What makes a great offensive play-caller?
In his book “Finding the Winning Edge,” the legendary Bill Walsh wrote:
For every call that was made that was well conceived, thoroughly practiced and called just at the right time, but failed because the ball was batted down or dropped, there was a parallel occurrence. An equal number of times, I made a call that was not as concise or as well-schooled and was called at the worst possible time given the defensive alignment, but was successful due to some extraordinary effort or talent by a particular player.
So… luck?
Perhaps that plays a role. But Walsh ended that paragraph as follows: “Sound decision making enables you to reduce the amount of uncertainty in any given situation as much as possible. As a consequence, the variables you have to deal with will be reduced.”
Therein lie the keys to being a great play-caller. Yes, you need to put your players in position to be successful, but part of that comes from dictating the defensive personnel, the matchups and sometimes even the exact coverage that the defense will run on a given play, and then running a design to attack that.
These are some of 2020’s best offensive play-callers, many of whom accomplish those exact goals with what they call.