Anatomy of a Bomber Offensive Play Call
Andrew Coverdale, Offensive Coordinator
One aspect of the game of football that tends to provide a lot of intrigue for fans is the verbiage that coaches and players on both sides of the ball use to communicate their plans and intentions. Laden with numbers and code words rooted in everything from military terminology to animals to popular culture references, an offensive or defensive play call can at times seem like it needs its own Rosetta Stone.
The reality is that every team builds its system of communication in such a way as to be conversational and communicate efficiently and intuitively with its players under the significant strain of the highest levels of competition, not to mention the 40 second clock. At St. Xavier, we as an offensive staff created an entirely new system of terminology this past season, attempting to build a structure that was natural to learn and communicated a lot in the fewest words possible, words packed with obvious meaning to the learning. It
was a unique creation different from what the Bombers had used in the past or what I had used at Trinity or my other spots. Truthfully, and importantly, the players participated in its creation as well—it is a collaborative effort. The players, after all, are the ones that have to make use of it in competitive settings, so it makes sense that their fingerprints be on the building of the vocabulary.
Our play calls, when we huddle, at times can be lengthy, but our kids know which parts of the call speak to them (i.e. they know what to NOT listen to), and they allow us a lot of versatility and the capabilities of making adjustments and creating mismatches. Our quarterbacks rehearse the most effective ways to ‘spit them out,’ using pauses and emphasis so as to create clarity for the other 10 hearers.
Here is an example of what a Bomber offender might hear in the huddle:
“North – X Bump – Don left – Rip Baby Space”
Let’s break this down, element by element to give you some insight into our vocabulary:
The first thing you might notice is that there’s no ‘cadence’ articulated in this huddle call – no “on 1,” or “on 2,” etc. For us, we assume a ‘normal’ cadence unless we add an indicator before and after the call to indicate a different kind of cadence.
The next thing to notice is the actual core of the call from the standpoint of the six players not on the offensive line – which is the formation that we will end up with. In this case, the formation we will end up in is “Don Left.” ‘Don’ is a formation in the ‘D’ family – D family formations in our world put two receivers to the right, and two to the left. Typically, the Y and Z players align TOWARD the directional call, X and Z AWAY. So “Don Left” puts Y and Z to the left, H and X to the right. “Don” in particular has a pneumonic device that clues the players into further modification – the “ON” in “DON” tells the inside receivers to line up ON the line of scrimmage.
This is what a “Don Left” formation looks like:
We like to use a fair amount of pre-snap movement in our offense to gain information about the defense, put our opponent on the move, and create certain matchups. The two phrases in front of ‘Don left’ tell the players what sort of movement will be used to get us into our final ‘Don Left’ formation.
“North” is a term that tells our Tight End that he is to shift. This particular shift calls for him to start on the side opposite his final side, get the defense to identify him, and then sprint to his final alignment and reset. Because it is a shift, he has to be set for a full second before anything else can happen. These kids of shifts can be helpful for gaining angles in the running game, identifying where blitzes are, or are not coming from, and cause defenses to realign or rotate their coverage.
“X Bump” is a motion, as opposed to a shift. “Bump” tells the identified player (in this case the ‘X’ receiver) to align in the backfield (‘B’ – bump – backfield), wait for any shifts to be finished for a full second, and then motion to his final position. Because it is a motion, he can be moving at the snap of the ball, as long as it’s not forward.
“Rip” is the part of the call that speaks to the linemen and the running back. It is a protection call that indicates that the linemen will work gap protection to the right, man protection to the left, and the running back will check release off any linebackers that present themselves to the left, with the ‘man’ side protectors. It also allows the quarterback to know where he might have to throw ‘hot’ based on what he sees pre-snap.
The last two words speak to the receivers and quarterbacks, describing the routes that will be run. The first word speaks to the ‘frontside’ of a route (which is really a misnomer because we believe all five eligible receivers are alive in the quarterback’s thought process). Again, we try to use pneumonic devices to speed the learning process wherever we can.
In the case of this play call, we want to initially target a Corner route to our frontside. Since everyone knows “nobody puts BABY in a CORNER,” we call this 2-man route combination “Baby.” “Baby,” then, speaks to the two receivers to the field (H and X in this formation; it could be any pair of receivers depending on how we deployed the formation. Notice that each route has very specific ‘splits’ (distance from the offensive tackle and each other) that they must adhere to execute each route.
“Space,” then, is the part that now speaks to the backside receivers. It creates a second “act” or “rhythm” for the quarterback to work, should the initial ‘Baby’ combination not present itself. Matthew Rueve was tremendous as executing these kinds of backside progressions. A big teaching point for us is that backside receivers must give the quarterback eye contact so he can process quickly late in the play.
This gives you just a hint of what kinds of things our kids are communicating when you see them in the huddle at Ballaban Field next year. Last season, our kids and coaches did a great job of adapting to this new way of speaking, and we hope to make our verbiage even more efficient and intuitive in the coming season.
Andrew Coverdale, Offensive Coordinator