Keith Grabowski (00:02)
Welcome to another episode of the Coaching Coordinator podcast presented by Modern Football Technology. Today, I want to talk about playcalling, an evolution that I’ve seen from some ideas that I read about in the 90s and things that are coming to fruition today. And a lot of this is on the writing of Homer Smith, who I think is just one of the most brilliant football minds ever to coach the game.

We’ve all been there. We watched the film the next morning and then the solution just jumps right off the screen. The safety was flying downhill or the corner was overplaying the outside, the pressure was right there and the adjustment was obvious but the hard part is you usually don’t see it or just not soon enough. So by Saturday morning, the solution is clear. The goal…

The goal is to build a process that gets you there while the game is still being played. That’s what sent me back to a manual that Homer Smith wrote and it was just calling plays. Very simple name. Homer was writing before huddle, before tablets. Let me start that section again.

That’s what sent me back to Homer Smith’s manual calling place. He was writing before huddle, tablets, AI, technology we take for granted today, but he was already thinking about the same problem we’re dealing with right now. He wrote that only a computer could keep track of things that affects a call. And that line really made me pause and think.

Homer Smith wasn’t trying to remove the coach from the decision, he was trying to help the coach process the game fast enough to make a better one. Think about what goes into.

Think about what goes into a single call on a Friday night or Saturday afternoon. Personnel, field position, down in distance, formation structure, what you’ve already shown, how they’re adjusting, what your players are, this is too fast.

He wasn’t trying to remove the coach from the decision. He was trying to help coaches process the game fast enough to make a better one. Think about what goes into a single call on a Friday night. Personnel, field position, down in distance, formation structure, what you’ve already shown, how they’re adjusting, what your players are telling you coming off the field. There’s a lot happening. And Homer Smith understood that the game produces information faster than one person can process it.

and he was writing in an era when information was scarce. That’s the conversation I want to have today, not about analytics, about decision making, specifically, how do we shorten the distance between seeing the problem and solving it?

If Homer Smith was coaching today, he wouldn’t recognize the environment. When he was writing about this in the 90s, there wasn’t enough information. A coach watched film, took notes, built tenancy sheets, and relied heavily on his experience. And a lot of what happened on a Friday night or Saturday afternoon lived in the coach’s memory, which is a big reason veteran coaches carried such an advantage.

They had seen more football, they had more reference points, and they remembered situations that younger coaches hadn’t experienced yet. Then the film got easier. Computer breakdowns got better. Huddle changed everything, and all of a sudden, every coach had access to more information than the previous generation.

Then film got easier, computer breakdowns got better, and Huddle changed everything. All of a sudden, every coach had access to more information than previous generations could have imagined, and the original problem f- Damn it.

Then film got easier, computer breakdowns got better, and huddle changed everything. All of a sudden, every coach had access to more information than previous generations could have imagined, and the original problem flipped. The challenge stopped being collecting information and started being figure out what… And figure…

The challenge stopped. The challenge.

The challenge stopped being collecting information and started being figuring out what was actually useful. A lot of staffs are still living there today. They have reports, cutups, tendency sheets, hit charts, and data. The problem is that none of it helps once the next series starts because there’s too much of it and no clear filter for what should change the next call. Folsom.

Fawesome.

Folsom High School defensive coordinator Jordan Irsik and I have talked about this a lot. When we’ve discussed how his staff at Folsom uses modern football, one of the things that always comes up is how they choose to… One of the things that comes up is what they choose to stop tracking. Early on, they were tagging too much. Routes, receiver splits, footwork details, and they gave all that up because it wasn’t helping them make in-game decisions. Now they keep it simple. 11 personnel, two by two.

Tight end of the field, that’s a tag. And everybody can interpret that instantly, which is the whole point. Homer’s vision wasn’t bigger reports or thicker binders. He was trying to figure out how coaches could process the game while it was still happening. And for the first time, the technology is catching up to the problem he was describing. But only if you use it in a disciplined way.

but only if you’re disciplined about what you actually use.

This is where Jordan’s experience really gets interesting and it’s something that I want every coordinator here, maybe not the defensive coordinators who I’m going to face this fall, but I think this is useful for everybody. Earlier this season, earlier in the 2025 season, Folsom’s in the state final game, Folsom’s defense gave up 38 points in the first half.

In the playoffs, Folsom’s defense gave up 38 points in the first half of the NorCal championship semifinal. If you’ve followed coaching long enough, you know exactly what halftime feels like. If you’ve been coaching long enough, all of us know exactly what halftime feels like, especially in that situation. Everybody has an explanation. They have something that they think needs to change and the challenge is figuring out which problem actually needs to be solved and solving it fast enough.

that it makes a difference in the second half. So as Jordan walked through it with me after the game, what stood out was how quickly they narrowed the field. They weren’t searching for every possible solution They went to the data and looked at how their coverage families were matching up for efficiency against what the opponent was doing. And what they found is that their coverages were creating six-man run fits and they were getting killed.

And anytime they had a seven man fit with three at the second level, they were much better. They’d done it twice in the first half and seen it work both times. The other piece was personnel. The opponent came out in 11 and 12 personnel about 90 % of the time when Folsom had prepared for 10. With that personnel change came a different run structure and tight end and running back location was now driving play direction in a way that hadn’t fully been planned for.

So they had an inline tight end, a back end pistol, that way 80 % of the time. And then the hip tight end with an offset back is going the other way 90 % of the time. And once they had that confirmed at halftime, the front coverage stemming.

And once they had that confirmed at halftime, the front and covered stemming adjustments became straightforward and the second half for them was a shutout. Jordan made the comment to me that I keep coming back to and he said that numbers weren’t replacing his instincts. They were helping him trust them sooner. Because in the second quarter, he was already starting to feel like certain structures were the problem. He just didn’t have enough confidence yet to completely commit to the adjustment. The data

gave them that confidence faster and by halftime it was confirmed. So they ran their adjusted calls the entire second half and pitched a shutout. And I think that’s the real value. It’s not finding the solution It’s finding it while there’s still enough game left for it to make a difference. When coaches discover something valuable, the first instinct is usually to collect more of it. So more cutups, more reports, more tendency data.

And the assumption is that if something… And the assumption is that if some information is good, more must… And the assumption is that if some information is good, more must be better. Every piece of information comes with a cost. Somebody has to collect it and communicate it and interpret it. And then somebody has to decide whether it changes anything while the play clock is running the whole time. It’s not a lot of time to make a decision.

The filter I’ve been thinking about is simple. Would this information change what I do next? If the response is no, then it belongs in a post-game analysis. And if the answer is yes, then I think we’re getting somewhere. Jordan’s staff tags protections on passing plays, but not routes. Their reasoning is direct, that against the West Coast offenses that run deep choice concepts, the same play might look like five different route combinations in a row.

Tagging routes then becomes noise. But if you can determine whether the quarterback had a dirty pocket, that tells you something actionable. Their data confirms it. The number one factor in an incomplete pass against a good quarterback is pass protection pressure. So that’s where they put their attention. Homer Smith wasn’t trying to create the world’s biggest report. He was trying to improve the quality of the next decision. Those are very different goals.

One creates information, the other creates action. As I step back into it after 10 years and all the things I’ve been studying, I’ve been working through a framework for how my staff at Bay High School will use this on game day. And I keep coming back to three words that we’ve talked about, insight, trigger, and solution.

A lot of our coaching conversations skip straight to the solution. The defense does something unexpected and everybody immediately starts talking about adjustments before they clearly identified what they’re adjusting to. The insight is what catches your attention first. Maybe a concept that normally produces explosive plays is grinding it out two yards at a time.

Or maybe a safety is playing differently than he did on film. Whatever it is, you’ve noticed something worth watching that doesn’t mean it’s time to change anything. It means the observation is registered. The trigger is when that observation becomes actionable. The moment your confidence shifts from, think I’m seeing something to, I know what this is. And let’s say that’s your bass run concept that you expect to get 60 % efficiency, four yards or better.

60 % of the time. Your three drives in and it’s sitting at 42 and the safety’s fitting hard, the corner’s involved in support and at some point that stops being an observation and starts being a trend and the conversation needs to change from what are we seeing to what are we gonna do about it. For us on the offensive side, I’m thinking about our outside zone particularly as our starting point. So for me, two inefficient plays in a row early in the game is gonna be a trigger.

because early you don’t have a lot of data. So you set the threshold lower. If the strong safety is active and making tackles at or near the line of scrimmage,

If the strong safety… Where the fuck is it?

If the strong safety is active making tackles at or near the line of scrimmage, we’re asking whether he’s rotating from depth or playing downhill from a too high structure. That solution points us somewhere, whether that’s our four verts, our floods, our stretch pass stick, the connections that we’ve…

the solutions are already built.

The connections are already built. The solution shouldn’t have to be invented on the sideline. I think the best coaching staffs have responses built into the plan before kickoff. If the defense reacts this way, here’s where we go. If they’re taking this away, here’s the compliment. The game simply tells you when it’s time to use those. So for Jordan, he calls it set stress break on the defensive side.

The set call is the best call in a given situation and what they expect to see. They stay with it as long as it’s working. At Folsom, that’s an opponent offensive efficiency below 40%. Once it crosses that line, it’s stressed and they go to the next call. If both calls are getting hit, it’s time to break. Show them something completely different, exotic, something that might beat their protection rules or their coverage check entirely.

What I like about that structure is that it takes the decision making pressure off the call itself and puts it on the process. You’re not trying to figure out what to call, you’ve already decided what you’re calling next. You’re just waiting for the numbers to tell you when. Or as in I’m looking at it, that trigger.

Sometimes I think about what Homer Smith would do if he went, sometimes I think about what someone like Homer Smith would do if he walked into a staff room today. I think he’d be amazed by the technology and then I think he’d immediately start to ask questions, not about the software, but about the decisions. What we have right now, what we have now that Homer didn’t is that a coach in the box can relay efficiency information between series.

The coordinator can take a look at the call sheet, make the notes, and be ready for the next drive with the updated information at hand. And at halftime, the staff can pull full reports, whether they check the run pass splits, the game plan, whether they check the run pass splits, the game plan for our holding and making adjustments based on what the game is actually showing rather than what they expected to see.

With modern football, I’m really excited about the AI reports which just allow me to build prompts ahead of time that I can use in game and at halftime I just click that button and it’s going to give me the report on that data so that The insight is actionable right away

The other thing we’re adopting is something Jordan does that he and his staff practice this whole process during spring ball. Then they run a competitive Bulldog ball period, which is best on best up tempo with their coaches in the box. They’re running full communications process like the game. The tagger is tagging the spotters calling out personnel. The coordinators getting information between series and practicing that call sheet live. And by the time they get to Friday night,

the game actually slows down. The communication process is already grooved. Talked about this quite a bit years ago with Noel Mazzoni, where he talked about unscripted periods. And I’ve seen a lot of coaches going to unscripted periods. One, I think as a play caller, it gives you the opportunity to get your reps. Something I’m going to do this year in unscripted periods for sure. But we’re going to break out all our technology with that as well.

We’re going to treat it like an in-game situation where we’re looking at the data between and what did we call and how are things working. At the very least, as these will be shorter periods, we’re getting work at the process and communicating it. There’s a thing that I heard Jordan say that I thought was really important. You can’t wait until game day to figure out how you’re going to use a tool. If the technology doesn’t show up till Friday night,

you’re going to get frustrated and abandon it. And the value compounds when it’s integrated in how the staff prepares all week so that by game day, the data isn’t new information you’re trying to process under pressure. It’s confirmation of what you’re already building.

One thing I don’t want anyone taking away from this is that there’s one right way to do it because there isn’t. A defensive coordinator cares about different things than an offensive coordinator and a head coach sees the game completely different than those two guys. So the two coordinators running the system might focus on completely different pieces of information and what matters is having a process. And we could look at two different offenses. For them, their if-thens might be set up differently.

I’m really using an if-then type of structure that once I have that insight, here’s what we’re starting with. And then when we have a trigger, here’s what we’re going to and building those solutions in our process over the course of the week and what we’re doing with our game planning breakdown and self scout. And I think here’s the question worth thinking about. If someone walked into your office right now and asked what information actually changes your decisions on Friday night,

Could you answer that immediately? It’s not what information are you collecting or what the reports change, but what would change the call for you? And I think once you know what the solution is, the rest starts to get easier. You can decide what deserves your attention during the week and what needs to be communicated on game day, right? What belongs inside that headset and what belongs in a composed game report? The best staffs I’ve been around can answer

that question before kickoff. They know what would concern them. They know what would trigger an adjustment and what they do about it because they’ve talked about those things and the possibilities and they’ve built those responses into their game plan. That’s the piece that I think gets overlooked. A lot of our conversations focus on identifying problems, but if you want to win, you have to spend as much time on preparing those solutions and then have a process so that you can make

those things as they’re happening in the game actionable, that you call it at the right time. When I started thinking about this episode, I thought that it was gonna be about analytics, and then somewhere along the way I realized that it’s not, at least not in the way that the word analytics usually gets used. Homer Smith understood that football was becoming too complex for one person to process.

every variable in real time and you imagine a future where computers could help organize information and support better decisions. 30 years later, we’re finally living in that and I think that’s what I’m most excited about as I get back into coaching after a decade not coaching. Jordan Ersik’s story then puts this in concrete terms. The numbers didn’t shut out that offense in the second half. The coaches still had to teach the players. They still had to tackle. The decisions had to be made.

but the staff got confidence in what they were seeing faster, what they had prepared for in these situations, and they were able to move from their discussion to decision while there was still enough game left to make a difference and win that game and put them in the state championship. And that’s the goal. We don’t want to have more information or better reports. We’re not replacing experience with instinct. We’re shortening the distance between the problem and solving it.

think that’s what the power of in-game analytics are all about. The tendency is usually there. The adjustment is usually there. And the solutions certainly are there. The question is whether we can find that while there’s still enough time on the clock for it to matter. And I think that’s exactly what Homer Smith was trying to tell us. I’ve put together a presentation myself on my… I’ve put together…

presentation. I’ve put together a presentation on our framework that we’ll be using and I would love to share it with you. I’ve set up some times where you could go through this individually. I do want to show you how I use it and how the technology of modern football comes into play. So I invite you to book a demo with me. I think we can handle this in 15 to 30 minutes. Full disclosure, I do work with modern football but

The reason I work with Modern Football and I’ve become an advisor for the company is I really believe in it. And I’m just so excited that I actually get to use this myself on Friday night.

So just like everybody listening, I’ll be trying to answer the same questions. What is the defense doing? Is it different from what we expected? Does it matter? And if it does, what’s our solution The tools we have are different than when Homer wrote his manual calling plays, but the game isn’t. Players still have to block, coaches still have to make decisions, but what’s changed is our ability to gather that information and communicate it.

And the opportunity is now to figure out how to use that information without getting buried by it. A report isn’t a process. A tenancy sheet isn’t a process. A platform isn’t a process. Those are tools. The process is how your staff thinks and how that information moves from the box to the sideline and what deserves your attention, what doesn’t, and whether you have those answers.

and whether you have those solutions prepared before the problems show up. And whether you have those solutions prepared before the problems show up. That’s what I’m working with through at Bay High School this season, and I’m sure I’ll get some things right and some things wrong, the only question that matters is whether it helped us make better decisions while the game is still being played. Again,

Again, click the link in the show notes, book some time on my calendar. I’ll set some time aside for anyone who’s interested in talking about this, showing you my process, how I’m thinking about it, going into detail. What does that look like with a run play, a pass play? What are the triggers that we’re using and how do we set those up in a piece of technology so that I know when we need to move quicker than we have before? I’ve done it before, know, sat there as I mentioned in the beginning.

on a Saturday saying, we should have got to this earlier or looking at something at halftime thinking the same thing. We’ve got some answers for how we’ve got some solutions for how this works early in the game. I think the process is tight and the idea isn’t to put my framework on you and say this is the one you need to use, but to help you develop your own framework by looking at mine. Again, click the link in the show notes.

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