A veteran college football coach who has worked in almost every Power 5 conference is sitting down for a late lunch. This is typically a moment when he would gush about his players. But on this afternoon, in a rare instance, he is gushing about another coach.
“The level of espionage in this sport is insane, and he’s the best I’ve ever seen,” he said as he lowered his voice. “You go from giving up 12- and 14-yard chunks to plays of negative-2 yards. He’s amazing.”
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He is a signal stealer.
Well, actually he’s a defensive assistant coach. He also has a rare talent that can — and on several occasions has — changed the course of a college football game. This isn’t a case in which it’s a guy who used intel he brought from a previous staff to burn an old employer. This is next-level stuff. Armed with his trusty binoculars, pen and a pad, he can deliver wondrous bits of info and become an offensive coordinator’s worst nightmare.
He agreed to share some of his secrets with The Athletic to provide insight on the practice of signal stealing in college football. We agreed to not disclose his identity or the details of the teams he’s worked for or faced.
One example of his handiwork came against a conference rival. “I got their stretch, boot and power signals as soon as I saw their first series,” he says, acknowledging the simplicity of the boot giveaway. It was someone on the sideline gesturing as if they were putting boots on. “It’s too simple sometimes because they have to communicate it to the players and they don’t want to add another layer onto the players to not screw it up.
“Their coach makes the call. Right as he makes the call, I said, ‘You’re getting boot.’ They booted right into an edge blitz, and we made a pick.”
That interception, a pick-six, was a game changer, and by the end of the day they had held a gifted quarterback and his offense to less than half their offensive production from a year earlier.
This season, the business of signal stealing could become more challenging. In May, the NCAA passed a rule limiting the number of people who can use headsets during a game to 20, including the 15 coaches (head coach, 10 assistants and four graduate assistants). The other five headsets will go to four players and one other staffer who is in a non-coaching role. “What a drastic change that may be for some schools,” said one Power 5 coordinator who suspects some programs used those additional headsets as part of their signal-stealing operation.
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Coaches say they noticed a dramatic difference in staffs piled into the press boxes from around 2005, when there would usually be five total coaches upstairs, to around 2012, when some schools had 14 or 15 staffers in there. If you’re an off-the-field assistant trying to steal signals, “Now you’re gonna have to stand right beside the (defensive coordinator),” says a veteran signal stealer who has worked in multiple Power 5 conferences. “And you won’t get information clearly, fast enough, with confidence in front of 80,000 people to make a difference.”
Not that anyone thinks this will put an end to the sideline sleuthing.
Just how common is signal-stealing espionage in college football? The Athletic spoke to more than 20 coaches who estimated that 80 percent to 90 percent of college teams do some form of it. Several of the coaches contacted for this story have worked in the FBS and the NFL and said there is considerably more signal stealing in college than the pros. The two biggest reasons for that: the NFL’s speaker system through which a coach talks to earpieces in the helmets of the quarterback on offense and to the middle linebacker on defense, and most NFL teams huddle much more than college teams.
The guru of all signal stealers was the NFL’s Howard Mudd. The Indianapolis Colts offensive line coach from 1998 to 2009 under Tony Dungy led a unit that allowed the fewest sacks in the NFL over that dozen-year period when Peyton Manning’s offense was shredding the league.
“The urban myth is true,” a former Colts player says. “Howard had an unbelievable ability to decipher those signals and the codes in a way that very few could and do it instantaneously and have a read on it, and to be able to communicate it quickly enough.
“That’s half the battle — OK, I’ve got the sign, it’s like in baseball, I’m standing on second base and have the catcher’s sign. Well, how do I communicate it to the batter in a way that I’m not tipping my hand as well? There’s games on every side of it. How quickly in real time can that be relayed to the coordinator before the play comes in to be able to actually take advantage of it? And they were the best at it.”
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Even though teams love as much information as possible, the bottom line for elite quarterbacks is knowing whether pressure is coming. That explains why most teams have a whole practice period on offense that is designated for blitz pickup. Teams first want the quarterback to stay upright, healthy and maintain possession. They also recognize that if they know it is coming and the quarterback can get the right protection and right play — and the defense doesn’t check out of it — the defense is vulnerable.
“Peyton was unbelievable with, ‘OK, the blitz is coming, now watch me decipher which blitz and I’m going to absolutely feast upon it,” the former Colt says. “Those signals, by the way, changed because that urban legend (Mudd’s signal-stealing acumen) was such that everybody in the NFL knew about him, too. When they played Peyton and Howard Mudd, they knew. They weren’t dumb. They were mixing signals and doing all they could to try and change those signals, but Howard’s ability to not only go into a game with some of that code but also to decipher it in-game, that’s where the magic really was. That’s why they were so elite.
“It was, ‘OK, here’s the hand to the boot. Here’s the hand to the elbow. Here’s shooting a bow-and-arrow. Here’s any number of these different signals. Rubbing their chest, doing an exploding dynamite, or maybe it was super subtle — they’re taking their hat off or touching their ear.’ There is absolutely an advantage when you know it’s coming, and those guys can crack the code of which pressure it is based on the safety, based on look, based on tendency, based on the whole Rolodex that Peyton would be able to go through.”
NFL teams are skilled enough to change signals on the fly during a game. The college game doesn’t have that level of sophistication. It’s a more elementary process, but the increase in staff sizes at the FBS level has created more opportunities for bigger programs to engage in it.
One longtime coach who has spent more than two decades as a college defensive coordinator says, “If you sneak in and go to somebody’s practice, it’s unethical. If somebody’s steals my signals, that’s on me. It’s up to you to keep things changed up.”
The coach added that his eyes were opened later in his career when his head coach hired a staffer whose main role was to steal signals. “That was pretty much all he did. He studied a lot of TV copies. That’s where he got most of his stuff. He could get everything — formation and play — and he would have it early. What he told me, and it really resonated, was if you can get three or four calls, that makes a huge difference in the game. It’s all worth it. After that, I realized I gotta hide my signals. It was a big deal to hide everything we did from then on. I don’t think people realize how easy it is to get your signals if you’re not really being discreet.”
Defensive coordinators’ biggest fears are the offense knowing what coverage they are playing. The ready-set-check-with-me teams, which have the quarterback and everybody else except the center look over to the sideline, are the ones that spook defensive staffs the most.
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Nothing, though, is more unsettling for a coach than when he suspects the other team is onto them. To that point, if a coach doesn’t expect a former colleague to spill the beans on him, he is kidding himself. NFL teams often debrief new players about their old teams. In college, most of the turnover isn’t player-related, it’s coach-related. And dealing with college kids who don’t play football for a living makes coaches more hesitant to overhaul signals even though they are fully aware of the risk of not doing so.
“You know it when they’ve got you because you start thinking, they’re not that lucky,” says one coach, who said his players came to the sideline shaken after they heard an opponent calling out their code word for a specific blitz. “The players are looking at me like I’ve got three heads.”
Our signal stealer stumbled onto this craft in his first year, when he was making next-to-nothing as an entry-level staffer. His role on game day was to sit upstairs in the coaches’ box and call out personnel for the defensive coordinator. He thought to himself, how can I be of more value?
Over the years, he’s developed his methodology. “I’m writing down everything — hand on nose, arm out, hand on top of head. … What is the actual play? Are they signaling numbers in? Or is the signal a word? It’s just about being methodical and matching early what you see and getting confirmation of the little things. I just try to really pay attention and write down notes.”
He’s learned many coaches don’t change their signals. They don’t want to think about extra steps because they have to process and do a lot in a hurry, he says. And they don’t want their players getting bogged down trying to recall things that might not be intuitive.
“It’s a giant math problem,” the coach says. “I can’t help myself doing it a lot of times. It’s a puzzle.”
A three-fingers sign is a common tip for 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end and three wideouts). The Longhorns hand-gesture is common for 12 personnel (one running back, two tight ends, two wideouts). A fist is often used for 21 personnel (two backs, one tight end, two wideouts). “Some teams don’t care about giving you that information, but it can help your call defensively,” the coach says.
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Such information, when relayed to the defensive coordinator, can afford him an additional three or four seconds to make his decision. If the offense is going to be in 22 personnel (two running backs and two tight ends), the defense better have some heavy people in the game to counter, whereas against 10 personnel (one back and four wideouts), the defense probably will want to be in nickel or dime.
Boise State, for example, has frustrated rival staffs for years with its mass substitutions on offense, which don’t appear to be signaled in and send defensive coordinators scrambling.
Identifying personnel can be a thankless role that involves repeatedly and furiously counting up bodies.
A former college assistant now coaching in the NFL recalls when a staffer was right on every snap but one. He yelled out “11” but hadn’t noticed that the player who appeared to be a receiver wearing No. 88 was a tight end wearing a scrunched-up No. 83. The defense was playing the pass and got gashed by a power running play.
Pregame recon is a must for a staffer whose duty it is to identify personnel before defensive coordinators make their call: This guy has high socks. That guy has three wristbands on his right arm. That guy has wristbands on both elbows. Seeing who is coming out of the game is just as important as seeing who is coming in. And it is chaotic, especially when the official who is supposed to stand over the ball to give the defense time to match up sometimes doesn’t.
“Shit’s happening so fast,” says one staffer in his late 30s who has spent time at the NFL and college levels. “It ain’t easy.”
Any advance intel is welcome when a team is trying to decipher signals and codes. It can be something detected from an opponent’s previous games or something gleaned from a close coaching peer who has played the opponent.
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Technology is making them more vulnerable, too. Cameras and audio quality always are improving, and each season a handful of teams get burned by something that anyone on their couch could pick up if they knew what to look for. Many head coaches have a staffer watch a TV copy of a game broadcast in hopes of matching a gesture with a play. One Power 5 offensive coordinator told The Athletic he studies a TV copy every week to see what he can find. He also said, “I hate when they (TV cameras) pan to us.”
“You’d be shocked what you can get off the TV copy,” a Big 12 defensive coach says.
Some teams have weekly “skunk meetings” in which staffers gather whatever info they can from the TV copy. However, that intel comes with a caveat: If a coach thinks his guys can handle it, use it. If not, just read the keys and play ball.
Still, the former college assistant now working in the NFL calls studying the TV copy “the new signal stealing. It’s like playing poker. How do I know if he has a full house? Does he scratch his face? Everybody has a tell.”
College teams have taken pretty extreme measures to cloak how they get their plays in from the sideline — Oregon held up five bedsheets stretched across PVC frames to shield its sideline signalers from Arizona State’s staff in 2015. One of the coaches The Athletic spoke to said his team resorted to holding up towels to try to mask things from its opponent but realized its own players couldn’t see the signals. Just exchanging film has caused some dustups between staffs.
“Because they don’t want you to see their communication, they actually edit the film they send to their opponents so they don’t show them from the sideline communicating to the quarterback,” says the veteran signal stealer who has worked in multiple Power 5 conferences. “Their film guys are taught, ‘Hey, listen, you don’t start this frickin’ edit until we’re at the line.’
“I’ve had head coaches get pissed off because they feel like teams are leaving out motions and stuff. But the ones complaining about that the most are the ones who are probably cheating.”
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An offensive coach in the Pac-12 says to throw defenses off the scent during the game, his team has three different signals for some go-to plays. “Defensive guys are paranoid,” he says. “You hit one out-and-up on ’em, and they won’t bite again for another five weeks.”
Deducing who is the live guy — the person sending in the signal for the actual play to be run — is crucial, but it’s not impossible to do. If a team has three signalers, for example, they might not finish their signals at the same time. Based on how the quarterback or offense reacts, it can be discerned which is the live call.
“Figuring out their live guy to me is just common sense,” our signal stealer says. “Some people will change it and mix it up. I think their third-string quarterback probably won’t be live. He’s usually just a dummy guy. The coach needs it to go right. They don’t want to take any delay-of-game penalty. Sometimes, the guy who is live will stand a bit further forward. You can also usually tell from the body language of who the quarterback is looking at or who stops signaling and then the QB turns around. There’s always, always some little tells because they’ve got to communicate it quickly and efficiently. And, those (huge bingo) cards with the four random images are irrelevant 99 percent of the time. It just refers to how fast they wanna go or is a decoy.”
Some teams, conversely, don’t care if their opponent figures out which call is live, because they can’t adjust to it fast enough, he says. “We’re always running into a time constraint for it to be usable information.”
On a sideline, there are all sorts of possible targets. One guy who was charting players didn’t realize he’d been tipping off whether it was a run or pass until later in the season after a buddy on a different team broke the news to him. Run calls are a lot shorter: Green Right 93 Blast. Pass calls are longer: Blue Right, F-Short, Two-Jet, Flanker Drive. “Based on the time you would spend writing, we would have somebody watching you,” he was told, realizing that if defensive coordinators know if the play is a run or a pass, it is an enormous opportunity for them to get an eighth player in the box or play zone coverage.
One 30-something offensive coordinator scoffs at the notion of a defensive coordinator thinking he’s gained an advantage if he knows whether a play is going to be a run or a pass. “Those days are over with all of the RPOs and stuff we give our quarterback,” the offensive coordinator said. “I probably call runs 75 percent of the time (which actually translates into more of a 50-50 balance). I trust our quarterback to get us into the right thing because we spend so much time with him on worst-case scenarios.”
Our signal stealer talks to his defensive coordinator over the headset. He doesn’t want the players paying any attention to it — they should just focus on their game process. When he’s pretty sure he has something, he’ll say “ALERT!” and relay what he thinks is coming.
“You’re not gonna be right all the time. It’s the cost of doing business,” he says. “DCs get it. They understand what’s going on. I’ve never had a DC get mad at me. Even if you don’t get what you expect, you still have to be fundamentally sound.
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“There’s been numerous times, though, where it’s more trouble than it’s worth. I’ve guessed wrong. You think it’s power and they run counter — ‘Aw, fuck.’ ”
He won’t act on anything within the first series: “I’m pretty analytical,” he says. “I don’t like to make broad statements that early in the game; maybe it’s a common play. I’m gonna let them run it again before I say, ‘Hey, Coach, that’s power.’
“Your data set isn’t big. If you advance scout people, like I’m pretty sure a few programs do, they’ll watch those things to write ’em down to match plays and signals, and it could really help. But if they only run power three times a game, there’s still a little hesitation and doubt.”
Many signals he’s figured out seem fairly intuitive. He’s deduced a team’s signal for running the power play (it relies on a double team at the point of attack and then a lead blocker coming in to clean up any nearby linebacker) when one of the signals punches one hand into the other as if to say, “I’m strong.” Another team’s signal was simulating barbell curls. Another was a flexed biceps pose.
“I’ve gotten power on third-and-short where we’ve had a cross blitz inside against it,” he says. “You match it up with plays you’re expecting from a scouting report.”
A signal he once got for four verts (four receivers running routes straight upfield) was one hand sliding off another upward with palms facing each other, as if taking off. He realized one opponent’s signal for four verts was tapping their wrists, like time to go. Putting a hand in front of one’s face has been used for a screen pass. Pretending to draw a beer from an imaginary tap could be a draw play.
Sometimes it seems just too easy, like when one Power 5 powerhouse drilled another by almost 40 points thanks in part to the rival defensive coordinator’s motioning what looked like a big zero above his head that proved to be a dead giveaway for a zero blitz call (cornerbacks on an island with no deep help).
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Detecting when a hard count is coming also is a big plus. One team’s signal for that was looking like they were shivering, arms folded, hands rubbing their biceps to alert Freeze! Freeze! Freeze! “Sometimes, they’d do binoculars with their hands cupped around their eyes — see what the defense is gonna do.” Another was pretending to use a camera and triggering it with their index finger to take a picture.
Another proud moment for our signal stealer was getting an opponent’s call for zone read with a bubble. That was from someone holding their hands lined up with pinkies side to side in front of them, as if they were reading a book.
He is on high alert for double moves. Numerous times he’s noticed a chop-and-go preceded by a sideways tomahawk chop with something like a fist added to the end of it. In those moments, the defensive response is to be in more of a soft coverage and have the secondary play off and not break on the ball.
Defenses are most vulnerable at the start of a drive or after a quarter change, because the offense has 25 players standing around their coaches near the sideline. Who will come out of that pack and onto the line of scrimmage is anyone’s guess.
“It’s the only thing I’d usually give them ahead of time is one verts or double moves,” our signal stealer says. “ ‘Play it soft. If they throw a hitch on you, they get a hitch on you.’ ”
Signal stealing, of course, is a two-way street. Our signal stealer says he thinks that picking up defensive signals probably would be a lot easier than picking up offensive signals. “On D, you have to signal it in a lot faster, so there are a lot of one-signal deals,” he says. “There’s a lot more variables to the offensive side.”
The Pac-12 offensive coach says he’s more worried about his players tipping off a signal in warmups than anything being compromised during the game. “They’re dicking around in pregame and are creatures of habit and don’t even realize they’re doing it,” he says.
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In reality, coaches tend to remember the one or two instances when clever detective work led to a game-changing play. What is the cost-benefit of all the effort that goes into it? That probably depends on the quality of work of the person who is doing it.
“The thought of signal stealing is really, really cool, but the practicality of it isn’t all that helpful,” our signal stealer says. “It totally is a game within a game, but sometimes you do wonder if the juice is actually worth the squeeze.”