Allowing MORE plays to be used in commonly used categories

[Dean-Tennessee]

Some coaches believe it strengthens a game plan to use more than the required minimum in play categories that are used more often. This is more possible on defense where the league minimum is 6 plays each in 6 categories. Some teams uses as many as 8-12 in categories like RL, PM, RM, and/or PS.

This is less possible on offense and part of the reason, current rules requires the use of 5 each in lesser used categories like PMR and PSR and 3 each in GLP/GLR. Some teams will call the league minimum for PSR/PMR in the profile (such as 10 RM, 10 PSL, 1 PSR on 3rd and 2-5) which means in many games only 1-2 plays are called from those 2 categories that must take up 10 play spots in the game plan. This is a waste of play spots and leads to more repetitive calls of the other categories used in the 10-10-1 profiles alignments used. If we allow fewer calls of those play categories, and more plays to be included in the game plan, a coach will have the flexibility to use MORE, not fewer, plays in a game.

Here is the current league minimum for offense:

RM 10
PSL 5
PSM 5
PSR 5
PML 5
PMM 5
PMR 5
PLR 4
PRD 4
RL 4, RR 4, GLR 3, GLP 3 are optional
total 48 plays mandatory, 62 with all optional included

Here is what I think we should adopt, to allow coaches the flexibility to include more PSL, PSM, PML,PMM in the game plans, the most commonly used play categories in passing:

RM 10
PSL 5
PSM 5
PSR 5
PML 5
PMM 5
PMR 5
PLR 2 (50% timed or rollout)
PRD 2 (50% timed or rollout)
RL 2, RR 2, GLR 2, GLP 2 are optional (50% max QB runs or timed or rollouts)
total 48 total plays mandatory, 56 with all optional included

I think a game plan should still have at least 48 plays, but by lowering the lesser used category minimums, coaches will have the flexibility to use more PSL/PSM/PML/PMM which are used more often, allowing more plays overall to be called in a game.

I think we should seriously consider making this change for next season.

[Justin-Texas]

How often do all the plays in a given category get called during a game? Need some objective data to back this up, and I think that would require self-reporting of data (only Tennessee knows how many PSM are in Tennessee’s plan week to week.)

My intuition is that all the plays in a given category are called rarely (I’ll say less than a third of the time.) if that is in fact true then this change is not needed.

I’ll review some logs and check back to provide my own team’s data.

[Justin-Texas]

For Texas in the 2025 season, excluding the championship game (14 games):
All of the RM in a gameplan were called 1 time
All of the PSL in a gameplan were called 2 times
All of the PSM in a gameplan were called 1 time
All of the PSR in a gameplan were called 0 times
All of the PML in a gameplan were called 2 times
All of the PMM in a gameplan were called 0 times
All of the PMR in a gameplan were called 0 times
All of the PLR in a gameplan were called 0 times (2 were called 6 times)
All of the PRD in a gameplan were called 0 times (2 were called 0 times)
All of the RL in a gameplan were called 1 time (2 were called 10 times)
All of the RR in a gameplan were called 0 times (2 were called 10 times)
All of the GLR in a gameplan were called 1 time (2 were called 10 times)
All of the GLP in a gameplan were called 2 times (2 were called 5 times)

This is a small sample size but to me it shows it's pretty rare (far less than a third of the time) that all the plays in any category are all called. It also shows that reducing the minimums as proposed in any of the categories mentioned, would lead to all the plays in those categories being called a much higher percentage of the time. I don't think that's a good thing.

Under the current rules, a team could simply choose to omit one of the optional categories, include 7-8 each of PSL and PML, which would virtually guarantee they wouldn't all get called. If that's what they wanted to do.

Based on, again, very limited data, and what I observed looking into this, I could perhaps see an argument for reducing PMR and PSR to 4 each, specifically if (PML+PMR)>=10, and (PSL+PSR)>=10, respectively, or reducing PRD, if used, to 3, or maybe even 2, but anticipate others could have strong opinions about those possibilities. Plus, we want PNFL gameplans to be useable without modification in the PCFL, right?

All things considered, the current rules stand up quite well to any alternative.

[Dean-Tennessee]

If we want to prevent coaches from using minimalist game plans, which the current rules do allow, maybe we should adopt minimums like this:

RM 10
PSL 8
PSM 8
PSR 3
PML 8
PMM 8
PMR 3
PLR 2 (50% timed or rollout)
PRD 2 (50% timed or rollout)
RL 4, RR 4, GLR 2, GLP 2 are optional (50% max QB runs or timed or rollouts)
total 52 total plays mandatory, 64 with all optional categories included

The above numbers would cause ALL of us to use and call more individuals plays than the current rules require.

[Justin-Texas]

Who said that we need to regulate away from “minimalist” gameplans? I believe the data I gathered this morning shows that even plans that rely on the current minimums would not be able to exploit one homerun play consistently.

Plus, I believe we could all acknowledge there are pros and cons to choosing to go with the minimums, but does that mean that coaches shouldn’t have the choice of doing so? I don’t think this is something this league needs to step in to address with more or new rules. I know it’s been said many times before, but it’s a solution in search of a problem.

Let them live by the sword, let them die by the sword.

[Dean-Tennessee]

The very real problem I am trying to address with what I originally proposed in this discussion is the lack of flexibility to use more than the minimum number of plays in the more commonly used categories by lowering the number of plays required in the less categories. The notion of a minimalist game plan was raised in the PNFL discussion of this issue.

[Dean-Tennessee]

All of the PSR in a gameplan were called 0 times
All of the PMR in a gameplan were called 0 times

These numbers show that we do not need to WASTE TEN game plan spots for PSR/PMR plays that are not called very often when they can be better used to include more PSL/PSM/PML/PMM plays in a game plan. My plan addresses this very real shortcoming of our current rules with a reasonable solution.