X's & 0's Play Suggestions From Players

We have 10 minutes of practice each week we call "the Lab" in which we tell the players we are going to try stuff out. As coaches it is a chance for the whole staff to get input on a play desgin and the players like to throw their ideas out too. Honestly a high majority of their ideas are too off the wall to really get used, but we have come up with some interesting stuff during this session from coaches. We once designed a shovel jet sweep/option look out of two back gun.

WR goes in jet motion, QB gets gun snap and shovels to the WR, who then optioned to the trailing back. Lead back helps seal the edge and we optioned off the OLB. It worked well when we used in a game, but I think the timing was dumb luck. We scrapped it because it took too much work to get the timing down.

I also have a funny story about players suggesting plays. We had a particularly bad game where we lost by about 25 points. We drove the ball well, but we fumbled 7 times. Now mind you the rest of the season combined we had fumbled 2 times, one being a snap, but in this game we fumbled 7 times. It was just one of those freaky games and it seemed we fumbled 4 times in the redzone. So we talked about it the next week and shored up are issues all week. When it came time for "the Lab" a player suggested we do the fumblerooski. I looked at him with a straight face and said "We tried that play seven times last week and it didn't work." To their credit the players started laughing.