How many plays are in a conventional college playbook?

[geetarguy]

I was just curious, I heard somewhere between the 80s and 100s, and then I read somwhere that there are more like around 1000 plays? Would anyone happen to know?

[BHavenBlazer]

Alot of it is the same play, just out of different formations. Around 100 plays sounds about right, but with the different formations, it can into the thousands.

[PowerofRed25]

Quote: Originally Posted by geetarguy

I was just curious, I heard somewhere between the 80s and 100s, and then I read somwhere that there are more like around 1000 plays? Would anyone happen to know?

It depends on the offense, but there would never be 1000 different plays. Maybe 1000 different combinations, but certainly not 1000 plays.

Guys like Paul Johnson and his Flexbone and Mike Leach and his Air Raid MAYBE have 50-75 total plays in their offense. And on game day, they take 20-40 of them in with them. They watch film and narrow down to the best 20-40 plays against that week's opponent and they practice them nonstop during the week.

In the case of Mike Leach's air raid, they could literally create hundreds of different plays off of a single play call. For example:

Mike Leach's favorite play call is Six, known to the rest of you as Four Verticals. If he calls Blue Right Six (Blue Right being a split back with a tight end formation) he can add a tag to the end of that play to take advantage of something they see on film or from the coaches booth. Think of it like a hot route, but pre-determined. So it could become Blue Right Six Y Shallow. Which gives you the same play, everyone running verticals except the Y receiver (the tight end) changes and runs a shallow cross. Using one single play as a base, Leach is able to create dozens of plays.

It is the same concept for Chip Kelly. Oregon literally runs no more than 12 plays in a game. They are inside zone, outside zone, counter, speed option and then play action off of all of it. Where they get multiplicity is via formations, shifts, motions and tags. They can run their base 12 dozen plays out of dozens of formations. They can take their base inside zone and add an option call to it and make it a triple option. They can take their base outside zone and change the read from the defensive end to the three technique defensive tackle (midline option). They can take their base outside zone call, change the blocking call to have uncovered linemen pull and you get the buck sweep that Gus Malzahn runs all day at Auburn and now Ark State. When you're running at warp speed and signaling in plays fast, you can't have 150 different plays.

Nebraska in 1996 ran:

10 different outside runs
19 different inside runs
16 pass plays

That is it. That was the entire offense. Now each of these plays could be mirrored to go the opposite direction and could be run out of multiple formations but in the end, the Nebraska playbook in the 90's was 45 plays.

That is the trend in football, especially in high school but now in college and even somewhat in the pros. Less plays, more formations. It is so much easier to teach a new formation than it is 150 different plays. The most successful offensive teams at every level are those that perfect a dozen or so plays and run them over and over out of different looks.

That is where EA gets playbooks wrong. I made a thread on here a while back about Modular Custom Playbooks. Where I said instead of having certain plays be in certain formations, when doing custom books, you should be able to select the plays you want to run, then select the formations you want to use and then you'll have every play of your offense available in every formation.

[BHavenBlazer]

PowerofRed, its post like these that makes you , by far, my favorite poster on this site. You know football. Do you coach?

Quote: Originally Posted by PowerofRed25

It depends on the offense, but there would never be 1000 different plays. Maybe 1000 different combinations, but certainly not 1000 plays. Guys like Paul Johnson and his Flexbone and Mike Leach and his Air Raid MAYBE have 50-75 total plays in their offense. And on game day, they take 20-40 of them in with them. They watch film and narrow down to the best 20-40 plays against that week's opponent and they practice them nonstop during the week. In the case of Mike Leach's air raid, they could literally create hundreds of different plays off of a single play call. For example: Mike Leach's favorite play call is Six, known to the rest of you as Four Verticals. If he calls Blue Right Six (Blue Right being a split back with a tight end formation) he can add a tag to the end of that play to take advantage of something they see on film or from the coaches booth. Think of it like a hot route, but pre-determined. So it could become Blue Right Six Y Shallow. Which gives you the same play, everyone running verticals except the Y receiver (the tight end) changes and runs a shallow cross. Using one single play as a base, Leach is able to create dozens of plays. It is the same concept for Chip Kelly. Oregon literally runs no more than 12 plays in a game. They are inside zone, outside zone, counter, speed option and then play action off of all of it. Where they get multiplicity is via formations, shifts, motions and tags. They can run their base 12 dozen plays out of dozens of formations. They can take their base inside zone and add an option call to it and make it a triple option. They can take their base outside zone and change the read from the defensive end to the three technique defensive tackle (midline option). They can take their base outside zone call, change the blocking call to have uncovered linemen pull and you get the buck sweep that Gus Malzahn runs all day at Auburn and now Ark State. When you're running at warp speed and signaling in plays fast, you can't have 150 different plays. Nebraska in 1996 ran: 10 different outside runs 19 different inside runs 16 pass plays That is it. That was the entire offense. Now each of these plays could be mirrored to go the opposite direction and could be run out of multiple formations but in the end, the Nebraska playbook in the 90's was 45 plays. That is the trend in football, especially in high school but now in college and even somewhat in the pros. Less plays, more formations. It is so much easier to teach a new formation than it is 150 different plays. The most successful offensive teams at every level are those that perfect a dozen or so plays and run them over and over out of different looks. That is where EA gets playbooks wrong. I made a thread on here a while back about Modular Custom Playbooks. Where I said instead of having certain plays be in certain formations, when doing custom books, you should be able to select the plays you want to run, then select the formations you want to use and then you'll have every play of your offense available in every formation.

[PowerofRed25]

Quote: Originally Posted by BHavenBlazer

PowerofRed, its post like these that makes you , by far, my favorite poster on this site. You know football. Do you coach?

I do not coach, I just love this stuff. I study it all the time, I have a stack of playbooks on my desk that I study and love getting to know what these coaches run. I'd love to coach some day, I love the strategy of the game.

I was looking forward to opening this thread when I saw the title because I knew it was a general misconception I could try to better explain.

Of course, there are always exceptions. There are some coaches that believe in multiplicity in plays, a coach like Bill Callahan when he was here at Nebraska would be one of them. His playbook was 5-6 inches thick. Obviously not all of that is plays, but that is overkill. It is so hard for teams at any level, NFL included, to perfect all these plays. From what I've learned, the best offensive teams don't even hand out playbooks. They have a dozen or so printed out for the coaching staff, but players do not receive playbooks. It forces you, as a coach, to do your job and explain it. Guys learn their role and they do it.

[PowerofRed25]

The other thing I'd like to bring up, specifically about Mike Leach's (and guys like Kliff Kingsbury now at A&M and Dana Holgorsen, my favorite coach, at WVU) offenses is just how specific they are in their offensive roles. Where in NCAA 12 you have a WR depth chart that is 6 deep and if one guy goes down, the next guy slides up, in his offenses, you play one WR position. Michael Crabtree played one WR position his entire career, always on the same side of the field. Justin Blackmon at OSU is the same way (although Holgorsen and Monken utilized a lot more motion which had him shift).

It allowed those WR's to get their position down specifically. You didn't have to learn plays and routes from 4 different spots on the field, if you were the X receiver, you stayed at X receiver. Perfection through repetition. Same thing with Wes Welker at Tech, he played that inside slot position and owned it.

That is what allows these teams to run a couple dozen plays a game, they have them down so perfectly they don't care what defense you're in, they're going to out-execute you. A number of plays in Mike Leach's air raid offense are packaged concepts. Where you have different coverage beaters on either side. So if you're in a 2x2 spread formation. You may have a Smash concept to one side (corner/hitch combo) which will beat Cover 2 and Man and a slant/flat combo to the other side which will be your blitz beaters. You cannot defend that. No matter what you call defensively, the offense has something to beat it. It is just about the QB reading it. Don't have a good QB and you're going nowhere.

Okay, tangent finished for now. Love this topic though. Love when real football gets brought up on here.

[Dr Death]

Quote: Originally Posted by PowerofRed25

Okay, tangent finished for now. Love this topic though. Love when real football gets brought up on here.

Some very good posts Red. Very glad to see another Mike Leach fan, especially considering your team faced him for a number of years. My two favorite offenses are the Air Raid and Run & Shoot. Both have a small number of plays and both have short terminology.

Like the example you gave; Blue Right 6 - Y Shallow or in the R&S an example play call is Rip 60 Go. These shorter play calls get the offense in, and out, of the huddle quicker and to the line where the QB has time to read the defense.

One thing I've never liked about certain West Coast offenses is that the terminology is SO lengthy. I've heard and seen many West Coast plays/playbooks and one play is damn near a paragraph long, which just takes so much time.

Anyway... nice to see someone else who's into the strategy of the game. Sadly, EA will never get these aspects correct because it would require them to do a lot more work, but everything you've said is right on and many of the things that relate to the game are things many of us have been asking for for years.

[geetarguy]

Wow, thanks so much for this information. Do you use this mindset (I guess you could say) when creating a playbook?