In November 1990, just before final exams in my second to last semester as a senior at Boston College, I walked into a software store and saw a game called PlayMaker Football {PMFB} from Brøderbünd Software. As a football enthusiast, I was immediately entranced by the possibilities inherent in the game. My roomates' Macintosh immediately became caught in a tug of war between school work and PlayMaker Football. Needless to say, I was not completely focused upon my upcoming exams.
After forming the Global Football League {GFL} with other local enthusiasts and playing through three seasons of 'live head-to-head' play, I brought the GFL on-line onto American On-line. I had signed up just in time to see Geoff Neale win the first of his three championship rings. {Ockers, AOFL Season5 Champions} I signed up for AOFL Season6 for my first season of 'on-line' play. My team, the mArLeYs, went 7-4 that season and made it to the playoffs, only to be stung with a first round loss to the formidable Flunkies {former champions themselves, in AOFL Season4}.
After that loss, two things were apparent to me: First, designing plays was a real craft. Basically, the best teams had the best plays. Second, setting the proper Artificial Intelligence {AI} for your playbook was crucial. The best teams also knew when to call their plays. I immediately sought to provide myself and other coaches with that information. I started the PlayMaker News in March of 1992 to help fill the gap in knowledge between the coaches, and to reach out to those coaches who were not on-line. But the gap in knowledge was still forminable. That is when I started The Coaching Handbook 1.0. It simply started as a folder on my hard drive where I would dump plays and descriptions that coaches sent to me. Then I started to organize it into the form you see before you.
So after many, many hours of hard work, The Coaching Handbook 1.0, a definitive collection of some of the best PlayMaker Football plays and formations from some of the best coaches in PlayMaker Football, is finally finished. All of these plays have been used and tested by the coaches who supplied them. You will find no 'dogs' in here. Enjoy these plays and use them {or variations} in your playbooks. The only consideration that I, and the coaches who have supplied the plays ask, is that whatever you choose to name your version of the play, you leave the appended initials in the new name of the play. This is very simply to give credit where credit is due. Please do not disregard this simple request. {Use of any of the formations included here, does not require any appended initials.}
This file was started before PlayMaker Football 2.0 was available, hence the reason that this file is in 1.x format. If you are already using PMFB 2.0, then just click 'YES' when the program asks if you would like to upgrade this playbook. For those of you who have PlayMaker Football 2.0, look for The Coaching Handbook 2.0, coming soon!
Remember, that all of these plays are from the playbooks of different teams, so the timing may be off when you transfer them to your playbook {especially on medium and deep pass plays}. Likewise, if you transfer a 3-4 {three down linemen and four linebackers} defensive play into your playbook, and your team runs a 4-3 {four down linemen and three linebackers} defense, then you will have to make the appropriate substitutions. Due to differences in player abilities and the new timing in PlayMaker Football 2.0, some of the plays included here may also need other adjustments to fit into your offensive scheme. Also, most of the AI has been left at the settings that the donating coach chose. You may or may not want to change the AI to fit into your AI scheme.
I would like to thank every coach who took the time and energy to help me with this project. There is a complete list of the coaches who contributed to this project available in the Acknowledgements section. You may also have noticed that some of these plays were in the CI$ Coaching 101 Handbook, and in the original AOL Coaching Handbook, the reason that I have transplanted them here is very simple; they still work. Any play is only as valuable as how well it works against your current opponent. These plays work against a wide variety of offenses and defenses, hence I have used them here. Every play description that you will read is from the 'horse's mouth,' so to speak, as every coach wrote up the description for each play that he/or she contributed to this tome of PlayMaker Football knowledge.
Finally, while it is nice to have some of these plays in your playbook, if they are the only plays in your playbook, your opponents will find it very easy to thwart your team. Good luck in your pursuit of building a PlayMaker Football champion!
