Football Audibles - What is the Quarterback Screeming?

So you're watching an exciting football game and it's your favorite team verses their rivals. You listen intently and before every play you hear them yelling out random numbers and colors. Asking yourself what is this for? Many people often wonder what is going on when this is happening. The thing is most of the time it means nothing! Its just fake numbers and colors. Every once in a while it has meaning to it. Football is a fairly easy sport to figure out and it is a great sport to watch.

When these quarterbacks are yelling random colors and numbers it is usually nothing, but once in a while it is known as an audible. An audible is a change of play because maybe the defense is set up in a way that will totally wreck your plans of making a good play. So if the defense is set up to counter your play, the quarterback calls an audible.

The first time i learned about audibles was in high school football. I am sure there is more than one way to do it and I'm sure every coach has different plans. For example, the color the quarterback calls, lets say when he yells out "RED" that would mean the play is changing to a run, or maybe he says "BLUE" that would mean it is a pass, and if he says "GREEN" it means there is no change in the play.

Next example so he says red, now he says numbers, we know it is a run. Next he says, "23" the first number is going to be the running back that is going to carry the ball, and the second number is going to be the hole he is going to run through. When i played the hole number was even on the right and odds on the left starting between center and guards, counting out. Say he says "RED 23" and lets say the 2 represents the fullback in this case. The fullback will be running through the 3 hole. This is just an example I don't know if anyone would run that play or not.

Moving on the the blue color lets say it means pass as stated before. Lets say he says 35, this would make certain receivers make certain pass patterns. 3 will be the formation the 5 will be the set pattern for the different receivers. So lets say the tight end is running a hook, and the wide receiver is running a slant, that would be determined all by the 5, knowing your patterns before the game starts.

Usually if teams run audibles, they have what is called "dummy calls" also. Lets say he says "GREEN 23" that would mean there is no change in play but maybe the defense would pay closer attention to the 3 hole. Dummy calls are also used so the other team can not pick up on the play as easy if there is an audible.

I hope these examples can help anyone understand a quarterback a little better when he is screaming out random weird numbers and colors before a ball is snapped. Remember these are examples though and everyones audibles are different. This is just kind of the basics of what is going on.