Starting from scratch!

Question
Hi Coach,

My name is Edvard I'm from France, and with a couple of friends from College, we made up a football team.We're 20 players so far.We started in September playing Flag till we got our equipment. We train 2 times /week, go to the gym etc... and we schedule games against other new formed teams. I'm one of the 2 QBs, 2 RB etc... we play football with 9 players because apparently in NFL Europe it is played like this. I've been looking all around the internet for tips, drills, strategies etc... and I'm starting to create our own playbook. I have enough imagination and player instinct to know what play is right or wrong but I was wondering about Audibles. Can you explan what system I could use for Audibles, how to call them and what plays I should use for Audibles?
Thank you very much.
Regards,
Edvard

Answer
Ed -

Thanks for writing.  Greetings from the US!  How is everything over your way of the world my friend?  Its always nice to see people from around the world interested in American football.  Now, truthfully, I am not familiar with 9 man ball.  As  you probably know, normal is 11.. SOme leagues play 8 on 8.  But nine is an odd number for me.  Regardless, you are interested in audibles. So I will do my best to try and get you started.

The most important thing to remember is that audibles start with nothing more than a coach / player knowing 3 things: One is his offense (the players, the plays, the schemes, the goals for each play, etc.. Two is the defenses they are playing that week (its strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, formations, etc).. And third is how your plays stack up against their defenses specifically.

Once you have these down, you can create audibles.  All an audible is is a player / coach looking at a defense, and determining that the play we have called from the huddle might not be the best choice against the defense they lined up in (Remember, if we as offensive coaches KNEW what defenses were going to run, be in formation wise, we'd score on every series). SO we need to change the call to something we think gives us a beter chance for success. Thats it.  So as a very basic audible example, let's say you call a basic running play to the left of the line (maybe between the left guard and left tackle), but the defense is lined up in a manner that will make it almost impossible to block those defenders effectively. Maybe the 2 defensive linemen on that side are pinching that gap and have a linebacker there as well.  This is not a good match up.  SO the QB sees this, then looks to the other side of the line and sees there is a wide open gap between the right guard and tackle.  Most every offense has this audible.  It is commonly called a "flip" because all we would do is FLIP sides.  Instead of running to that gap on the left, now we are running to the same gap but on the right.  Get what I am saying? In the huddle it was called a "35", but gets flipped to a "34"...  Easy enough huh?

As you get more in depth, youll see that anything can be audiblized.  Its just a matter of making sure EVERYONE on the offense KNOWS the calls.  It doesnt do any good to audible if even 1 player doesnt know the calls.

So once you learn the offense really well, get creative and come up with code words for different calls.  Just make them up, and then stick with them... Maybe "France" means a fullback screen left"  I dont know, its your offense and code system. So if you have a call in the huddle that is a toss sweep right, but see the defense is shading to your right, as you are under center you call out "France France" telling everyone on offense we are changing the play to a FB screen left.  The defense doesnt know because they dont know what France means on your team.  And there you go Ed.

Thats all coaching football is Ed.  Its taking the basics and the rules of the game, and designing your own strategy / plan of attack.  Just like chess, but with humans.  Do your research, film studies, read as much as possible on it, and practice as much as possible and you will find that success will come your team's way.

Hope this got you started Ed.  BEst of luck with your new team.

Coach Perl