows screenshots of their defense against 2x1, 2x2, and 3x1.
We can see what they call against certain formations. I can see what they call against each formation. We can then filter this further by down and distance if we like. We can click on field zone as well. We can also click on the formation and then the # of blitzers to see which pressures they brought. We now could use this data to prepare our game plan for the best calls from each formation. This is an example of how we use this information on our call sheet for our best plays from Trips.
We were able to script our trips calls based on what we could predict the defense was going to do. The defensive calls by formation also helped us greatly when we script our inside run, pass hull, and team. Instead of drawing cards and guessing, we can run cards for what the defense is most probable to run.
This is an example of our inside run script for this week on Monday. We are going to do what we call BOLD the first play we run from each formation. This means we are going to run it 3 times in a row with fast tempo. This is going to be run against the defense they play most frequently to that formation. This gives us more reps of what we are going to run, against what we expect the defense will show most against that formation.
We use this same data from Recon for our team and pass hull scripts. We are able to practice against what we will actually see. We won't waste time trying to prepare for everything. We are going to prepare only what we are going to run, against only what they most frequently do.
I could dive deeper into this, but we would be here for days. I had several questions about how we got the data for our call sheet, and what the thought process was to preparing that for a game. The biggest tip is to enter data into Hudl or whatever program you use, and find a way to keep the data manageable.
When we started using Recon, we saved ourselves hours on the weekend. Recon gave us the data we needed, without any fluff. We also used it for self scouting, as well as on the defensive side to prepare for our opponent's offense. All we did was take the data we were already entering, and upload it to Recon. From there it was just point and click.
We scored more points and became much more efficient in practice using Recon. Our explosive play percentage doubled because we knew what to call and when with a high probability of success. I still called things on feel at times, but what I felt was much better because of the data we had, and how easy it was to understand the data.
If you want to schedule a Demo with Danny from Recon, Click Here
He also has put together a data entry tool called Recon Assist that makes entering data go much quicker, and it auto populates into Recon. He can show you that as well.
Here is a YouTube Video I did walking through the Recon Dashboard and using it to fill in your call sheet.
I wish you the best as you prepare for the upcoming season. Please let me know if there is ever anything I can do.
And, If you are looking for specific resource you can use to help you be more effective with your game planning and more explosive on offense, check out my offensive game planning packet at https://sellfy.com/p/AndN/
It includes everything from a scouting report template, to practice plans, to a two-sided color call sheet, and more! Each of the nine documents are fully editable and customizable! Order today and start preparing for your first game right now! This helped us be able to be prepared to attack the defense and put more points on the board. It also helped us be much more efficient and targeted on the weekends when we were game planning.
When I was a defensive coordinator we adapted this to our defensive preparation!
Here is a link to the defensive game planning documents. It includes 12 fully editable and customizable documents. https://sellfy.com/p/AY1u/ These are what we used to post 6 shutouts when I was a defensive coordinator. Defensive coordinators at all levels of football are using this.
And finally, I put together a special teams resource. This has everything you need, included drill tape, practice tape, and game footage. It includes teaching presentations and scouting forms just for special teams! https://sellfy.com/p/tJwz/ This helped us to build dominating special teams!
I wanted these to be available at a very reasonable cost. These can help you to be more successful on the field and more efficient in the office!
A while back I got hooked up with CoachTube and put together three courses for offensive football coaches. I put together two courses on RPO's, and a course on Building An Elite System of Communication. All of these courses will help you to score more points!
All three of these courses are detailed, with everything you need to be more explosive and to score more points.
The course on communication gives you a detailed approach to your gameday communication. I give you a system and a process to improve the quality of conversations, leading to improved play calling on game day. This course has received outstanding reviews from coaches at all level of football. A coach with multiple state titles told me this course helped them to be much more efficient and explosive this season.
My two RPO courses take you through a systematic process of installing RPO's into your offensive system. RPO's put the defense in conflict, forcing them to defend all 53 yards of width and all 6 skill players every single play. I not only give you a system, but I teach you the methods to develop your own RPO concepts.
Books
I published a couple of iBooks that can help your program with X's and O's. The first is on Installing RPO's into any offense. Here is a link to the iBooks version: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1078061959. The ibooks version includes explanations, diagrams, and video clips on multiple RPO Concepts. It will give you a simple process for implementing them into your offense.
If you don't have an apple device, you can order the paperback version! It is available on Amazon!
I also wrote a book on Tempo. It will greatly help you build a multiple tempo system with simple communication that will allow your kids to play with confidence. It also had over an hour of video clips! You can order the ibooks version here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1075902270.
Over the last several months, I have stepped out of my comfort zone and wrote a new book about faith and purpose. The book is available as a paperback on Amazon, and as an eBook for the Kindle App. The cool thing about the Kindle app is that you can read the book on any device. I invite you to read it, and discover the power you receive when you make a decision to walk with the Lord. Here is a link to the book: Finding Faith
Since publishing the book, I have received numerous texts, calls, and emails, from people who are going through similar trials and tribulations. They were feeling many of the same things I was feeling. The found comfort in the book. They also found they had a desire to change and to live better. They wanted more joy.
I would invite you to read the book and discover the possibilities that God has planned for your life.
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