Play Calling Using Wrist Coaches
How do you call your offensive plays ? Do you have your QB come to the sidelines? Do you meet him a quarter of the way? Or do you use a wrist coach? The most effective way to call plays is with a wrist coach. The wrist coach will allow for plays to be delivered to your youth football quarterback quickly and easily.
Throughout my coaching years, I have executed the no huddle offense. Each player on the field has a wrist coach on their arm. Each position will have a custom wrist coaches. Meaning, the offensive linemen wrist coaches will say run or pass block. If it is a run play they will know to run block (follow blocking scheme). If the right guard is to pull and kick out the end man on the line of scrimmage the wrist coach will say pull left-kick out EMLOS. This stands for end man on line of scrimmage.
Each series, or grouping of plays, is highlighted with a color and named with a number. For example, coach yells “BLUE 2”- the players will look at their wrist and read the play name that is highlighted BLUE and is numbered 2. We will use two colors- green and blue. We like to label our plays those colors because after yelling the color and the # the opposing coaches will start recording what the plays are. So we will do verbal communication as well as hand signals. Say our sweep play is under green 1, I will point to the ground and then I will show one finger. Green stands for pointing to the grass, blue means pointing up to the sky. You can also have an assistant coach stand there and give dummy calls to throw off the opposing team and players.
Having all players utilizing wrist coaches can take your offense to a new level. Running a no huddle offense with every player having a wrist coach is a certain nightmare for youth football defenses. You will see opposing coaches burning timeouts and having trouble subbing players in and out. You will notice players and coaches getting tired because of the up-beat no-huddle offense. The no huddle will also help conserve the energy of your quarterback. If the quarterback comes to the sideline for every play it will eventually take a toll on him and he’ll tire. Figure this: it is at least 20-30 yards this kid will have to run back and forth from the coach to the huddle every play.
Related Content: No Huddle Offense for Youth Football
Benefits of using wrist coaches for no huddle:
- Control the pace of the game. You can go quickly or slow it down.
- Call the right play every time. Calling plays from the line of scrimmage will allow you to see how the defense is aligned. This will allow you to call the best play vs the defensive alignment.
- You will tire the defense.
- QB doesn’t have to come to the sidelines every play.
- They will have problem substituting players.
- They will burn timeouts to reorganize.