Art of Play Calling

I like calling offense from the booth. I think it takes the "emotion out of it". Defense I think you def SEE more in the booth, but I always liked calling from the box.

I would by no means consider myself an offensive guru, but I have called plays at the sub-varsity level for 5 of the last 10 years.

I definitely put myself in the preparation camp. I have a call sheet that includes every play call I could ever consider calling during a game. I script the first 10 plays (although I'm considering cutting down on that a bit) and script the first 2-3 plays for 3rd & short (1-3), 3rd & medium (4-7), 3rd & long (8+), Red Zone (25-12), End Zone (11-6), Goal Line (5-1), and 2pt Conversions. I also have sections with the full play call for every version of every other play I could consider calling. I don't want to have to think up the play call in the moment during a game, so I plan out the calls.

I also use my gameplan to script practice throughout the week. I have an excel sheet that pulls plays from the Gameplan sheet into the daily practice plan sheets to make sure we run every play we may run during the game in practice at some point during the week.

Like others have said, I definitely prefer calling plays from the box, but as JV Head Coach, I don't really have the option to do that. I'm in the box for Varsity games, which I thoroughly enjoy, but I'm mostly just relaying information to our HC, who calls plays.

Called plays at multiple levels for a while. Never did it from the box. Always put a trusted guy up top though in varsity games to get a good look at what they were doing.

Definitely had more fun doing lower level play calling because the pressure was off and you could take advantage of mistakes more.

Started scripting last year midway through the season and it really helped the offense break out of its shell.

Early in my career we played a team whose head coach called the game from the booth. Reason was he did not feel like he had assistants that could help him enough from up there. I think he was the only coach up there.

The making of the sheet is far more VALUABLE than the sheet.

Have called from the field and the booth.

BOOTH PROS:
Better view
Quicker adjustments

CONS:
On field coaches removing headsets.
Can't change play as quickly.
Our headsets only have one channel. Hard to speak to offensive coaches while defense is on the field.

Game day play calling is an art. But it is derived from your preparation. If we are unsure of how they will play certain aspects I will script plays to see their adjustments vs our personnel groupings, formations, and motions. If we have a good idea then we just go for it.

Agreed. It is also there to look at in between series, or when you want to take a shot and have newer play so you want to make sure and get the verbiage right.

For me. It was about preparation. What plays pair best with what formations. As the game goes though. It becomes more of an art. What do you see and feel? What is working? What have they stopped and where does that make them weak?

How did those 7 years go?

What offense were you running?

Went to the playoffs 4 years. 3 conference championships, 1 quarterfinal appearance, 24 game regular season winning streak. Went 42-28 over that span with the highlights being a 10-1 in 2012 and a 11-1 in 13. In 13 we beat the 1A state Champs in the regular season, but we were 2A in the postseason by like 30 kids of enrollment. We had decent talent obviously, no one wins that often without it.

We ran variations of the I primarily. Got into some gun stuff my last couple years.

PS- all 28 losses over those 7 years were to teams that made it to the state playoffs. That was a stat I was always very proud of. We never lost to teams that we shouldn't have.

Another odd caveat to my 7 year tenure at that school- From 2011-2016 we played a team every year that either played in a semifinal game or a state championship game.

11- state runner up
12- semifinalist
13- 1 state champ, 1 semifinalist
14- state runner up
15- state champions
16- semifinalist

I always thought that was weird for a small 2A/1A school in rural Illinois.

I think I’m in the minority but I don’t enjoy play calling. I think it’s an important part of the process but it doesn’t interest me a whole lot. I do enjoy being a coordinator and have done well. The actual coordination of personnel, practice, evaluation, motivation, implementation it takes to get kids individually and aggregately better is rewarding to me. Play calling to me is not the most important or interesting part of it.

For me with play calling I had a sheet. We had a plan to stop their top plays out of their top formations. We had a few calls to dictate a change in what they were trying to do or who they were trying to target. Generally we had a plan B in there as well. Often this was solid and enough to compete. Sometimes it wasn’t and we just drew some shitt up in the dirt. That never worked but you can only get beat the same way so long before you let them kick you in the teeth instead of in the asss.

I loved calling from the field with at least one good "booth guy". Otherwise, I preferred the booth. I'd give each of the booth coaches tasks/things to look for when I was on the field. I'd be quite specific about what I needed from of them. Some guys were better at staying on task than others.

We'd script the first 3-4 play but it wasn't set in stone: if we gashed them big with Play #1, chances are we were going back to it, it's counter, or PA off of it the next time around.

I built pretty detailed call sheets and sometimes I followed it, sometimes I didn't. Putting it together was a big part of my game-planning process.

I'll be honest, my best play calls in my career either hit me out of no where-like it just popped into my head and I called it, were suggested by players, or were the play after the opposing coach yelled to his players "watch out for xyz". On the last one, if we didn't run it the play before, I found their kids generally didn't think there was a way we'd run it the next play.