Have Fun With This, Brainiacs
Attention: aspiring coaches, pop warner/high school/college football players looking to improve, football fanatics, anyone who's bored senseless at work.
What a service this is. If you've ever wanted to take a look at a real NFL playbook, here's your opportunity. The kind folks at pigskinplanet.com have acquired the real playbooks of three NFL teams -- the '87 Bears defense, the '98 Bucs defense, and the '03 Patriots offense, for your perusal. They're all written by the team's actual coordinator -- not recreated or dumbed down in any way. Those are three pretty good regimes, as well; unfortunately, no luck trying to grab the famed 0-14 '76 Bucs playbook. I'd imagine it was written in crayon.
Seriously, though, this is fascinating stuff. If you ever thought you could run a team just because you won the Super Bowl on All-Madden, read these playbooks and let your hopes and dreams come crashing down. It's quite heady. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, not a road scholar, but smart nonetheless, and I couldn't even get past how to arrange in the huddle properly. The huddle! It's the first page!
It makes me wonder exactly how a player can memorize all of this by heart and perfect it, but interview like unintelligible primates (in a specieal, not racial sense). I'm looking at you, Shannon Sharpe. I mean, you've heard the saying "It's not rocket science," but, uh....this sort of feels like it.
