Organizing A Call Sheet

When organizing a call sheet as the offensive coordinator, there are many ways to organize your play calls. After six years as an offensive coordinator, I have experimented with several formats in an attempt to find what works for me. What I have settled on is a format that lends itself to being flexible in games and helpful in game planning on the weekends.

When structuring my call sheet, the first thing I did was to create landmark calls. We broke the field down by zones, similar to what Air Raid teams do. But we decided to get more specific and have calls for the different yards lines within each zone. (We at first attempted to break it down further by hash mark but found that it overloaded our QBs who typically play both ways). Our zones of the field are as follows:

0-10 = Coming Off

10-30 = Yellow Zone

30-30 = Open Field

30-20 = Orange Zone

20-10 = Red Zone

10-5 = Green Zone

5 & In = Goal line

In addition, we broke our call sheet down by situation as well. We try to carry calls for the following situations as well:

Drive Starters

1st Down Calls

3rd Downs (Short, Medium, Long & XL)

4th Down (Short, Medium & Long)

2-Point Plays

Shots

Gadgets

Lastly, we identify our most explosive athletes and design specific plays to get them the ball. We try and create 3 plays per athlete to get them the ball.

Below is an example of a call sheet template we use.