Operation Sports Forums - View Single Post

SDL ("Saddle") Pairs
The term "Saddle" comes from the acronym "SDL", which stands for "slightly different layout".

Saddle Pairs:

Have the same personnel, so we can audible between them, AND
Audibling between them doesn't require any receivers or tight ends to cross the formation from one side to the other

This distinction is important, because this whole philosophy is built around audibling at the line of scrimmage, and we want our audibles to be as swift and efficient as possible. There's no pain like wasting 5 seconds of play clock waiting for multiple receivers to run from one side of the field to the other and get set. The time we have to snap the ball is limited, and every second wasted is one we may have liked to use making more adjustments.

There are many, MANY examples of Saddle sets, here are a few:

Gun Trips & Gun Trips HB Wk
Pistol Ace Slot & Gun Ace Slot
Pistol Strong Slot & Pistol Weak Slot

Having a pair of Saddle sets in your playbook gives you the ability to quickly call nine different plays at the line of scrimmage - the one you called, plus the four audibles in each set.

And if you're calling a play out of the playcall screen that IS one of your audibles, just know that you're a football sinner, and you're going to football hell! If there is only one thing you take from this monstrosity of a post, it should be this: DO NOT call a play that IS one of your audibles. If you end up liking that play at the line, you can just check to it. There's no point in calling it out of the playcall screen and limiting your options. Seriously, NEVER, EVER, do this! (I do it all the time by mistake).

Strategic Planning of Audibles
Because they're paramount to our success here, it's time we talk about how we should set up our audibles.

In default playbooks, most formation audibles have one run, and three passes (one quick, one play-action, and one deep). However, having several pass plays as audibles is a wasted opportunity in a game where there's enough hot routes at our disposal to make almost any passing concept we want to at the line of scrimmage. Here's a non-comprehensive list of concepts you can easily create at the line of scrimmage, using ONLY hot routes:

Flood
Slant Flat
Curl Flat
Mills
Switch
Shallow Cross
Mesh
Drive
Smash
Verts
Ohio
Stick
Levels
Texas
Dagger
Mills

In fact, the flexibility afforded to us by hot routes is so vast, you probably didn't even notice I listed Mills twice! Instead, we want to arrange our audibles in each set like so:

Two runs, which attack different places (example: pair HB Dive with HB Stretch)

One standard dropback pass play, which could also become... any other standard pass play we decide to make it with hot routes

One of... something else. This really could be anything, but the key thing is it shouldn't be redundant. For example, you wouldn't want to have two of the same pass concept as separate audibles, or multiple inside run plays. It's also a great place to put your favorite plays, because the only thing better than running your favorite play, is waiting to use it against the ideal defensive alignment!

You don't have to set up your audibles exactly this way, but it's a good starting point. Basically we want our audibles to attack different parts of the field from one another. This lets us get to the line, identify the area of the field we want to attack based on the defensive alignment and then make our decision. That might mean just sticking with the original playcall, but it often doesn't. The use of saddle set pairs allows us to choose from eight potential audibles very quickly rather than just four - giving us loads of options at the line of scrimmage.

For example, if they come out with two high safeties, you might prefer to run the ball. If they have very wide splits, it makes sense to run it down the middle. Are they weak on the outside? Run it there. Are there eight in the box and showing blitz? It might be a good idea to switch to a pass. But, there are no hard rules around when you should change the play and to what - it's all based on personal feel, and your own style will evolve as you continue to play and tinker with these ideas. Some considerations should, of course, be:

Down & Distance
Clock & Score
Area of Field
Personnel Matchups

That's really the gist of what our general philosophy is here:

We design our playbook and audibles to maximize the flexibility of what we can call on any given play.
We call a play from the playcall screen (that is NOT one of our audibles; Football Santa is always watching!)
We see how the defense lines up, and then decide which of our 9+ plays we like for the scenario and defensive alignment.

So let's move on to a basic example -

Example Microscript - "11 Trips"
Yes, of course we get to give each of our microscripts a fancy name! Why is this one called "11 Trips"?:

It sounds cool. And if you've made it this far, you can probably tell I'm like super, duper, cool.
11 is the personnel group.*
My Saddle sets are both called "Trips"

*If you didn't already know, personnel groups are often described by two numbers. The first represents the number of backs (not counting the QB), and the second represents the number of tight-ends. The number of receivers isn't given because we know how to count to five.

This arrangement of audibles gives loads of advantages:

For starters, the combination of run plays lets us run the ball inside left, inside right, outside left and outside right. We are prepared to run the ball anywhere there might be a weak spot in the defensive front.

The standard passes are concepts that attack different parts of the field. "Drive" attacks the short-intermediate middle, and Curl Flat attacks the short-intermediate sideline. We have two different variants of Smash here, but they're different enough that they aren't redundant to one another. The corner route of either Smash can be dangerous to any Cover 1 or Cover 0 we face, and the Sprintout variant gives us the option of a designed rollout in the case of any interior blitz.

We also have loads of other nice plays in these sets we can call out of the playcall screen and just run it if we like it against what the defense is showing us.

Now this was a pretty simple microscript, and a lone microscript does not an offense make! When we're building an offense, we want to include many of them. Different microscripts in our offense can serve different purposes. You might include a pass-heavy microscript designed specifically for the two-minute offense, and one for use in the red-zone. You might even have one microscript set up specifically for being on the left- or right-hash. If you have a really good player you want to get the ball, you can dedicate an entire microscript designed to do that in a bunch of different ways.

Maybe Pairs
Now that we've covered "Saddle" pairs, let's move on to something a bit more complicated: "Maybe" pairs. The term "maybe" comes from the "M" for motion. It also comes from the fact that the first of these I came up with, I was going to run Jet, maybe? More on that later.

For two sets to form a "Maybe" pair, they must:

Have the same personnel
The only difference between the sets is a single "across" motion

That motion needs to be one you can do manually

For example, Pistol Strong Slot and Pistol Strong -

When running Maybe, our intent is to motion the player across, monitor the defense's response, and call a play in the other set that we like against the defense. Motion can often reveal whether the defense is in man or zone, and that combined with the coverage shell can give us a good idea of what specific coverage they are running. Additionally, good defenses tend to make adjustments in response to motion, so by doing this we've given them pre-snap work to do, which creates the potential for mistakes.

Some other ways we can take advantage of using this motion are:

We can position an extra blocker where we want to run
We can remove a defender from where we want to run/pass
(My favorite!) There are instances where this can resemble Jet motion. We can snap the ball before the motion completes and run many things behind it, for example: dive, inside zone, play action, read option the opposite direction, etc. If the defense is overcommitting to Jet, that may open up one or more of these other plays. Otherwise, doing this might just desensitize them to the Jet motion, making the times we actually do run Jet that much more effective.

Example #2 - "21 Jet Maybe"
With that, let's look at another example Microscript: "21 Jet Maybe". It gets its name because we're in 21 personnel, and we're also running Jet maybe?

Here, we can run inside or outside on either sides. If we get a favorable alignment for it, we can run Jet at any time. We can also dummy the Jet motion and run other stuff behind it if we like.

OR we can let the motion play out and change the play to one of the plays in the other set that we like against what the defense just showed us. Did our slot receiver motion reveal that our opponent is in zone? Hmm, HB Slip Screen is great against zone.

Some Notes on Custom Playbook Design
I recommend starting with a completely blank playbook and building up slowly from there. The game won't let you save a playbook that is completely empty, but you can start with any playbook in the game, remove all of the plays except for one, give that play a rating in every scenario, and save it. That way, every time you start a brand new offense, you can start using that one.

While you want to have a playbook with lots of variety, it's still a good idea to embrace a "less is more" mentality. This is especially true when it comes to the number of sets in your playbook within a particular personnel group. You don't want to be at the line of scrimmage trying to switch to a play in your Saddle or Maybe set and have to scroll through 20 different sets to find it. I recommend you keep the number of sets per personnel grouping to 5 or less to keep it quick and easy.

Some Quirks of Personnel
Be aware of the scenario where a TE is your starting FB, as is very common with the game's starting roster. For the purposes of audibling at the LOS, this player is still considered a TE, not a back. This means calling a play in 21 personnel will still put 12 personnel on the field, thus you will only be able to audible to other sets with 12 personnel.

Many packages will change the personnel on the field, so be careful using them. This can also be wielded to your advantage though, so take the time to experiment with packages in practice mode.

Some Pre-Arguing, For Good Measure
While it's true that I can hot route into pretty much any passing concept, won't that telegraph to a human opponent that I'm passing?

Yes! And that's exactly why we should occasionally call a bunch of hot routes on run plays to throw them off! Hot routing on run plays doesn't actually do anything, but the QB does the same yapping he does as if they were real hot routes.

Won't this entire strategy fall apart in hostile road environments, where audibling becomes difficult?

Yes! It will become difficult to use this strategy in some conditions. Having a QB with the "Headstrong" ability can mitigate this problem a bit though. As can having the coach perks in the Offensive Communication tree from Scheme Guru. In these types of games you can certainly ignore my "never call an audible from the playcall screen" golden rule.

Resources
An excellent tool for searching through all possible plays and sets while you're at work, working very hard!

https://cfb.fan/25/playbooks/all-plays/

__________________
----------------------
PSN/Steam: southtitan
----------------------

Operation Sports Forums - View Single Post - "Omaha!" (2025)