Playbook

Bill Simmons has some doubts about Al Saunders' legendary playbook:

[A]llow me to be the 10,000th person to chime in on Al Saunders' 700-page playbook. I'd like to think that I'm a relatively smart person -- did well on my SATs once upon a time, haven't had a job where I had to shower before 10:30 a.m. in my entire life, feel like I'm reasonably well-read, and so on. With that said, the thought of memorizing a 700-page playbook gives me the shakes. I don't feel like I could do it. So how does someone like Clinton Portis or Chris Cooley pull it off? Wouldn't there be screw-ups all the time? We're forced to read 25 stories a day about Terrell Owens, but I'd love to read one explaining why it's a smart idea to have a 700-page playbook. Just one.

I've been assuming this "700 pages" business is some kind of bullshit for much that reason; either there is not 700 page playbook or else there's some kind of counting trick happening here.

10/1/06 1:51PM del.icio.us this incoming links

Comments

It had been my understanding that there are a series of base offenses and then variable calls for each individual. A player only has to memorize the offense (i.e. pro set, I formation, etc.) and then understand who will be doing what.

So the play call will embed the base offense and some of the routes, running holes or blocking schemes. I guess 700 plays could equal 700 possible play calls. Which isn't too many if you consider XY Slant different from YX Slant or some such.

Posted by: talboito on October 1, 2006 02:07 PM

This seems pretty similar to claims about coaches sleeping an hour a night. There is a sense in which it may be accurate (variations, as talboito points to), but in a pure sense, it's totally absurd.

Posted by: jhupp on October 1, 2006 02:14 PM

Memorization of 700 pages is extraordinarily difficult if the information therein is not connected in a way that allows heavy usage of mnemonic devices--i.e., if the linkage between the data is more or less arbitrary. A playbook, though, would tend to be very, very structured information.

Posted by: dj moonbat on October 1, 2006 02:23 PM

Block letters.

Posted by: Jeffrey Davis on October 1, 2006 02:39 PM

It is not uncommon for chess players to memorize 10,000 or more openings to a depth of 20 moves, and not all good chess players are overall geniuses, smart, or intelligent by any means.

Cranky

Posted by: Cranky Observer on October 1, 2006 03:15 PM

This really wouldn't be all that hard. It's not as if each of these pages has hundreds of words written on them, all of which need to be remembered in order.

Each page represents a single play, which is likely very similar to many other plays. I mean, there are only a couple of "standard" running plays (up the middle, off tackle, end around, outside), but each offensive line-up produces minor alterations in the basic play. I don't see it being difficult to get several hundred plays, and also don't see it being all that hard to learn them all.

Posted by: TW Andrews on October 1, 2006 04:51 PM

Its 700 plays, of which given the opponent you're facing, its probably cut down to 100 or so for the week to focus on.

Posted by: Rob on October 1, 2006 05:15 PM

playbooks have lots of things other than plays. They'll have team rules, definitions of terms, tell you how to stretch, everything. A receiver doesn't need to know every single blocking rule that the linemen have. The linemen don't need to know all the different possible alignments for a cornerback. And also, these guys have been doing this stuff for years -- they probably do know 700 pages worth of stuff. For some reason, somebody decided to write it all out.

So most of it ends up being stuff you know already. also, as has been pointed out above, you can have each play run out of lots of different formations, maybe each on its own page, but there isn't much additional information.

Posted by: Ian D-B on October 1, 2006 05:55 PM

First of all, each player doesn't have 700 different possible actions, they might have 50. Plus Rob is right, each game is pared down for the particular opponent. Plus the nomenclature is descriptive and detailed, although admittedly terse. And lastly, a few guys need to know more, like the QB and center. A wide out like Terrel Owens, probably not so much.

Posted by: Nat on October 1, 2006 05:56 PM

The difficulty with learning a new offensive system is not so much that the plays are new, but that the verbage used to call them is different. It's like learning a whole new language. Also the QB is the one player on the offense who does need to know each and every variation of the base plays.

Posted by: Just Karl on October 1, 2006 07:37 PM

They are combinations. Base plays and formations with different combinations of individual moves by individual positions. Each play probably isn't memorized by name by each player, but instead is identified by formation and base, and then some added calls to specify individual variations. A single formation could lead to a handful of different patterns for both the x and y receiver. The individual variations for any particular play may not even be called in the huddle, but by the quarterback calls under center before the snap, perhaps sending a particular man in motion, and thus changing the route for that player, and possibly others, like the tight end and running back. So it's really a factorial in a lot of ways. The quarterback is the guy who has to memorize the most information.

Posted by: Jimm on October 1, 2006 08:57 PM

Yeah, the difficulty is understanding the rules of the language or code that describes the plays. Once you speak the code, visualizing the plays is easy. Everything about the playbook is mnemonic, in a sense. Even at low levels of play, most coaches basically use a 'syntax.' Even my crappy Canadian high school team had a pretty elegant play tree that mapped nicely onto a "language". So the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons don't have to memorize 700 pages of randomly-named plays ("oh shit, is Annexation of Lithuania an inside draw play or a sweep with a pulling guard?")

Posted by: Tim Ross on October 1, 2006 09:06 PM

It would be so incredibly awesome if there was a well known type of play called the "Annexation of Lithuania."

Posted by: John on October 1, 2006 10:17 PM

Steve Young said that he was once thrown off his calls at the line by a linebacker who was shouting, "mormon in the backfield! mormon in the backfield!" as if that triggered a defensive adjustment.

Posted by: Just Karl on October 1, 2006 10:24 PM

I think it is probably like memorizing part numbers. For example, if you specify a pair of pants as type, color, waist, and inseam, that is 4 variable. Then, if there are 4 types of pants, 8 colors, and a dozen waist and inseam sizes each, thats, um, a lot of different "pairs of pants" and yet easy to memorize each one. Also, it is 700 pages, no plays.

Posted by: Chuck on October 2, 2006 10:38 AM

run vs pass = 2
shotgun vs normal = 2
play fake vs no fake = 2
2, 3 or 4 wideouts & 3 different routes for each of the wideouts = 9 + 27 + 81 = 117

so just that level a variety give us 2*2*2*117 > 900 possible plays. but, you could easily keep track of those plays.

Posted by: counter on October 2, 2006 11:10 AM

Is there a good book that explains the common football plays? I like watching football, but I am real ignorant about how the game is played.

Posted by: joeo on October 2, 2006 02:42 PM

"It is not uncommon for chess players to memorize 10,000 or more openings to a depth of 20 moves"

Good players don't memorize openings 20 moves deep--they learn the ideas behind the openings, and play moves that make sense in the context of those ideas. Otherwise, you find yourself 20 moves into a game, wondering wtf is going on. I suspect football works much the same way . . .

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