Offensive hand autible from the sideline

Yes. That's one of the first things we do in training camp is the conditioning fact. I coach the 13-14 age group and we ran a lot of hurry up offense last year with a wrist band. Wanted to see if there was some kind of system being used, or it is up to the coach. I see in the up coming clinic in Cherry Hiil, NJ there is a class on it. Wanted to see how other coaches handle this

Sounds good Coach. I watched from High School to college programs switch to the spread. Why is that?

Coach Hartman,
Well understood. I was just wondering. I coach a youth team in NYC and the HS coaches come to me looking for a QB and WR to fit in there Spread. I want to go to it this year and hope to have a good showing. I will be going to the Cherry Hill Clinic and hope to get some good material on it.

If you use hand signals for NUMBERS - here is a good way (old Joe Gibbs signals):


Ft. Above head = 1 (left) or 0 (right)

Touching ear = 3 (left) or 2 (right)

Touching shoulder = 5 (left) or 4 (right)

Touching waist = 7 (left) or 6 (right)

Touching knee = 9 (left) or 8 (right).

THUS - if you wanted to signal "28" you would touch your RIGHT EAR ("2") then, your RIGHT KNEE ("8").

If not clear - PHONE me at 804-378-0116 (up to 10 PM/EDT).

To also answer your question, Here's what we do...


We use hand signals when we have 2 plays called.

Ex- we keep it simple, but may have a Sneak Called or a Smoke route.

Depending upon how they line up in A gaps vs bump coverage on our SE/FL, we take a pre-snap look and put our fist in the air for pass and our arm/fist out and down to signal to go with the run play. Again, this is all due to the coaches pre-snap look. As our kids get older they can actually handle 2 or 3 run/pass combo presnap reads themselves. We then use a color in the Cadence to signify Run or Pass, so that everyone knows what the decision was. Red is Run and Blue is Pass. EX set hut, red 19, red 19 hut, hut.

Our refs don't let coaches in our league say much once the QB is under center, so we just use these signals to indentify to execute the run or pass. We don't do this more then a few times per game, but when you watch college, this is exactly what they are doing when they look back to the coaches when they reach the LOS.

If you can use Verbals, then simply go with City Names- Omaha, Houston, Denver, etc to signify a run play. And for pass use Country Name- Canada, Mexico etc...

Now, for our play calling, we simply tell or signal in the play number to the QB and he uses his wrist band. Like an earlier post, sometimes we may just say 7, and he runs play 7. Or if we use signals, we number the body and use touch points on the body to call the play.

Just like what was mentioned earlier, ex- head, shoulders, sides, hips, kness toes- even and odd etc.

Hope this helps.