Sports playbook

About sports playbooks

A sports playbook is the coach's diagram of a single play, set, or team shape — dots for players, lines for movement, drawn in a notation every coach reads at a glance. Schematex renders one from text for the three biggest team sports: American football (X&O play diagrams), basketball (half-court sets), and soccer / association football (team shapes and movement patterns). Each sport is drawn in its own coaching-standard notation on its own correctly-scaled field, court, or pitch.

You name a sport and a formation; the engine places the players. You add movement verbs (route, pass, cut, dribble, run, screen, shot); the engine draws each in the line style that sport's coaches actually use. Unlike an image generator, the output is editable — adding a fourth receiver or moving a screen is a one-line change.

1. Your first play

Every diagram starts with a header naming the sport, then a formation (which places the players), then assignments:

pass 1 2 draws a pass from player 1 to player 2; cut 1 rim sends player 1 to the rim. Basketball draws passes dashed and cuts solid — the convention on every coaching whiteboard.

Basketball and soccer actions run in declaration order. A cut, dribble or run updates the player's position for later passes; a pass or shot does not move the player. Player symbols show starting positions, and numbered actions show the sequence. Football assignments remain simultaneous from the snap formation.

2. The three sports

Pick the sport in the header (sport football|basketball|soccer). Each uses its real unit and the conventional coaching viewpoint:

3. Players & formations

The fastest way to place players is a formation (football/soccer) or set (basketball):

• Football — formation i-form | shotgun | singleback | pistol | spread | trips | empty | goal-line | wishbone with optional strength left/right. Receivers are X Z H Y (Y = tight end), backs QB RB FB, line LT LG C RG RT.
• Basketball — set horns | 1-4-high | 1-4-low | box | spread-pnr | 4-out | 5-out. Players are numbered 1–5.
• Soccer — formation 4-3-3 | 4-4-2 | 4-2-3-1 | 4-5-1 | 4-4-1-1 | 3-5-2 | 3-4-3. Players are numbered 1 (GK) … 11.

For set-pieces or free-form diagrams, place players individually and crop to a half:

4. Movement verbs & line styles

The same line style means different things in different sports — Schematex draws each sport's own convention, and the legend always matches:

Note the inversion: basketball draws a pass dashed and a cut solid; soccer draws a pass solid and a run dashed. That is how the two coaching communities actually diagram — Schematex honours each.

Move targets can be a player id, a landmark name, or explicit coordinates (to x,y).

5. Football — routes, runs, defense

Pass routes use the route tree: go fly streak slant flat hitch out in dig curl comeback corner post wheel cross drag seam. Run concepts: dive iso power counter sweep toss draw trap. Blocking uses block, pull, and handoff. Set goal N to draw the end zone and goalposts:

defense cover-0/1/2/3/4/6 draws the coverage shell; defense 4-3 | 3-4 | nickel | dime sets the front. hash nfl|college|none controls the hash marks.

6. Basketball — sets, landmarks, screens

Cuts and passes target named landmarks — rim elbow wing corner short-corner block slot top high-post dunker (prefix l/r for left/right). screen A B draws a ball-screen (T-bar) for player B; dribble is a wavy line:

defense man matches each defender to a man; defense zone-2-3 | zone-3-2 | zone-1-3-1 draws a zone front.

7. Soccer — shapes, runs, build-up

A formation alone draws the team shape. Add pass (solid), run (dashed), and dribble (wavy) to show a phase of play:

Landmarks include box top-box d penalty-spot near-post far-post six-yard center. defense low-block | mid-block | high-press overlays the opponent's shape. Soccer renders daylight-only — theme: dark falls back to the default pitch.

8. Validation

The engine rejects the mistakes models actually make and lists the valid options:

• unknown sport, formation / set, defense, or named route;
• a move referencing an undeclared player id;
• a malformed coordinate or a missing to target.

Softer issues (e.g. a zero-length move) render with a warning rather than failing.

9. Grammar (EBNF)

playbook   = "playbook" string "sport" sport NL { stmt NL } ;
sport      = "football" | "basketball" | "soccer" ;
stmt       = field | formation | defense | player | move | zone | "view" view ;
field      = "field" { "down" num | "distance" num | "los" num
                     | "goal" num | "hash" hash | "view" view } ;
formation  = ( "formation" | "set" ) name [ "left" | "right" ] ;
defense    = "defense" scheme ;
player     = "player" id pos "at" coord "label" text ;
move       = route | run | pass | cut | dribble | screen
           | shot | motion | handoff | pull | block ;
route      = "route" id namedRoute [ num ] [ "left" | "right" ] ;
run        = "run" id ( concept [ "left" | "right" ] | "to" coord ) ;
pass       = "pass" id ( id | landmark | "to" coord ) ;
cut        = "cut" id ( landmark | "to" coord ) ;
dribble    = "dribble" id "to" coord ;
screen     = "screen" id id ;
shot       = "shot" id [ "to" coord ] ;
zone       = "zone" coord coord string ;
coord      = num "," num ;
view       = "full" | "half" ;
hash       = "nfl" | "college" | "none" ;

Related examples

Five canonical plays per sport ship as examples — Four Verticals, Mesh, Smash, Power O, and a Red-Zone fade for football; Pick & Roll, Horns, Give & Go, Floppy, and a Backdoor cut for basketball; 4-3-3 shape, Build-Up, Overlap, High Press, and Counter-Attack for soccer.