Seldom has so much been said about so little, perhaps 200 hours and still counting of radio air time these last few weeks devoted to what amounts to one page of text, front and back.
That’s the extent of the Bears’ offensive game plan for Sunday’s contest against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the length of every other Sunday game plan. One page. Maybe 70 plays. Half of which, at most, actually will be used.
Sure does blow the image of the darkened room illuminated only by the flickering of videotape and computer screens, empty pizza boxes stacked in a corner, pop cans scattered about, a few cigar butts and an aura of intrigue.
And John Shoop hunkered down in the middle of it all.
Oh, Shoop is hunkered down. And he does manage to be mysterious, whether he’s trying or not. But boil down the average week of strategizing for an NFL game, and Sunday’s sideline is far more dramatic, as if we need to be reminded after last weekend in Green Bay.
“Everybody thinks devising a game plan is this stroke of genius–`I sat up in bed at 4 in the morning and it hit me . . . put three receivers out there.’ It’s not that,” said former Buffalo Bills coach Marv Levy. “What you do in game-planning is fine-tune and make slight adjustments to what you’ve been doing all along.”
Generally, it is a little more complicated than that, though not immediately obvious from a week composed of a series of meetings, interrupted by practice, followed by more meetings, holing up in those darkened rooms and then more meetings.
“It’s kind of like `Ground Hog Day,'” special-teams coach Mike Sweatman said, “where it’s just the same thing over and over and over.”
Bears coach Dick Jauron said he spends most of his time during the week with the offense, attending most of its meetings and moderating its debates, which are lively and frequent.
“There will be debate–say, about a running play against a front on a certain down and distance,” Jauron explained. “I’ll ask, `Do you like it?’ Some people might. But everybody doesn’t look at it the same way. They might disagree because if they run this defense this percentage of the time, they’ll think `Well, this play is good.’ But you still have no guarantee you’ll get that defense. You have to work though all of those things on every idea.”
Players have some input, though it varies from position to position. All three quarterbacks will suggest plays to Shoop and, in fact, submit a list on Friday of those with which they are most comfortable.
“That’s important,” backup quarterback Shane Matthews said. “We didn’t do that when Gary [Crowton] was here and we didn’t do that when I was in Carolina. If Jim [Miller] feels comfortable throwing a comeback to Marty [Booker], he’s going to write it down. If he doesn’t, he’s not going to put it on the top of his list.”
But there is still not as much micro-planning as one might think.
“I always thought coaches would look at the opponent and say, `This guy is terrible, so we’re going to pound him,'” offensive tackle Blake Brockermeyer said. “It’s funny because it’s never like that. They run the same stuff.”
Shoop is not alone among NFL coordinators in sticking to the same basic plays each week while tweaking the formations or personnel groupings.
“It’s one of the reasons our record is 9-3,” he said. “I promise you there’s nobody in the city more upset than me about [last week’s loss to Green Bay]. But it would be illogical if we just scrapped everything right now.
“We’ve got a lot of confidence in our methods. They work. . . . They’re time-tested. I didn’t invent these things, and while you do make adjustments in the game, you try to prepare for as much as you possibly can before that first whistle.”
There are exceptions around the league, said offensive assistant Pete Carmichael.
“There are people who will make major changes during the week and they’ll have some success,” he said. “But I’ve been through that and your players are bouncing around and then you have no place to hang your hat when things go bad.”
How players study during the week differs from player to player, from Miller’s almost obsessive absorption of the playbook–which has the one-page game plan supplemented by about 50 more on blocking schemes, run and pass plays, situational tendencies of the defense and scouting reports on each opposing player–to Matthews’ system.
“I know some quarterbacks study extremely hard,” Matthews said. “But I’ve never been one of those. I’ve been fortunate. Once I see it, that’s really all I need to do. I don’t do a lot of studying at home.
“Basically, all I’ll look at is our pass plays and our run plays. They have a section with the tendencies–on third down, they do this–and it’s good to read over it, but I don’t like to get it in my head because then you start to think about too much rather than just come to the line of scrimmage and react to what they do to you.”
On game day, communication is reduced to orchestrated bursts on headsets, punctuated by brief strategy sessions in between series and, of course, the well-documented ad-libs.
Coaches are connected by their headsets, with only Jauron able to switch back and forth between offense and defense. On offense, only Shoop can talk to his quarterback through a helmet speaker, and only Jauron and Carmichael–perched up above in the coaches’ box with tight ends coach Pat Flaherty, wide receivers coach Todd Haley and offensive quality-control man Charlie Coiner–can talk to Shoop.
Shoop, naturally, dominates the headset communication.
Sometimes, said Carmichael, Shoop will yell for down and distance.
“And sometimes I may have to tell him, `I don’t see it'” he said. “Sometimes you’re blocked. If it’s third-and-4 and you say third-and-3, it affects the call. You better be sure.”
Jauron is just as cautious with what he says.
“As the previous play ends, [Shoop’s] mind goes right to the next call,” Jauron said. “And if I come in and start talking to them about something–even if I just make one comment–it’s going to throw off their concentration. You can end up getting a penalty for delay of game.”
If, for example, Jauron does not want the Bears to run a pass play on a particular down, he’ll tell Shoop right away.
“As soon as I know the down and distance, if I’m going to get involved in the call, I’ll tell him before that clock starts running because once it starts, it’s way too late.”
Between series, Shoop and his quarterbacks get two pictures of each play from the previous series–one taken just before the snap and one taken just after–to study what coverages and fronts the defense is using.
Offensive line coach Bob Wylie periodically will slip Shoop notes on run plays that may work, while Haley will offer suggestions of who among his receivers have been open.
The input from players–both positive and negative–is often more conspicuous on the sideline than during the week. “I’ve had times in games where I’ve said, `Look, run the ball behind me, I can do this to this guy,'” Brockermeyer said. “Gary [Crowton] would always say, `Ok, yeah, yeah, we’ll do that,’ and they never would do it. But Shoop will actually listen to you, which is good.”
He’ll also tell them to shut up, as he did last week when Bryan Robinson got a little too mouthy during a Bears drive after Brian Urlacher’s interception.
“Guys will say anything on the sidelines,” defensive end Phillip Daniels said. “That’s what happened Sunday. . . . It’s all in the heat of the game and the fun of the game. Afterward, just like Sunday, guys will say, `It’s cool, let’s just get it done.'”
Shoop, like most coaches in the NFL, scripts his first 15 plays to see how the defense will react to different formations, so the Bears will show a different formation on virtually every play early in the game.
“Basically, you’re just laying the ground formation of how you’re going to attack them the rest of the game,” said Miller.
The Bears will go into Sunday’s game against Tampa with 32 to 34 drop-back passes, a dozen play-action passes, several third-down and red-zone passes and about 20 running plays.
Each play has the option of being run out of two formations. And in an average game, the offense will get from 55 to 75 plays.
At halftime, Levy said, he would throw out about 40 percent of his plays. Bears coaches will look at their charts and typically tell the offense which plays were the most successful.
“There is extremely little time to adjust,” Levy said. “If you start filling their heads with too much, it’s just going to confound them. Many times I’ve found myself saying, `OK, fellas, take a break, go back out and play hard.”‘
Levy laughs when he recounts how he was credited for brilliant halftime adjustments in the NFL’s greatest comeback of all time–the Bills’ 41-38 overtime victory over Houston in a 1993 playoff game after trailing 28-3 at halftime.
“People asked, `What did you say to those guys at halftime?'” Levy said. “You know what I said? Nothing technical. I said: `You’re the two-time AFC champions. Play with pride so that regardless of what happens, when you come off the field people can’t say you quit.’
“People thought I called up Gen. Eisenhower.”
