To the fan sitting in the stadium seats or at home in his or her La-Z-Boy, the act of running a football play might look simple. You know -- call the play, execute the play.
But as South Florida offensive coordinator Tim Beck explained, there's lot more to it than one guy sending the call down from the pressbox before the 40-second clock expires. Just deciding what to run is a group effort that is the product of hours upon hours of meetings of the offensive staff well before a game is played.
Basically, it goes like this.
Beck, from his perch in the pressbox, sees that the on-field situation calls for a running play. But what specific play for the situation? That has been worked out in advance with running game coordinator/offensive line coach Mike Sollenne.
If the situation calls for a pass, the collaboration with receivers coach Myles White comes into play.
And, of course, head coach Brian Hartline is deeply involved as well.
"You have too many good minds in there and not utilize them, so we're going to do that," Beck said.
Obviously, there isn't time between plays for a multi-headed debate about what to run. That's where pregame planning comes in.
"Typically, a lot of times you script things out in terms of like, say the second series. Coach (Sollenne) might be like, hey, they're doing this. I like this in the run game," Beck said. "You're kind of writing down, hey, you know, they're doing this and this cover. Then we got a chance to hit them on this play. Okay, great, put it down," Beck said.
"I like this call first, this call second. This will be our first third down call. You kind of talk about it. So when it arrives, you've got a plan. You just don't want to be caught off guard."
And just as the USF players are experiencing each other on the field for the first time, the same goes for the coaching staff.
"All of us are working together for the first time. So as we've gone through fall camp, these move the ball situations have been great for all of us because we get to learn about what do you like in these situations? What's the play call? Why? We have good, healthy conversations about it," Beck said.
"We learn, we think about what that velocity is going to be, what we need to do, and then we work to Implement that."
While they're learning about each other, the coaches also have had to contend with getting the players on the same page. That has been the focus since the team was first assembled and it's not complete yet.
"We're still in a process. You have remember now, we're gonna play all freshmen. They've never been in the system. They've never been with this coaching staff. It's like a high school kid coming in for the first time and playing. They're all playing together for the first time," Beck said.
"So imagine like really, even though they played college football, they have experience. They haven't had experience with us, they haven't had experience here in the system. So to some degree they are freshman. We expect that."
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