Panic?? Our Playbook Fell into the Hands of Another Team!

[CloakNNNdagger]

This has many times been discussed. But how really advantageous if you're on the receiving side.....or deleterious if you're on the giving side is it?? I would still always put it on my rathers to receiver.

Pettine explains the value of having an opponent’s playbook
Posted by Mike Florio on June 20, 2014, 2:22 PM EDT

The bulk of a recent profile of Browns coach Mike Pettine largely was ignored due to the presence of quotes suggesting that the Patriots somehow misappropriated one or more copies of the Jets’ playbook when Pettine served as the defensive coordinator in New York. It wasn’t surprising, especially with one of the money quotes being isolated and expanded on the page.

“We know in places like New England, it’s only a matter of time that they somehow mysteriously end up with our playbook.”

Pettine then shared the story of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady bragging at Wes Welker’s wedding about New England having the defensive playbook.

“It didn’t shock me because [coach] Rex [Ryan] would give them out like candy anyway,” Pettine told Greg Bedard of TheMMQB.com. “He gave one out to [Alabama coach Nick] Saban and I was like, ‘Don’t you know Saban and Bill [Belichick] are pretty good friends? I have a feeling it’s going to end up in New England.’”

In hindsight, Pettine and Bedard perhaps should have had a feeling that the anecdote would overtake the story, because it did. On Friday afternoon, Pettine shared with PFT details about what it means — and what it doesn’t mean — to have another team’s playbook.

“Most playbooks are very broad,” Pettine said via phone from Hawaii, where he is vacationing. “We’ll have 80 [defensive formations] in a playbook, 30 in a game plan. We’ll add six or seven new ones for a given game.”

Pettine said the defensive playbook shows core concepts. Without having access either to the game plan or to notes players take during meetings, the playbook has far less value.

But Pettine doesn’t claim that having an opponent’s playbook has no value.

“It’s a credit that [the Patriots] have been able to get that information,” Pettine said. “I didn’t mean to imply it was gathered illegally. . . . To me, it’s a sign of a smart team. We’re not actively pursuing playbooks, but when they fall in your laps, you’ll study it.”

Pettine emphasized that he wasn’t accusing the Patriots of stealing the playbook or any other wrongdoing, and he acknowledged that playbooks routinely end up on the Internet. Indeed, a reader sent PFT a copy of the Jets’ defensive playbook on Thursday after the story first emerged. While talking to Pettine, I rattled off terms from it, like Titan Package, Under Wasp Sting, and Under Bee Sting.

“That’s it,” Pettine said.

Pettine said he shared the Brady story with Bedard to illustrate the importance of keeping playbooks vague. Coaches assume that, somehow, a playbook will end up in the wrong hands. Though it will never provide the difference between winning and losing, if it can help even a little coaches want to study it.

“We’re all in the business of gathering information,” Pettine explained. “If I can get someone’s blueprint for how they build their offense or defense, of course I’m going to look at it.”

Usually, the playbooks migrate from team to team when coaches leave for other jobs. Far more valuable than a playbook, however, would be a past game plan used against a specific team, assuming the systems and personnel haven’t changed dramatically.

So while it can’t hurt to have a team’s playbook, it won’t help all that much.

“It’s only the skeleton,” Pettine said. “Not the meat on the bones.”

 

[Playoffs]

Everyone messed up in media's handling of Jets playbook 'controversy'

Though Bedard's story ran more than 3,000 words, it included an anecdote about how Pettine had to slim down the Browns' playbook because he believed the Patriots were able to get their hands on the Jets' defensive playbook thanks to Rex Ryan, with Nick Saban's name thrown in to give the tale just a dash of that S-E-C crazy. That little item in that long story very quickly became a big deal.

Bedard insisted the anecdote was a joke, never mind that it didn't read that way to many people, and to casual fans in particular. But the media's handling of it wasn't much better.

This is how the playbook thing became The Playbook Thing.

The video below shows Bedard... attacked the mediafor zeroing in on the playbook item, saying our quick trigger in aggregating it without proper context was "an example of problems that plague our industry."
...
Now that we've all had a chance to catch out breath, we all understand that coaches hand out playbooks to other coaches all the time, that a playbook can sometimes be impossible to decipher because of the specific language used, and that what's in it changes from week to week, depending on the opponent. None of this should have been a big deal.

Rex Ryan, in a Very Rex Ryan-y press conference, a portion of which you can watch above, made this point quite well. The NFL media—and, again, I include myself in this—should have known better and should have framed any initial takes on the item in a way that couched it with the reality that playbooks are easily accessible.
...

Now, Bedard is wrong because what he wrote never articulated that the playbook anecdote was a joke...

 

[Norg]

why don't they just write up a new playbook every year or heck ever half of the season

 

[CloakNNNdagger]

Many of us have never seen a real NFL playbook. So, out of my own curiosity, I began digging to see if I could possibly find an intact official copy. Finally, came across an interesting source.

HOUSTON TEXANS 2003 OFFENSIVE PLAYBOOK

Here is a source for a large list of past NFL PLAYBOOKS. (It even includes the playbook for the Houston Gamblers Run and Shoot Offense - 1985 - Kevin Gilbride)

You can see how some of these can get too complicated for a player that never had to go to class in college.

 

[b0ng]

Wade Phillips' playbook from his time as HC of the Falcons was posted on here as well. I don't think it was proliferated to the internet until after he was gone from ATL though.

Meh, if you told me that the Patriots worked very closely with the CIA, I would probably believe you, which is why this story got legs under it so quickly. If people talked about how a playbook might end up in Houston, nobody would've cared.