Former NFL Quarterback Sage Rosenfels Shows Us How to Crash Course a Playbook

The following is a hypothetical scenario based on facts.

Let's say I'm a NFL quarterback whose tour of the league started 12 years ago. I got cut at the end of training camp and now I'm sitting wondering what the heck I'm gonna do with my week. This is the first fall I haven't been on a football team since I was a kid. I'm trying to enjoy my first real break from the game, the extra time with my own kids, but I feel like I can still help an NFL team—that my career isn't over yet. I'm still in shape and watching as much NFL as possible on Sundays to stay current with what's happening around the league. My agent has even fielded a few calls from teams.

On Monday, I'm out walking the dog after my morning workout, still in sweats, when my phone rings. It's the Patriots. They're a bit short on healthy quarterbacks, between Tom Brady's suspension and Jimmy Garoppolo's shoulder injury. Now third-stringer Jacoby Brissett has a thumb injury, and they want to bring me in and sign me immediately.

So that just changed my plans for the week dramatically. Let's do this!

I get on the next flight out to New England, and six hours later I'm sitting in offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels' office to chat before meeting the greatest mind in football himself, Bill Belichick. Coach McDaniels and I briefly discuss the different offensive coaches I've played for and what "languages" I've used. We are feeling each other out. Both of us are wondering how hard this is going to be and how ready I will be for a game on Sunday Night Football in six days. I've had a crash course with a similar version of this Patriot offense when I had a two-week cup of coffee with the Miami Dolphins a few years back. The Dolphins offensive coordinator at the time was Brian Daboll, whose first NFL coaching job was with the Pats and is now New England's TE coach.

Before I go into my meeting with Coach Belichick, McDaniels hands me two playbooks. The first, a ten-pound, three-inch-thick binder, has every last detail of the entire offense. It has precise instructions on everything from how you form a huddle to different snap count variations. There is page after page of formation diagrams and hundreds of run and pass plays. One section is dedicated to describing defenses; another has goals and expectations for the season. It's A TON of information. The second book is much thinner: it's specifically for plays that the team will be using this week, and coaches will add pages to it as they build the game plan throughout the week.

After my meeting with Coach Belichick, I return to my hotel. Despite my exhaustion, I spend the next two hours flipping through the big book.

I start with the most basic information, such as huddle and snap count. Once I feel like I have a handle on that, I move on to vocabulary—every team describes formations in slightly, or majorly, different terms. What had been "trips right" in my last offense is now "twins right." "Double left" is now "deuce left," and so on and so on. The only way to learn how the formations and motions work is by rote memorization. I spend some time quizzing myself, calling plays out loud in my hotel room over and over again.

Next, I look at all the protections. The average football fan has no idea how many protections are used on a football team. There may be up to 30 types of protections, with variations. Multiple protections for every type of play: empty, one back, two back, play action, bootleg, waggle, sprint out. Each protection has its own specific rules, too. In one protection, the running back will scan for all safeties and corners. In another, the tight end stays in but will leak to the flat if he finds no work. Etc, etc. Tons of useful and important information, and all of it vital. These are the details everyone talks about that can be the difference between winning and losing. One mistake, one misunderstanding about someone's responsibilities could cost us the game. A sack can mean a fumble, and a fumble usually is a turnover. Turnovers lose games in the NFL.

Finally, I get to the pass-play diagrams. Some teams use a number tree and others use words to describe route combinations. All NFL offenses have code words for these concepts to be used during no-huddle and two-minute situations. Take five eligible receivers starting from dozens of possible formations, and you start to get an idea of how many concepts a coach can invent.

There is no way to memorize all of this in one night. There is no way to memorize it all in a week or even a month. Even if I could, it's not just memorization; I have to know it. This isn't that high school class where I memorized the formula for finding the area of a circle (pi times radius squared). I have to understand every precise detail, all the possible strengths and weaknesses of each play, so that I can run the offense with confidence. I must be able to instantly recall all of the coverages these pass patterns attack, as well as protection issues and how they are fixed.

Nothing in this massive playbook has anything to do with our opponent on Sunday. It doesn't cover the blitzes and coverages we will see, nor the other team's tendencies. Knowing what a defensive coordinator likes to call on third down in the red zone is important information to a quarterback, or at least it's important to the good ones. These are the kinds of things I will try to pick up during quarterback meetings, film sessions, and from coach's handouts throughout the week.

There is also nothing in the playbooks about my new teammates. Zero information about the strengths and weaknesses of my offensive line. Nothing in there about the subtleties of my receivers. These things can only be learned over time during practices and games, but if you're coming into an emergency-quarterback situation, like I am, that ship has already sailed. I've got three practices to answer any questions I might have about my new teammates.

Tuesdays are "off days" in the NFL, and I will spend 14 hours of mine at the Patriots' facility trying to master this incredible amount of information, part of it going over things with my new quarterbacks coach. At the end of the day, I pass out in my hotel room, mentally exhausted. I will be walking into a locker room tomorrow morning with a team fresh and ready to work.

I get to the facility early on Wednesday to meet the rest of my team and receive my game week playbook. The game-week playbook will be the focus of my studying for the rest of the week, but I will still need to reference the ten-pounder about some details, like protection and formation adjustments. Now I can really dial in, as no plays will be called in the game that aren't in this new playbook. Coach McDaniels and his staff have broken down the opponent and are using only protections and plays that best fit how we match up against them.

Over the next three days, I do my best to learn as much as possible as well as make a strong impression on the practice field. It's important to prove to the coaches that I know what I'm doing, but it's even more important to prove to my teammates that we can win if I play.

After our Saturday morning walk-through, Coach McDaniels brings me into his office and we go over the entire game plan. Usually, coaches get some afternoon family time on Saturday, but that's not going to happen this week. We go through every pass play and pick out those with which I feel most comfortable. A lot of the plays installed this week are ones I've never run in my entire career, much less this week in practice. We pick out 20 to 30 base pass plays and about 15 concepts that could be called on third down. We go through my favorite two-minute drill plays, as well. Then he hands me a quiz with questions relating to protections, audibles, our opponent, and other fine details. I take the test in front of him and we discuss the results afterwards.

Then I head over to the team hotel for one decent night's sleep before the game. There is nothing else I can do at this point, and rest is very much needed. I review the playbook in bed before passing out.

I wake up at 5 AM on Sunday with my mind already working overtime. It's raining and windy—not my favorite type of weather for throwing. Great. I head down to the team breakfast and find out Garropolo and Brisset are officially out; they're not even dressing for the game. I am the starting quarterback for the New England Patriots on Sunday Night Football.