A few weeks ago, I floated the idea of a video series called Talkin’ Football! But then I decided to start this Substack and I’ve always much preferred my writing voice to my talking voice, so we’re gonna transfer that idea to here! Right here!
The overall idea behind this column is this: there are a lot of details about the inner workings of football that we don’t really dig into. Some of it is simple, some of it isn’t so simple. I don’t claim to know everything, but I’ve picked up quite a bit over the last 9+ years and I’d like to share as much of that knowledge as I can with you. And, if I don’t know something, I want to dig in and learn about it.
Today we’re talking about how a QB calls a play in the huddle. We’ve all heard Jon Gruden talking about Spider 2 Y Banana, but what does that mean?
Some day we’ll dive into how offensive playcalling shifted from the relatively simple calls of Sid Gillman and Don Coryell to the more jargon-heavy West Coast Offense, but today is not that day.
To have this conversation, we’re going to look at it through the lens of the 1982 49ers.
In 1978, the 49ers went 2-14. They went 2-14 again in 1979, Bill Walsh’s first year as head coach. In 1980, they improved to 6-10. In 1981, they went 13-3 and beat the Bengals in Super Bowl XVI. Though the bones of this system had been around, this was the rise of the West Coast Offense, with Walsh as the father (even though Walsh himself says that everything he did he stole from Gillman 20 years earlier).
To understand playcalling lingo, the best thing to do is to look at a playbook. The first few pages are essentially a decoder ring. Today, we’re looking at the 1982 49ers playbook and talking about the language. Because, while things have changed since then, it’s all based here.
This is one of the first pages of the playbook, and you can see how it spells everything out. A playbook isn’t just a set of plays: it’s a full instruction manual. The “In the Huddle” section breaks down the sections of the playcall, while the “Here’s How It Sounds” section runs it all together. We’re going to slightly tweak #1 in the “Here’s How it Sounds” section and walk through a call of Red Right, 24 Double Square Out.
Red Right is your formation.
Next is “24.” That holds the core play and the protection up front against the various fronts and defensive alignments.
This gives the base protection for the offensive line, as well as the releases for the backfield and the Y tight end. Against 43 defensive (upper-left square), backs check and release to the flat, Y releases vertically and the offensive line drops straight back into their sets. As we continue the call, we’ll assume the defense is aligned in 43.
That initial verbiage - Red Right 24 - gives us our formation, offensive protection and protection/releases for the backfield and tight end.
The next term is Double Square Out, which are the routes for the receivers.
The Double Square Out has the outside receivers driving upfield and breaking to the sideline at 10 yards. So if we string it all together, a call of “Red Right, 24 Double Square Out” looks like this:
Out routes on the outside, Y releasing up the field and check/release from the backfield.
If you wanted the Y to motion pre-snap, the call would look slightly different. “Red Right, Y Left, 24 Double Square Out.”
Follow my terrible lines and the Y has motioned pre-snap and releases vertically from the left.
Not every system is the same. The terminology will be different depending on the system/coach, but, no matter the system, the playcall will still hold the same basic information:
How do we line up?
What is the offensive line doing?
What are the skill position plays doing?
The next time you sit down to watch a game and you notice a bunch of pre-snap motion, just know that the quarterback has to communicate all of that in his playcall. Also know that, depending on the defensive alignment, the play can look entirely different for the offensive line, backfield and tight end.
The last thing to keep in mind is that the play we just looked at was from 1982. While the idea behind the playcall is the same, offenses have gotten more complex. Which is how you end up with calls like this: