Every update we ship comes back to the same question: how do we help coaches spend less time building plays and more time coaching them?
This month, the answer is speed and clarity. Draw your plays faster with presets. Animate assignments with realistic timing your players can actually learn from. Share a play anywhere and have it look great. And annotate your cards the way you always meant to.
Here is everything that is new in May 2026.
Drawing Presets give you a one-click shortcut menu for your most-used line and route types. Instead of selecting a tool, configuring its style, and drawing from scratch every time, you pick from your preset options and apply it instantly.
Think of it the way a Visio or diagramming power user works: the shapes you reach for most often are always one click away.
What you can do:
Access a preset panel directly from the drawing toolbar
Apply your preferred route and line styles with a single click
Stop reconfiguring the same tools on every play
Who it helps most:
Coordinators who build high-volume playbooks and anyone who draws the same route trees or blocking schemes repeatedly. If you have spent time wondering why you are redrawing the same curl or out route for the hundredth time, this is for you.
This is one of the most-requested improvements coaches have asked us for, and it goes well beyond where you can access animation.
Animation is now built directly into the play drawer, so you can preview how a play moves without switching modes. But the bigger change is what you can control.
New player speed and delay controls let you set how fast each player moves and when they start moving. A route runner can break at the snap. A pulling guard can fire off the line a beat after the center. A safety can rotate at full speed while a corner holds in zone coverage. Your animation now reflects the actual timing of your scheme, not just the paths.
What is new:
Animate directly from the play drawer — no mode switch needed
Per-player speed controls — set how fast each player moves
Per-player delay controls — set when each player starts moving
Realistic timing that matches how the play actually unfolds
Why it matters:
Your players do not just need to see where to go. They need to see when to go. Speed and delay controls turn your animations from path diagrams into teaching tools that match real game tempo.
Any Football Play Card link you share now arrives with a rich visual preview automatically. Play diagrams and videos all show up the way they should, wherever you drop the link.
Supported everywhere:
iMessage
Twitter / X
Any platform that reads Open Graph tags
What this means for you:
Sharing plays with your staff, your players, or the coaching community just got easier and more professional. No more bare links. No more "trust me, click this."
Play Notes got a full rebuild this month.
If you have used text notes on your play cards before, you already know they could be inconsistent. Boxes that covered your routes. Text that went off the edge. That is all fixed.
What is new:
Background colors with opacity control — highlight key concepts, color-code by situation, or add visual structure to your cards
Vertical and horizontal alignment inside the note box — position your text exactly where you want it
Notes now sit behind players and routes — your diagram stays readable, the note adds context without blocking anything
Borders and padding for cleaner, more professional card layouts
Click outside to save — one less click every time you finish editing a note
Consistent resize and drag behavior across all note types
The result:
Your annotations look intentional. Your cards look finished. Color-coded notes for Red Zone, motion plays, protection schemes, or anything else your system uses.
For coaching staffs who pull play data into spreadsheets, the Excel export is cleaner and more useful.
What changed:
Export now respects your column overrides
Custom call-sheet rows are reflected in the output
If your staff uses Excel-based reports for game planning or scouting prep, your exports will now match the column layout you have configured in the app.
These updates are live now.
Log in to Football Play Card, open any play, and try Drawing Presets and Animation Enhancements today.
👉 Log in and try the Spring updates now.
If you have questions about any of these features or want help using them, visit our Knowledge Base or reach out to support@footballplaycard.com. We read every message.
More updates coming soon.