It's rookie mini-camp time, and like your third date with that girl you always liked it marks the time to get excited all over again -- only this time about the upcoming football season.
But for a rookie it's a hard time, especially because they have to memorize the contents in the playbook they're given. If they're Detroit Lions first year offense players under offensive coordinator Mike Martz, they're forced to absorb the contents of a playbook that's over 400 pages -- and poorly written.
How do I know? Because I'm reading the St. Louis Rams offense playbook from 1999 -- there's little different from the offense shown in this playbook and what the Lions and Washington Redskins players will learn this year.
This is what the Lions' Wide Receiver Mike Williams has to remember:
"We will number our holes according to the points of attack with EVEN numbers going to the right and ODD numbers going to the LEFT."
"Numbering of Backs: QB is #1, R is #2 regardless of set; H is #3 regardless of set."
Williams has to remember not only what a "Zero" route is (a shallow pattern into the short middle of field just five yard deep) but how to run it against "Retreat Zone", "Retreat Man" ,"Cloud" , "Trail", "Bump" , and vs. "Quads" -- all are types of defensive coverage approaches.
He has to know the difference between "Trade Deuce Right" and "Trade Double Right" (the fullback is next to the weakside tackle in the former and in the slot between the weakside tackle and the split end in the latter), and that's just in the "D Variations"
The what?
But hey, I'm reading the playbook. He's got to remember this stuff.
What ads to this is the playbook itself is so poorly written. There's not an extensive table of contents. The plays are not well organized. Indeed, there should be a chapter for each kind of pass there is. And each play should have it's own page and segmented so that each offensive player knows what they're supposed to do in that play. Kind of like the Cal offense.
I've got that playbook too. It's the best organized playbook I've ever seen. Each play has it's own page. There's a page on special strategies. For eample, Cal calls it's two minute offense "Bonzai" -- who can forget that? There are also special chapters on screen passes.
How do I know this? Because I'm looking at Cal's offensive playbook, too.
In fact, It's clear to me that some NFL teams should study their college counterparts for playbook design ideas. The 2005 Notre Dame Offense playbook is well-segmented, yet detailed and there's no play that's simpler than what's ran in the NFL. Moreover it' reveals a varied offensive attack that has just one weak spot: an apparent vulnerability to defenses that play multiple-fronts and zone blitz.
But heck, if you've got to get to that level of complexity to beat Notre Dame, that's saying something for their playbook. The only other answer is to have better athletes, but that's another story.
Rookies coming into the NFL have to learn a new playbook and absorb a lot of information. Since the concepts in the NFL are really not more advanced than those at colleges like Notre Dame and Cal, why not make the playbooks easier to read?
There's no sense in fooling your own players.
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