Quick hits
***A few weeks ago, Green was asked roughly how many plays he felt absolutely comfortable running in games. At the time, he guessed about 15 or so. Well, apparently, that number has grown quite a bit since then.
"That number has grown tremendously," Green said. "From that time to now, I saying - last week we had somewhere around 320-something plays on the wristband. I probably knew 200-some of them. After (that first interview), I know people just had a field day with it. In the back of my mind I'm thinking, 'I know more plays than that.' It's just that was the first thing that popped into my head. I just went in and started hitting the playbook harder and tried watching film more and just really took the offense in."
i don' think Watson learned as much as we have given him credit for......he still has that Cally mentality of needing a phone book size playbook.......this can't be helpful to the O line or anyone else with athletic ability, trying to break into a stating role.......i think Wats is jacking up this offense with too much thinking and not enough execution!
After spring ball and fall camp he was comfortable with 15 or so plays.......now, after a few weeks. he is comfortable with 200 plus. Interesting - not impossible but really really interesting.
Keep in mind that's across probably 10+ formations, and many of them are run calls or slight variations of routes that will be only slightly different.
It is in contrast to someone like Leach though who doesn't even hand out a playbook basically. He's got about 25 different pass plays that he runs out of 5 formations or so. So even a basic offense that has 150+ plays (Texas Tech) doesn't require a playbook. And people wonder why the NFL isn't interested in his QB's
Article from a few years back
When Leach recruits high-school players, he is forced to compromise on most talents, but he insists on speed. All have been conditioned to run much more than a football player normally does.
A typical N.F.L. receiver in training might run 1,500 yards of sprints a day; Texas Tech receivers run 2,500 yards. To prepare his receivers’ ankles and knees for the unusual punishment of his nonstop-running offense, Leach has installed a 40-yard-long sand pit on his practice field; slogging through the sand, he says, strengthens the receivers’ joints. And when they finish sprinting, they move to Leach’s tennis-ball bazookas. A year of catching tiny fuzzy balls fired at their chests at 60 m.p.h. has turned many young men who got to Texas Tech with hands of stone into glue-fingered receivers.
...The first play Leach called against Texas A.&M. was the first play on Cody Hodges's wrist. That wrist held a mere 23 ordinary plays, 9 red-zone plays (for situations inside an opponent's 20-yard line), 6 goal-line plays, 2 2-point-conversion plays and 5 trick plays. “There's two ways to make it more complex for the defense,” Leach says. “One is to have a whole bunch of different plays, but that's no good because then the offense experiences as much complexity as the defense. Another is a small number of plays and run it out of lots of different formations.” Leach prefers new formations. “That way, you don't have to teach a guy a new thing to do,” he says. “You just have to teach him new places to stand.” Texas Tech's offense has no playbook; Cody Hodges's wrist and Mike Leach's back pocket hold the only formal written records of what is widely regarded as one of the most intricate offenses ever to take a football field. The plays change too often, in response to the defense and the talents of the players on hand, to bother recording them.....
Leach is unusual in giving his quarterback the authority to change every play, wherever the line of scrimmage. “He can see more than I'll ever see,” Leach says. “If I call a stupid play, his job is to get me out of it. If he doesn't get me out of it, I might holler at him. But if you let him react to what he sees, there's a ton of touchdowns to be had.”
