What is an audible? An audible is when a change of an original play is made. This is where a lot of the delay of game penalties come in at. An audible is the quarterbacks' ability to change a play on the...
This is where a lot of the delay of game penalties come in at. An audible is the quarterbacks' ability to change a play on the fly. Say for instance the play that has been called by the coaches is a run to the right. But if and when the quarterback gets to the line of scrimmage he sees that the defense has stacked most of its defensive players on that side, he might want to audible to something else.
It used to be that only a few quarterbacks where given the option to change the play at the line of scrimmage and very few college quarterbacks were ever given that option. But with defenses continuing to get better and faster, coaches have realized that having a quarterback that can make decisions about the next play after seeing what the defense has to offer can be very beneficial.
Byron Leftwich, former quarterback at Marshall University and current quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars of the NFL, was given full range of permission to audible when he was in college by then head coach Bobby Pruett.
Allowing Leftwich to wait until the defense set up before making a read or an audible helped him to be one of the better college quarterbacks in the country. But again, making decisions on the fly is very difficult.
Defenses have already begun to take this advantage away from the gifted quarterbacks by coming out in "dummy defenses". Meaning, they purposely give the impression of one defense while planning to run something totally different. It can, and usually gets pretty confusing for quarterbacks who aren't sure what they are doing.
