{"id":779104,"date":"2026-02-27T04:16:33","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T04:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/779104\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T04:16:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T04:16:33","slug":"how-nfl-playbooks-get-made-with-help-from-little-known-microsoft-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/779104\/","title":{"rendered":"How NFL Playbooks Get Made, With Help From Little Known Microsoft App"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhile PowerPoint has won countless converts, many creators of the NFL<\/a>\u2019s most advanced offenses still swear by a different piece of the Microsoft<\/a> Office suite.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAlongside the NFL Combine in Indianapolis this week, assistants are gathering in conference rooms to swap tips and tricks they\u2019ve learned over untold hours in Microsoft Visio, a chartmaking tool designed to build computer networking diagrams or floor plans rather than route trees and counters. The sessions are led by the team behind Pro Quick Draw, a football-focused Visio (or PowerPoint) plug-in founded by a longtime NFL assistant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tProfessional football is a massive business. Top coaches<\/a>\u00a0earn<\/a>\u00a0$20 million a year. In a majority of states, the highest paid public employee leads a college program. And yet, parts of the industry still feel small-time. The American Football Coaches Association represents roughly 10,000 members, about as many as the American Association of Geographers or the American Society of Plumbing Engineers. In a market that size, the sport\u2019s greatest minds rely on consumer-grade software. At least for now.<\/p>\n

\n\tAndy Bischoff was coaching high schoolers in 2001 when he first encountered Visio while visiting Notre Dame, a year after Microsoft began selling the software. In 2005, Robert Saleh brought Visio to Houston as a Texans intern, where he impressed coaches with his computer knowledge. A year later, Nathaniel Hackett earned plaudits in Tampa Bay by converting Jon Gruden\u2019s 17,000-play playbook into Visio files; he\u2019d previously worked the same wonders at Stanford. As Robert Klemko\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in 2017, the digital revolution provided opportunities for a new generation of coaches\u2014led by Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan\u2014to shoot up the coaching ranks. Saleh is now the Titans\u2019 head coach. Hackett runs the Cardinals offense.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe labor-intensive process of converting play calls into diagrams has also proven to be a fertile\u00a0learning ground\u00a0<\/a>for the crop of coaches that have come up under them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the early 2010s, Bischoff had worked his way up to a position with the Chicago Bears. By then, Visio had become the norm.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne night I came home in 2013 and my wife asked me the question, she said, \u2018Why is it that technology is growing but the coach\u2019s workflow stays the same?’\u201d Bischoff said. \u201cIt was literally my wife\u2019s question that was the origin of Pro Quick Draw.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt first, Bischoff built the plug-in for himself, creating a collection of templates, integrations into other software and customization options. After joining the Ravens staff in 2015, however, his peers wanted in. Rather than start from scratch, Bischoff consciously built his new offering on top of what Microsoft already offered.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAn idea that was meant to improve my own workflow has led to 30 of the 32 NFL teams [being] Pro Quick Draw teams\u201d he said, as well as thousands of high school and college programs.\u00a0Over the last decade, the venture has grown to become an entire software ecosystem with a staff of its own. NFL teams now pay thousands of dollars each to improve their processes with Pro Quick Draw integrations and shortcuts.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHere\u2019s what plays look like in a recent version of Microsoft Visio, with Pro Quick Draw elements available.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt one point, coaches using Visio even caught Microsoft\u2019s attention. Seahawks offensive line coach John Benton said he and others met with representatives there to discuss potential feature updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAlmost 25 years after Bischoff\u2019s fateful ND visit, coaches are still using Visio, even if Pro Quick Draw encourages newcomers to pick up PowerPoint, given it now offers many of the same tools and likely promises more staying power. Much of the work is done in the offseason as playbooks come together. Throughout the year, tweaks are then implemented and new packages created. Certain assistants are also tasked with drawing up each opponents\u2019 plays as part of weekly preparation. And when they\u2019re not knee-deep in game planning, staffers can use the same app to redesign their kitchens.<\/p>\n

\n\tToday Visio costs $15\/month, or roughly $300 for a permanent license, though NFL staffs likely have deals for larger collections of Microsoft software. The tech company, after all, is an NFL sponsor.<\/p>\n

\n\tA new generation of coaches has added more technology to their teaching stacks as they face players raised on cell phones and video games.<\/p>\n

\n\tOnline quiz platform Kahoot! swept through the league as teams adjusted to virtual meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic. For new Raiders offensive coordinator Andrew Janocko, Seattle\u2019s QB coach in 2025, it was his sister\u2014a schoolteacher\u2014who convinced him to use the tool.<\/p>\n

\n\tSchooling backgrounds, it turns out, ran through this year\u2019s Seahawks championship coaching staff. Tight ends coach Mack Brown, the son of two teachers (and a PowerPoint guy), majored in education in college. Run game specialist Justin Outten spent seven years teaching special education in Houston, learning how to get\u2014and keep\u2014students\u2019 attention. In Seattle, he\u2019s injected videos of himself breaking down concepts as a floating head on top of tape and diagrams to keep players like Kenneth Walker III engaged. Outten has also used Microsoft Copilot to generate mnemonics for athletes to remember their individual roles within certain play calls.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis season, Seahawks staffers had the benefit of a new tool, too, as sports (slowly) emerges as a proving ground for technology with broader applications.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDigital training platform Ethos allows coaches to upload their materials\u2014including, yes, Visio integration\u2014and create personalized assessments that players can complete from their phones during downtime. Ethos then shows coaches which concepts certain athletes might not yet fully grasp. Seattle was among six NFL teams implementing the tech, Ethos CEO and co-founder Andrew Powell said, along with multiple branches of the U.S. military.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf the company can prove its value in those highly demanding, competitive fields, larger industrial and hospitality opportunities will follow, the thinking goes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Army itself saw an opportunity in football coaching software, launching GoArmy Edge in 2015 after partnering with the Indianapolis Colts. The free app converts 2D play calls into the 3D visualizations as part of the armed forces\u2019 athletics\u00a0marketing effort<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe biggest tech firms, from Amazon to Google to Microsoft, are also using sports as a way to show how their artificial intelligence capabilities can improve evaluation and education.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is now a variety of football-specific programs from companies such as Catapult, Hudl and Pro Football Focus designed to augment coaching workflows.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe reality is the league is spending large volumes of money in this space,\u201d Bischoff said. \u201cThis work has evolved beyond play drawings. You have playbooks, scout cards, scouting reports, tip sheets, player quizzes and tests and on and on. What started with Visio and PowerPoint has evolved to a suite of services that provides teams competitive advantages when executed on a high level.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIndividual tacticians scour hours of film to find minute flaws in an opponents\u2019 scheme, tinker with their play designs to exploit those imperfections, and then drill an entire team to execute their vision within a matter of days.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s almost like an extremely high-profile agile software team, where you\u2019re identifying new bugs that you\u2019re trying to change and fix and ship new things,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery single day you\u2019re making significant improvements and change\u2014and that pace of change is a lot faster than a once-every-two-years annual refresher training.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tClear outcomes and intense scrutiny create a pressure cooker for new ideas, as well as the need to disseminate them efficiently. Win or change. Over and over again.<\/p>\n

\n\tExcept when it comes to software. If the program works, coaches will seemingly hold onto it forever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story was updated to include additional information on Pro Quick Draw processes and other augmentations for coaching workflows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While PowerPoint has won countless converts, many creators of the NFL\u2019s most advanced offenses still swear by a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":779105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[5148,7,4966,6],"class_list":["post-779104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-coaches","tag-football","tag-microsoft","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116140664379869252","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}