Scoop Study: Mike Shanahan and Indiana - Possession and 10 Plays

Plenty of offensive coordinators call plays.

Elite offensive play callers sequence plays.

There's a big difference between the two, and no situation is that more evident than how offensive play callers structure the first play of each possession - or as the specific scenario is referred among coaches - P&10 (Possession & 10).

Last fall, Indiana not only went undefeated, won the national title, and had a top 3 scoring offense in college football, but FootballScoop Coordinator of the Year (2024) Mike Shanahan and the Hoosiers offense also led the country in third down conversion percentage, converting at a clip of nearly 57%. That was more than 3% higher than the next best offense in college football, fellow Big Ten member Ohio State at just over 53%.

As any good offensive coordinator will tell you, success on third down starts with being efficient on first and second down situations. Efficiency on those base downs means getting 1/2 of what you need on first down, half of what's required on second down, and then converting whatever you have left on third down.

Starting today, we're rolling out a series of studies on the best offensive coordinators in college football, starting appropriately with the defending national champions in Bloomington under the direction of Curt Cignetti, who is off to a remarkable 27-2 start after two seasons leading Indiana.

Before start to dig in, Dub Maddox as well as a host of others online at at clinics over the years have pointed out some traits of top P&10 calls worth sharing with both veteran offensive play callers, as well as those who may be heading into their first year or two of calling plays. Here are some tips on one of the most critical, and underrated scenarios pertaining to P&10 calls.

On his P&10 calls, Shanahan does a great job utilizing motions and in their season opener against ODU they built schemed up some explosive runs with a long trap scheme, first motioning into a compressed formation look before lining up compressed a few series later and with the same explsovie run result, and then used that guard-pull action to dial up and explosive shot play later in the game in what turned out to be a great example of sequencing of plays despite the pass falling incomplete.

Later on in our series studying the top play callers in the game we'll take a look at high, mid, and low red zone strategies, shot / chunk plays in the passing game, unbalanced formations, RPOs, quick and drop back passing game, screens, and some creative ways coordinators are utilizing to run popular flood patterns, crossing routes, slide and dash concepts, as well as a host of other things we have planned before fall arrives.

Our journey will take us to North Texas, Ole Miss, Miami, Oklahoma, Tennessee, among a bunch of other potential places, and what journey talking about offense would be complete without a stop about option offenses like Navy, Air Force, and Army utilize.

This time of year so many coaches are looking for resources to improve themselves, their staff, and their team, and as a small high school head coach, I'm no different. So here's to bringing some new things I've been researching to the site the next several months ranging from these studies to some other additional game planning and organizational resources and templates - many of which have been monumental hits in the past - to add to your tool kit.

What do you want to see featured in future studies? How Buster Faulkner dresses up counter? Variations of mesh? Drop a comment to let me know what should get covered in future installments, or let me know at doug@footballscoop.com / or on X @CoachSamz.