One of the most common questions coaches ask when talking about signals, especially in a no huddle offense, is “How do you build the motion into your calls?”
There are a lot of different ways to do this, and we cover many of them our newest book about signals. In this article we’ll take a look at a couple of different ways offenses do it, including the author Tom Yashinsky’s favorite way.
Today’s article is taken directly from “The Complete Guide to Football Signals: A Coach’s Handbook“
Using Motion in Your Play Calls
There are a couple different trains of thought people use when assigning motions to players. Some teams will give every motion by every different player it’s own unique name to help them remember it. For example if your T receiver is going to motion into the formation they would call that TIN motion and have a unique hand signal for that.
If their Z receiver was going to motion into the formation they would call that ZIN motion and have a separate unique hand signal for that. You would go through all of your motions and do this for each one. This is great from a communication standpoint because every motion has a different call for it and it makes it easier when writing it out and saying it in a huddle, but it can add a lot of hand signals into your system when you are trying to signal them for a no huddle system.
Another way of signaling in the motion is to have your library of distinct motions and a hand signal for each, and then tag the letter of the player onto each one before giving the motion. This is the method that we use, and that we find the easiest with our players. You will see a diagram of our motions on the next page and I will explain how we get to each one.
Our motion system has eight basic motions that we can use throughout a game. We use a hand signal for each player on the field. Our X Receiver almost never motions because he is on the line of scrimmage 99% of the time. Everyone else motions pretty significantly when our offense is rolling.