Answering My Most-Asked Football Question
Matty F. Brown answers the question “How did you learn about football Xs and Os?” with a guide on how to learn more about the game:
“How did you learn about football Xs and Os?”
In my time covering this great sport, that’s the question I have been asked most. And I get it: it must be jarring having a British person breaking down the nitty-gritty details of America’s game—or a “tea and crumpets motherfucker”, as a New York Giants fan once commented after I dared to suggest there were elements of Eli Manning’s game to Geno Smith, way back in 2022.
I’ve only partially (and inadequately) answered this over the years, so I’m putting together a guide I can point towards. This isn’t the absolute right way to do things. Others have written excellent advice that is probably more useful. Instead, this guide is unique to my experience as a football student. I hope it proves helpful to you.
Curiosity
Let’s start with my background.
The first game of football I watched was a preseason game in 2012. It was a hate watch. The British high school zeitgeist was negative towards American football, and I expected to come away laughing at a pathetic display. On the contrary, what I found was a complex numbers and space game that I knew I had to understand better.
Soccer always appealed to me from a tactical standpoint; football had even more schematic possibilities—every play run by the offense, defense, and special teams was essentially a set piece.
Why did the offense decide to run that play in that situation?
Why was that defender positioned in that stance?
Why did the ball carrier react the way he did?
I was, and remain, so curious.
If you’ve clicked on this guide, chances are you are already intrigued by football Xs and Os. My advice would be: do not lose sight of what sparked your curiosity, because otherwise—like any form of study—you will grow fatigued or tired with an element that you ultimately aren’t that interested in.
Time and Persistence
There is no quick way of doing this, and it is an ongoing process. While I did a degree in modern history, over the same timeframe, I did a degree in football. I’ve studied the sport in depth from 2015 to 2025. A 10-year football masters. There isn’t really a way to cram the knowledge. It will come with time and persistence.
Where to Begin?
You’ve watched football, you have some understanding of the Xs and Os, but, given the overwhelming breadth of jargon, schemes, and techniques, you’re understandably unsure where to begin.
You should start on what first excites you. For me, it was attempting to answer some questions relating to that great Seahawks Legion of Boom defense.
How was the LOB able to play so fast on defense?
How were they able to play so much cover 3, and yet not get beat by the madden-suggested cover 3-beaters?
How were they able to make those unfancied, tall, “stiff”, long cornerbacks viable to the point of it being a league-wide trend?
Researching these questions led to other topics:
The Seahawks’ defensive speed came back to their schematic design and where players’ eyes were.
The Seahawks’ cover 3 generated topics like zone-matching cover 3, even taking me to Nick Saban’s Xs and Os—as that was, and is, the most covered form of matching cover 3 defense.
The Seahawks’ cornerbacks discussion took me into press techniques for all corners. And while the Seahawks utilized step-kick press, I ran into all types of other press techniques with terms like mirror stepping and inch-off and motor and off-arm.
You will encounter jargon you don’t understand. Do not be afraid: like brain synapses firing, or Charlie from It’s Always Sunny’s crazy evidence board, these are endless branches to follow. There is no correct path or right way to do this, so I would suggest picking what interests you in a given moment. Like any study, not all the information will be immediately absorbed. However, familiar past connections will re-emerge as you look into other subjects. This web will knit together over time.
Tape
To generate some topics that are interesting to you and keep learning, there is no replacement for game tape. You need to be able to access All-22 footage, ideally wide copy and end zone, so that you can see the full picture on each play.
As coined by Pat Kirwan in his book Take Your Eye Off The Ball, do that!
It is an instructive exercise to watch how an offense versus defense plays out in a game, exploring where and why each side experiences success or failure. This will lead to more questions.
It’s also useful to watch an individual player throughout a game and ask yourself why they are doing the things that they are doing on each play, pre- and post-snap. Again, further questions will follow.
This game tape is on the internet. The NFL makes Gamepass available as a product to pay for. There are also All-22 games posted on YouTube and in some other corners, some that you may find after establishing some connections.
How to Research
The internet is an invaluable tool for learning about football Xs and Os that has rapidly accelerated my football studies and taught me the majority of my knowledge.
When you have found a topic or topic branch that interests you, search for various bits of jargon on Google. For instance “cornerback” “press” “technique” “step kick” would generate various articles.
Pieces of jargon, while initially a barrier to learning, can be important to jot down, as they are buzz words that someone may have created educational content on.
(A cautionary note on jargon: coaches will use a different word for the same meaning. For example, this excellent clinic on “step kick” press technique has UCLA corner coach Demetrice Martin calling it the “peer step” and it is titled “corner fundamentals”.)
Like with more important things, media literacy should always be exercised with football research. Reddit user NinerGangSixtyNine may not be the most reliable source (sorry NG69!). There is plenty of useful football information on the internet that may not be 100% correct (my own work included), but does still paint an overall picture that informs you at the time—it’s only after coming back to it years later that you will spot a discrepancy or misunderstanding.
Here are some online resources that I have found to be excellent for learning the game. These can also serve as launch points for topics. I’ve listed them in alphabetical order:
AlertThePost – Bobby Peters
America’s War Game – Ian Boyd
Blitzology - Brian Vaughn
Breakdown Sports - Space Coyote
BrophyFootball
Cmikesspinmove
Coaches Insider
Coach Cogan
Coach Hoover
Coach Tube
Coach Vass
Dub Maddox
Inside The Pylon
Mark Schofield/SBNation
MatchQuarters – Cody Alexander
Nate Tice/Yahoo Sports
ReadOptional – Ollie Connolly
RileyKolste Football
Smart Football - Chris Brown
Ted Nyugen/The Athletic
Trench Warfare – Brandon Thorn
USAFootball
It never hurts to search web pages for key terms, even running a “CTRL F” on some. Some of the above are older and may require WebArchive. Some will be more accessible to a beginner than others.
You will be amazed at the amount of football clinics, produced by coaches willing to share their methods and how they view the game, that are posted online. I would thoroughly recommend subscribing to CoachesInsider, given the quality and breadth of access.
With Xs and Os, always bear in mind that there’s never an absolutely correct way of doing things—we’ve yet to develop a chess-style robot for football scheme—so it is interesting to consider the context of each coach’s situation and their reasons for picking their particular route.
The True Power of the Internet
The football connections you are able to form and learn from is the true power of the internet. On the web, you are able to demonstrate your thirst for football knowledge and connect with experts in their field.
Through posting my blogs on Twitter, I was brought into an awesome team at Inside The Pylon by Mark Schofield, where I learned from so many smart people in a football environment.
After getting my hands on a Seahawks playbook and posting nerdy things on social media, I quickly formed a friendship with my Seattle Overload co-host Griffin Sturgeon. Griff was also interested in the Seahawks’ defense, so we would spend hours pinging questions on playbook jargon and mechanics back and forth at each other, peer learning if you will.
I believe the football community at BlueSky is a return to this positive learning environment, where questions will be seen by expert posters and answered. I know there are also educational football Discord groups where similar exists.
Meanwhile, the kindness of American coaches and players to educate cannot be understated. People like Coach Brian “Blitzology” Vaughn, Coach Adam Gaylor, and Coach Rocky Seto have spent their free time sharing, with nothing in return.
Former Seahawks safety Tyvis Powell answered my Seahawks defensive back questions.
Richard Sherman engaged on Twitter, helping me confirm some press technique thoughts.
Kam Chancellor replied to a direct message, clarifying a coverage.
They’ve had more of an impact on my learning than they could know. I’m not sharing these names as a flex (Griffin is definitely a big deal) or as an invitation to go and harass these busy people—please leave them be! It’s to illustrate that football people will often treat your earnest desire to learn with kindness, resources, and teaching.
Books
A lot of the information found in football books can now be found online. Of course, the old school methods are sometimes a nice change of pace.
Take Your Eye Off The Ball remains an excellent intro from Patrick Kirwan.
Cody Alexander does a great job of explaining football in an entertaining way that avoids inaccessible minutiae. His MatchQuarters book series opened up my eyes to a certain way of playing defense.
Human Kinetics books
American Football Coaches Association books
Nike COTY Clinics manuals
Simulator
The Madden video game franchise was a fast way for me to teach myself the basic rules and mechanics of football. But football video games have been more than that for me, where I find them useful for visualizing Xs and Os. Hear me out.
A hot topic after Jayden Daniels’ remarkable rookie year, full of rapid improvement, has been Virtual Reality training for quarterbacks. Seahawks third-round pick Jalen Milroe revealed the team asked him to engage in similar VR work this offseason.
Madden is by no means a VR trainer or even an accurate sports simulator—in fact, I think the game sucks now, but maybe that’s just because I suck at it now, and would rather spend my money on some nice whisky rather than a next gen console, whatever.
Where sports video games remain valuable, personally,is that the sport of football is essentially a pattern recognition game. When you are learning these complex Xs and Os concepts and techniques, you need to be able to visualize how they play out. While real football tape is crucial, the more times and situations you can witness them will improve your comprehension of each concept, even in video game form.
While NCAA 14 carries gameplay flaws and these patterns do not always play out like real life, it is still an effective live pattern recognition practice. For example, 11-year-old-video-game-or-not, I am still able to see how double posts stresses the leverage of cover 4 from a 4-2-5 over front, and how that defensive structure can allow or remove the play via leverage, bad routes, or whatever else.
Most important: because you are thinking about how you can execute or stop the concept, you are thinking about the patterns in a slightly different way than when watching tape. You are gaining real-time “action” reps.
Coach/Play the Game
Chances are, a fair few of you live in America. I would urge you to get involved with the game; I’m sure some high schools require some form of help. It’s here where you can immerse yourself in a team and accelerate your learning from experienced coaches in their own systems.
It is also possible in the United Kingdom, where most teams require help. At university, I was able to play and coach. I learned so much from my head coach, particularly on the importance of defensive leverage. I think this is a similar situation across Europe, and I know the sport is played across the globe.
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This article was edited by Alistair Corp.
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