Thursday, January 06, 2005

In a Nutshell | by Jay

From Pepper Johnson's book Won For All, about the 2001-02 Patriots' Super Bowl run, here's an excerpt that puts a nice little wrapper around a lot of things we've been hearing about how Charlie calls a game:

(p. 86) What Charlie Weis does is try to keep you on your toes and spread the ball around as much as possible. He does it with a running attack that will run at you and around you with counter plays and draws. He will change personnel; in fact he's notorious for it. He'll go from three wide receivers to four, two halfbacks, one tailback, two or three tight ends. Week by week he tries to stay away from normal tendencies...He does a great job that way.
Does this mean we won't be seeing the bubble screen 5+ times per game? Say it ain't so.

Along these lines, I don't know how many of you have a subscription to Irish Eyes, but there was a post on the members board yesterday that was absolutely hilarious (you'll need a membership to read the whole thing). Apparently some fan picked up on Diedrick's simplistic scheme for audibles last year and began predicting play after play to the delight and amazement of the people around him in the stands. Every time Quinn would audible, this guy would know exactly what was coming. This went on for a couple of games, and seeing no change, the guy thought he better alert Bill that even the schmoes in row 30 were able to tell what was coming next. He emailed Diedrick after the Washington game, and to his surprise, Bill actually wrote back, claiming that the guy was wrong and the schemes were impossible to predict. Of course, for the next game, Diedrick switched everything up, and they never used that audible scheme for the rest of the year.

Check out the original post if you get a chance. It's a stitch.