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AFM Magazine


Technology Tools: Computer Software That Brings Your Play Diagrams to Life.

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Use coaching technology to your advantage with computer software that brings your play diagrams to life.

Technological advances have had a significant impact on football and coaching, especially in how plays are developed and illustrated for coaches and players. Today’s state-of-the-art play diagramming software gives coaches advantages never before available.


For playmaking, computers have indeed changed the way coaches coach. “Computers and software help coaches be more productive and work in new ways,” according to Bruce Williams of BW Software. “For example, with playbook software, you save time by reusing your work and produce drawings that look better than you could have produced by hand. Once you have drawn a play, you can quickly duplicate the drawing and change parts of it to create another drawing instead of starting from scratch.”


Stan Webber of Coach’s Office points out that today’s software is vastly better than early versions of coaching aids. “Software has improved dramatically in terms of functions and ease of use. Some software now offers a suite of modules, like Microsoft Office, that can perform multiple tasks such as drawing plays and saving them in a database, producing playbooks with built-in word processors, and building PowerPoint-like presentations with embedded digital video.”


Most analysts agree that the next stage of play diagramming evolution is animation. “Adding motion to your playbook is a great way to illustrate how the plays will actually look when they are run correctly,” said Jason Sada of Coaching Players. “With today’s faster computers, animating plays is easier than ever, and young athletes identify with high-tech animations better than they would two-dimensional, static representations.”


Here’s a rundown of three of today’s most popular software packages.

Coach’s Office

Coach’s Office is an integrated set of programs that allows football coaches at all levels to do in a matter of minutes on the computer what used to take hours manually. Developer Stan Webber created his software over a decade ago, after meeting a couple of NFL coaches who drew play cards by hand. Coach’s Office was first used to draw and print play/scout cards. Now coaches can produce a playbook, wristbands, practice script, presentation, and 3-D animation. “Coach’s Office is a complete suite of software, like Microsoft Office, built specifically for football coaches,” said Webber.


Coaches can easily draw and save their plays, fronts, and coverages in the chalkboard and place them in the playbook, using predefined or customized page templates. A built-in word processor allows coaches to produce professional-looking pages. Coaches can copy/paste information to/from nearly any PC application and also print wristband inserts using the wristband templates.


Steve Hagan, a veteran NFL coach, remembers the days not too long ago when many hours were spent drawing diagrams and handwriting details on reams of paper. “It was a process that took hours of work and detracted from time we could spend coaching our players,” said Hagen, “But now, with Coach’s Office, those days are over.”


With the new Coach’s Office 3D animation, play drawings come alive. Players can see the plays in motion, view them from any angle, and learn their playbook faster than before. Coach’s Office helps coaches to more effectively prepare their players – and hopefully win more games.


PlayMaker Pro

PlayMaker Pro, from BW Software, is a simple drawing program designed specifically for drawing football plays. Coaches use it to create playbooks, handouts and drill cards for practice. They can create team presentations complete with animation and video. PlayMaker Pro was first demonstrated to the University of Michigan football staff in 1988. Since then, its development has been guided by coaches from the NFL, CFL, NCAA, high school and youth football. With over 8,000 customers worldwide, PlayMaker Pro is a standard in the industry.


A PlayMaker Pro page is a collection of player symbols, lines, boxes and text. Coaches add these elements to a page with simple tools using a mouse. Pop up menus are used to set attributes of these elements such as line width, color, player symbols and fonts. Boxes can become scale size football fields with NFL, CFL, NCAA or high school markings. Page layout is completely flexible.


Coaches can save time with PlayMaker Pro by reusing their work. Before playbook software, coaches would recreate a playbook page from scratch in order to change it. Now they change the original in PlayMaker Pro and print it out. Coaches also produce new drawings by duplicating existing drawings and altering the duplicate. With PlayMaker Pro, coaches can create a library of commonly used playbook elements including formations and page layouts, then build new drawings quickly using their library.

3D Chalkboard Ultimate

Coaching Players latest coaching tool – the 3D Chalkboard Ultimate – now gives a coach the ability to teach a play from any angle or position on the field. With very easy point and click drawing tools, a coach can create an offensive, defensive or special teams play in less than a minute. The true 3D technology then allows a coach to pan 360 degrees around the play and to zoom in to a helmet camera from any position on the field. Coaches can use the helmet view to teach pre-snap reads and adjustments while panning side-to-side. Then they can take their meetings and chalk talks to the next level by clicking “PLAY” and watching the play come to life.


Once a play is drawn, the play can be animated and run as a simulation. Using the Coaching Players Smart Animation technology, this simulator does not require any drop down menus with difficult protocol. Coaches simply draw the play and then click “PLAY” to watch it in action. The players on the field will follow the lines coaches have drawn. Although the animation looks like a video game, it is a true simulator controlled by the lines drawn. During playback, the play can be paused and teaching points can be telestrated with simple click of a mouse. At all times during playback coaches can pan 360 degrees and zoom in and out. “Your players will be blown away by the animation and simulation of your playbook,” according to Jason Sada of Coaching Players.






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