Like I said many of these terms are not cliches. I played ILB in a 3-4 defense for a D1 program in the late 80s and some of these terms were just starting to be used. I had not heard them during my H.S. career. In college we heard terms like "leverage" and "downhill" every day from our position coaches during drills and in film study. "Leverage" has a very specific meaning in the football context. A back shoulder throw is no cliche, it's a specific fundamental in the passing game. It has been around for decades. Getting the ball to a player "in space" is a term that coaches started to use more recently as offenses have evolved to spread the field and utilize the short passing game as essentially an alternative to running the football between the tackles. This is football terminology, not announcer-driven cliches. Butch Jones used to talk about getting Antonio Brown the ball "in space" all the time, how great a player AB was in space, and his entire offense at Central Michigan was based on exactly that--getting his playmaker the ball in space--clear the area normally occupied by the LBs out, get AB the ball on a 5 yard route and let him do his thing. It was unstoppable at the MAC level.
A good example that just came to mind is Jon Gruden. If you listen to him analyze a game or a play you will hear him use these terms and many others that some would think are "cliches", but are really standard, everyday football terminology. Gruden still speaks as a coach would in a film room versus a football announcer who doesn't know what he's talking about. Herbstreit is another guy that fits that bill although he is not quite as "coachy" as Gruden, who never gets out of coach-speak mode.
You want cliches, listen to a Brett Musberger. Interestingly, you won't hear him use terms like "leverage" and "downhill", because, never having been a football coach or player, he doesn't know what they mean.
