Sideline SideKick Tracker
Coach's Read is the screen for timeouts, halftime and Saturday morning. It shows your own tendencies, read off the plays you've already logged. It's a self-scout, not a scout of somebody else. Everything on it is worked out on your own phone from your own game.
What it is
You're already keeping the play-by-play. Once there's enough of it, Coach's Read tells you which calls are moving the ball tonight, which have stopped, and what an opposing coordinator with a notepad can already tell about you.
It's a coaching screen. Fans never see it, and the owner can switch it off for the whole staff in Team Settings.
Two ways in, and why they open differently
- From the game screen: the Coach's Read card. It opens on This Game, because that's what you want for a quick look between series.
- From the home screen: the Coach's Read door. It opens on Season, because a coach opening it on a Tuesday wants the year, not a Friday that hasn't happened yet.
The This Game / Season switch is at the top either way, and it stays where you put it.
The rules it plays by
These are printed at the bottom of the screen. Read them once and the rest of the screen makes sense.
| Rule | Why |
|---|---|
| Counts, not averages | A coach can hold "6 for 41" in his head. "6.8 yards per carry" he has to unpack. |
| Nothing ranks under 3 calls | Two carries for 22 is a long run, nothing more. Under three calls, a read you can't trust is worse than none. |
| Everything with 3+ calls is listed | The screen doesn't pick favorites once a call clears the floor. |
| Flags and bad snaps excluded | One holding call shouldn't make your best play look broken. |
| Nothing appears before about 10 plays | Same reason as the three-call floor, applied to the game as a whole. |
This Game
WORKING · GONE COLD
Your calls, ranked. WORKING is 3+ calls ranked by yards per call. GONE COLD is 3+ calls averaging two yards or less: the plays you're still calling that have stopped paying off.
BY PLAY TYPE
The same read, pooled by play family. Power and Counter are two calls and one read, so this section fills in early. A family reaches three uses long before any single call does. On a night when the call table is still empty, look here.
It only works if your plays are tagged. If yours aren't, this section says so and tells you where to fix it.
FIELD POSITION
Your average drive start tonight and, in Season scope, across the year, so you can see if tonight is unusual.
BY QUARTER
Eligible snaps and yards, quarter by quarter.
What they can see: the self-scout
This is the most useful section on the screen. It looks at this half and tells you what somebody in the other press box has already written down, in the words they'd use.
Two things trigger it:
- Direction. "You're telegraphing right. 11 of 14 directional plays this half have gone right — 79% — and their edge will start cheating that way."
- Run/pass balance. "You're 78% run this half — 18 of 23. Expect an extra man in the box until you make them pay for it."
Above the warnings are direction bars, and under them the run–pass count for the half. When there's nothing to flag, the screen says so: "Nothing standing out — your calls are balanced enough that there's no obvious key".
It only reads this half, on purpose. A tendency you broke at halftime isn't a tendency anymore, and a screen that kept counting the first half would keep warning you about a problem you already fixed.
Season
Season asks different questions, so it has different sections.
- WORKS ALL SEASON · NEVER WORKED: the same two lists, for the year.
- STARTED WORKING · STOPPED WORKING: the last three games measured against everything before them. Each row shows both numbers: "7 for 63, last 3" above "Earlier: 11 for 34". This is where you find the call that's slipped, and the one your install finally took on.
- BY PLAY TYPE: families, across the season.
Season scope loads your other games the first time you switch to it, so give it a moment on a slow connection. Tonight's game is included and counted once, so a live game that's still adding plays doesn't get double-counted into the year.
When a section is empty
Every empty section on this screen tells you why it's empty, and most of them tell you what to do:
| It says | Do this |
|---|---|
| "Tendencies appear after about 10 plays" | Nothing. Keep logging. |
| "None of your plays have a family yet" | Tag them in the playbook. One afternoon, once. |
| "Nothing has been called three times yet" | Nothing. The three-call floor is doing its job. |
| "This Game reads the game on your Game tab" | Switch to Season, or open a game first. |
Sharing it with your staff
The share button in the top right sends the read as plain text, in exactly the scope you're looking at, so the message always matches the screen.
This read is built from your formation and play-call names. Send it to your staff, not to an athletic director or a parent. The postgame report is the one meant to go outside the staff. It can't name a single one of your calls, which is why it's safe to email. The two are kept on different screens on purpose so you can't send the wrong one.
Fans don't see the share button at all.
The two-device sideline
Coach's Read reads the same live game your play entry writes to, so there's nothing to set up. An assistant enters plays on an iPad while the coordinator keeps this open on a phone, and it updates as plays land.
It also opens as its own screen, not a pop-up, so opening it on the same device doesn't block the assistant from entering the next play behind it.