Friday Night Lights: Pilot and Explanation of the Panthers' First Playcall

So I've finally taken the plunge and decided to watch Friday Night Lights, the highly acclaimed and now ended television series. Before you commend me for taking so long to watch a show that is already off the air, let me try to defend myself. From the show's early beginnings I had been aware of the show's critical acclaim and as the show progressed I kept on hearing from more and more people that I should jump on board. Clearly time got in the way, the rise of bad reality TV shows (that shall not be named) grabbed my attention and I turned my back towards this TV series, based off the movie which is, based off the book which is based off the reality of any rural town in Texas. Though I imagine this setting plays out in many more communities throughout the United States.


Coming from a High School football background myself I can honestly say what happens in the show definitely doesn't happen in Canada or at least Edmonton for that matter. Though I was privy enough to play Varsity level in grade 10 because of a hand injury to the starting Quarterback in the first game vaulted me from Junior Varsity to Varsity within my first 2 weeks of high school. That single incident was as close to the TV series I think I came close to. At the end of the day though the TV's off field drama can be unmatched but the game of football remains the same no matter where you play it.

I was happy to hear during the first game, when they were calling actual plays for instance: the initial play is read by QB Jason Street as "Strong Left-I Y-Flip 24 Counter". "Strong Left-I" refers to the formation. With those with any previous knowledge "Strong Left" refers to the strength of the formation which is useful in commenting on which side of the field is more advantageous for the offense to run the play towards. While this may or may not sound easy to comprehend, defining what "Strong" means could be different from team to team. Most commonly it refers to the side where the majority of your blockers are but at times it may represent where you put your best offensive linemen (not commonly found but plausible) or it may also reference to where you put your strongest wide receiver to play the advantage of where the ball will be played from.

Standard Strong Left-I

In the clip proceeding the play call, you'll notice that if we are to use in the first definition of "Strong Left", I seem most definitely wrong. Strength appears to be on the right as opposed to the called left. That takes us to the next part of the play "Y-Flip", in this formation there are 2 Wide Receivers, 2 Running Backs (Fullback and Halfback), Tight End, and per usual your 5 offensive linemen and 1 QB. The Running backs are aligned in the I-formation thus completing the "Strong Left I" part of the play. Y-Flip refers to the Tight End's movement prior to the snapping of the play. Why call him "Y" if he is the Tight End? Good question and I wish I had a better answer for you. The best explanation I can come up with, is the fact that not all the time will there be a tight end. Instead they could use a slot receiver, so calling him a TE in that play would confuse the whole play call up. "But using letters won't?" Again, good question. By now you can contend that there requires a certain aptitude towards looking at a playbook and calling out plays and I am by no means an expert at this foreign language but I do get a general gist of it. Ranging from high school to the pros playbooks and their terminology are constantly changing and evolving and will differ immensely. Though the sum of all parts does produce an offense... eventually. Where was I? Oh yeah, TE flip instead of Y-Flip. Simply put, considering there are only 3 receivers in this set and not to mix up terminologies of slot receiver and tight end, what happens often is that they'll label the WR/TE going left from right by the last letters of the alphabet. In this case, the rec at the bottom is X, the receiver at the top of the screen is Z and our lovely Tight End makes up the middle, Y. "Y-Flip" then would mean that in pre-snap movement the TE moves from his "Strong Left" position to a "Strong Right" position. Still with me? We've yet to run the actual play.

Strong Left-I, with the Y(TE)-Flip, Image via Friday Night Lights (NBC)

The final part of the play call is labelled, "24 counter". Without getting into much detail the 2 refers to the running back, most often this is the tailback or commonly known as the half back. In this fine series it is played by Brian "Smash" Williams who plays the egotistical running back who has dreams as big as his TD runs. I can only imagine how his character plays out but if the movie was any indication, it will be a roller coaster of emotions. The 4 in the play, refers to the hole in which the running back will run to during the course of the play. Again for those not privy to playing on the offensive side of the things; running plays typically try to run in between blockers and will designate the areas with numbers. The numbers to the right are often labelled with even numbers while numbers on the left are for odd numbers. "24" then means a run to the right between the guard and tackle. The "Counter" part of the play means the blocking that will occur during the play. In this play it doesn't appear that the offensive line does anything special, except block the guy dead ahead of them. For the QB though, he opens away from the 4 hole, and opens to left instead thus delaying the hand off to the RB and possibly confusing the defence into thinking the ball will be run to the left instead of the right. The QB opening to the left also requires the RB to make his first steps to the left as well instead of the right to receive the ball allowing hopefully the blocks to develop. From then on, "Smash" did his thing and broke out for a considerable gain.

As you can tell I'm enjoying the show solely on it's ability to be accurate with its presentation of the game that I love dearly. I'm torn on the idea if I would've enjoyed the same pressure those young men endured during their high school careers as it appears to be a lot to take on at such a young age and I have full confidence that this show will explore that issue in the episodes to come.

After the pilot episode, the show gets the full endorsement from me and I definitely urge all those who are like me who haven't picked up on this show to get it queued up on your media device of choice. And while I'd like to end this post with the show's most notable tagline: "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts...Can't Lose", I fear my good friend and FNL fan number 1, Alex H. has monopoly over it on the internets or at least on the twittersphere. Nonetheless, I definitely have to thank him for his persistence on me to watch this show and I shall do the same even after such a small sample size.

I'm going to try to keep this up as I go along the show and jump in and out of topic with the show and football related goodness so stay tuned and hopefully you enjoyed this small bit.