Three Keys to Eliminating Chaos on the Headsets

One of the biggest challenges for play callers is making a play call when you have chaos on the headsets. I am sure no one reading this has ever had this problem. 

Yes, I was being sarcastic. Everyone who has coached a down of football has had chaos on the headset. Football is an emotional game with a large group of people invested in the success of the team. 

How many times did the chaos on the headsets make it tougher to call a game? How much better would you be if you could eliminate chaos and have your coaches focused on their individual job during the game? It's hard to call the touchdown play when you have chaos on the headsets. 

I speak at several coaching clinics each year, and this is the most popular clinic topic I talk about. Every single coach who attends this session tells me this is the topic they took the most out of. 

I am going to give you three keys from my clinic talk to help you eliminate some of the chaos on the headset. 

1. Have Clearly Defined Roles
2. Have a Communication Plan
3. Have a Game Plan and Call Sheet

Have A Communication Plan

When I first became a coordinator, we had chaos on the headset. It was mayhem. If the play went well we all screamed and cheered. If a play went bad we all yelling about who screwed up. We had to get a play call in and we were still talking about the last play. This went on for an entire season. I complained to my head coach. He said, maybe you should tell guys what you want. What an innovative thought.

Too often, we assume everyone is going to know what you want to them to do. We think that everyone magically end up on the same page. No one will be on the same page if you haven't given them a plan. You have to be intentional in everything you do if you want to be elite. 

We evaluated the strengths of our staff. We then discussed this as a staff to make sure everyone was in the best place to ensure team success. This might mean you put a guy upstairs that has been on the field. It might mean you move a guy from the box to the field. 

Our plan was broken into three parts. 

1. Who is in the box and who is on the field?
2. What is each coach watching?
3. What is each coach saying?

I was our OC and QB coach. I had been on the field calling plays, but I moved to the box. Our OL coach stayed on the field. Our WR coach moved to the field from the box. Our RB coach was going to be on the field. We had a JV coach who would be with me in the box charting plays. 

We had specific things each coach was watching for. We had what we called our "batting order" for who would speak and what they would say after each play. This coach says this, then this coach says this, then this coach says this. We worked under the rule that less is more. 

We had a specific language we used. If one coach says we have an under front when we have a 1-5 technique to the tight end, but another coach calls that a field eagle, then we can't have elite communication. I put a simple terminology sheet together that would help me as a play caller understand what each coach is saying. 

We had a procedure for how we communicate between series. Our players and coaches knew where to go and what our process would look like. This helped us to be better at making adjustments and greatly improved our coach to player communication. You have to have a plan in place. 

We practiced our communication in the office before we ever put the headsets on for a game. We would pull up a quarter of a game and go through two or three series, practicing our communication. If the first time you ever put the headsets on is when your first game starts, you are setting yourselves up for failure. 

Have Cleary Defined Roles

If no one knows what they are supposed to do, how can they do what you need them to do, when you need them to do it? Every coordinator should define the roles of each of their coaches. You should define these roles on paper. Each coach should then be given these roles, in writing. You then should discuss what each coach's role is during the game.

Each coach had a role that defined exactly what they were supposed to be looking at during the game. Each coach had a specific thing they were supposed to say between plays and during plays. This eliminated any confusion. Our OL coach was watching the box. Our receiver coach was watching near side secondary. Our RB coach was watching the linebackers. The JV coach next to me was watching far side secondary and charting plays. As the OC I was watching the big picture. 

Because each coach knew their role, we eliminated much of the confusion. 

Have A Game Plan and Call Sheet

This was a big piece of reducing chaos and being more efficient with our communication. We built a game plan with each coach being involved in putting together part of the plan. Each coach was filling in certain areas of our call sheet. On gameday, each coach had a copy of the call sheet. We discussed the call sheet on Sunday and made sure every single coach understood the game plan.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we would have a live period that was mostly unscripted. We would put the headsets on and practice our communication. We would work through different situations, just like it was a game. This helped us find where we needed to make adjustments to our call sheet. We would almost never add anything to the call sheet, but we would take some things away.

This shows one area of our call sheet. We had the defensive blitz percentages and the percentages of man coverage they play in each situation. We then had a small menu of plays we liked. Every coach was on the same page and coach anticipate what the next call would be. If you don't have a call sheet and you don't want to create one from scratch, check out my Offensive Organizational Resource. 

Adjust this to Your Staff

Your plan has to fit your staff. When I was in the Bronx, we did not have a lot of coaches. We had to adjust the plan to fit the size of our staff. When I was in Texas, we had many more coaches, so we could break things up further. You have to determine what fits your staff and put a plan in place. 

If you have a chance to see this talk at a Glazier Clinic, come up and introduce yourself. If you haven't, I have put together an on-demand session on CoachTube on Building an Elite System of Gameday Communication. The price is also dropped for a limited time. You will have lifetime access to this session, and it includes some in-game downloadable! 

Coaches tell me this session on CoachTube helped them to greatly reduce chaos on the headsets and score more points! 

If you want to incorporate simple RPO concepts to get your skill guys more touches, I have two additional video courses on CoachTube. Installing Pre-Snap RPOs to Get Your Skill Guys More Touches While Protecting Your Runs and Designing and Installing Post Snap RPOs to Create Explosive Plays.  This will help you score more points while getting your dudes touches! If you want to save a few $$, here is a link to get all three videos at a huge discount! Coach Vint Bundle Deal

Earlier I mentioned our Call Sheet and gave you a link to our Offensive Game Planning Resource. This includes editable and customizable templates for you to use with your team to be more organized and score more points! 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!

Here are a couple of screen shots to show you what our call sheet looks like: 

This shows you a small portion of it. It is a fully editable, customizable two sided call sheet. It gives you the ability to better organize and be prepared on game day. It helped us to be better play callers on game day. There are eight other fully customizable documents! Some of the top high school programs in the country use this, as do several college programs!

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, templates, and scouting forms just for special teams! This helped us to build dominating special teams! 

Developing an Offensive Game Plan and Call Sheet: Less is More!

Earlier this year I was speaking at a clinic in Greenwich, Connecticut, when a coach asked me what the biggest issue is with ineffective game planning. The answer was easy. Numerous times I have tried to put too much into the game plan. I tried to run too many concepts from too many formations. We would often have over 100 different calls in our game plan. The problem with this is that we couldn't practice everything we were going to run in the game. We wasted a lot of time practicing concepts we wouldn't end up running. Many of you are probably nodding your head because you have done the same thing!

I decided to take an analytical approach. We had approximately 50 team reps each day, 25 inside run reps, 25 team on air reps, and 25 7-on-7 reps each day. If we had four days of practice, we would get 500 reps a week. These 500 reps were sacred. We had to make sure we used them wisely so we were prepared each week.

The first thing we did was cut down on the number of calls we had in our game plan. In a typical game we are going to run between 70 and 85 plays. We aren't going to run 85 different plays. We are going to repeat plays throughout the game. And often, we are going to find a call that works and repeat it over and over. Once we find a formation and concept that works, we often will call that concept several times.

As we began to build our game plan we started with a menu. Our menu consisted of 24 things we felt would be best on Friday night. When I talk about a menu, I am talking about the entire call. This is how we built our menu. As we watched film of our opponents, we answered a worksheet with 63 questions on it. The answers to these questions helped us to get a clear picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the defense. Below is a screen shot of the first 12 questions of this worksheet.

We examined four areas of the defense. First, we wanted to know how they were going to align. We looked at their alignments to find what formations would give us leverage, numbers, and green grass. Where could we find an alignment advantage?

Second, we examined their personnel. Who were their best players? Who were their worst players? Where could we find a matchup we could win? This is a vital part of game planning that helped us win several games. One season we were playing a team with a great defense. They shut our offense down in the first quarter. However, there was one matchup we knew we could win. Our X receiver was better than their corner. To stop the run they were putting their corner on an island. We scored three times in the first half, all on vertical routes to our X. We ran 35 plays in the first half for 220 yards. 170 of those yards came on 3 long touchdown passes to our X. 

Third, we wanted to know when they blitzed. When did they call 5 and 6 man pressures? This helped us to determine when we would call our screens. If a team blitzed 75% of the time we were 2nd and medium, we were going to call our screens on those downs. Below is a YouTube video I did talking about how we use data. 

Fourth, we wanted to know how they handled tempo. Did they huddle? How did they get their call in? What was their answer to offenses playing fast? A few years back we played a team that was much better than us physically. They were huge up front. The one weakness was that they couldn't adjust to tempo. They couldn't get lined up right if the offense played fast. We had no business beating them, but our tempo overwhelmed them. 

Once we analyze these four areas, we begin to build our menu. We want to major in 24 things each week. We then would have 12 things we would minor in. This gave us a total of 36 calls for a game. If we did a great job preparing, we would not have to deviate from this list. Below are two screenshots of showing our weekly menu. This is a simple excel worksheet we could adjust each week. 

Once we have our menu built, we begin to fill in our call sheet. Our call sheet is very unique in that it gives us specific call scripts based on situations we will face each game. What we did each season was analyzed how many times we faced each down and distance situation. We then built a script for each situation with a column for left hash, right hash, and middle hash. For each situation, we would enter the defense we were most likely going to face. This helped us to have a specific set of plays we felt would take advantage of the defense for each situation. The plays on the call sheet came directly from our menu. Many of these plays would be repeated throughout this call sheet. Below is a screen shot of our call sheet with situational scripts. 

The number of plays we had scripted for each situation was based on the number of times we would face that situation each game. We had would have more 2nd and medium calls than we would 2nd and short. By putting together these scripts on our call sheet, we were able to call plays faster on Friday Night. We were able to call better plays based on what the defense was doing against us. Each time we called a play I would make a red mark or a green mark during the game. The red mark meant the play was not positive. A green mark meant it was good. This gave us a point of reference as we went through the game. Typically I would go right down the script each time we faced that specific situation. 

On the other side of our call sheet we had sections designed to for additional important areas of our game plan. We had a section with calls designed to get our best athletes the ball in open space. We wanted to make sure we got our best athletes enough quality touches. We had calls based on each formation. This was similar to our play menu. We had another section with specific coverage beaters. We also had a script built for our last play based on field position. There were several other sections as well designed to help us make better calls in the heat of battle. 

Once our call sheet was built, we began to build our scripts for the week. We scripted everything we did. If a team we played brought a 5 man pressure 75% of the time on third and long, we made sure we ran a 5 man pressure during that situation in our team period of practice. Everything we did was tied to our preparation worksheet and the reports we ran on our opponents. I am not smart enough to call things from the hip, so our preparation was vital to our success on offense.

If you want to improve your preparation, I have made each of our game planning documents available for download. You can click the link here: Offensive Game Planning Documents. There are 9 documents included in this download. Each document is completely editable and customizable to your program. You can order them today and download them immediately. Here are the documents that are included:

You don't have to recreate the wheel! Everything you need is all ready to go for this season! For less than $15 you will be better prepared and more explosive on offense! Each document is already formatted, saving you hours of work! Simply type in your information and go to work! You will call better plays and score more points. These sheets will also make you look like a professional! 

I also have a packet for the defense available for download! These documents helped us post 6 shutouts in 10 games! Everything you need as a defensive coordinator is here for you to prepare to dominate your opponents! Defensive Game Planning Packet

As you build your gameplay, start with a 24 play menu. Remember, you want to be able to give everything you are going to run in the game enough quality reps in practice. You don't want to run a bunch of stuff in practice you may not run in a game! I hope you have gotten something from this article you can use!

A few months back 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 iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you can order the Amazon version for the Kindle. It has everything except the embedded video. You can order it here: http://www.amazon.com/Installing-Explosive-Concepts-Into-Offense-ebook/dp/B01B12YSCG/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

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.

Order the Amazon Kindle version here:

http://www.amazon.com/Using-Multiple-Tempos-Create-Explosive-ebook/dp/B01ATOL46A/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

 Last year 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! 

https://coachtube.com/users/coachvint

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. 

https://coachtube.com/users/coachvint