Reading the Game

Football from the couch to the coordinator’s booth

Reading the Game takes you from watching football casually to understanding it at a high level, so you can see the play coming before the snap.

It assumes you’ve watched plenty of games and maybe played Madden, but never played or coached. Terms like nickel, Power I or Cover 2 may sound familiar without meaning much yet. By the end you’ll know what each one is, why it exists, where it came from, and how to spot it on a broadcast.

How to use this course

• Read it in order the first time. Each chapter builds only on earlier ones.
• Look things up later: use the search box, the Glossary, or the reference atlas.
• Print it: every chapter has a printable PDF (link at the top right of each chapter, or see all PDFs).
• Play with the diagrams: every play is drawn in Python with the gridiron library, in the same coordinates as the NFL Big Data Bowl’s tracking data. Open “Show the Python” under any diagram to see the code.