[Mick]

Shaw is being a bit dramatic. You don't remember it. You synthesize it. The West Coast play calling system is a language with structure and syntax. Some words qualify others, and some words/numbers have meaning by their position in the "sentence". You are just "saying" the play. Some memorization is required, but the strength of the system is the ability to abstract football plays and communicate them unambiguously. A consequence of this is that you can describe, and therefore call, ANY play in the playbook this way. However, that is seldom necessary, the 270 to 300 selected ones are usually enough!
That doesn't mean it's easy. Luck was a phenom in this for sure. It is now well known that you shouldn't throw the Venus on Spider 3 Y Banana unless the safety has vacated the middle of the field. But what is the read for Spider 2 Y Banana Zeus, I have no idea.
I absolutely assure you that Burns/Chryst were never asked/expected to do anything of this magnitude.
What is presented here is how the play would be called in the huddle. Now, if you are in no huddle, or actually at the LOS, how do you call the play? That is what I asked above. I know how some teams do it, but their systems would never allow selecting one of 300 plays. You can't just do it like in the huddle, because other people will understand your "language" pretty quick. If someone knows how we do this speak up. No details that are secret, but basically, how/what do we do?. Can we actually reach all 300 plays that are installed?

Now I understand why it takes the OL so long to gel...

[Mick]

Shaw is being a bit dramatic. You don't remember it. You synthesize it. The West Coast play calling system is a language with structure and syntax. Some words qualify others, and some words/numbers have meaning by their position in the "sentence". You are just "saying" the play. Some memorization is required, but the strength of the system is the ability to abstract football plays and communicate them unambiguously. A consequence of this is that you can describe, and therefore call, ANY play in the playbook this way. However, that is seldom necessary, the 270 to 300 selected ones are usually enough!
That doesn't mean it's easy. Luck was a phenom in this for sure. It is now well known that you shouldn't throw the Venus on Spider 3 Y Banana unless the safety has vacated the middle of the field. But what is the read for Spider 2 Y Banana Zeus, I have no idea.
I absolutely assure you that Burns/Chryst were never asked/expected to do anything of this magnitude.
What is presented here is how the play would be called in the huddle. Now, if you are in no huddle, or actually at the LOS, how do you call the play? That is what I asked above. I know how some teams do it, but their systems would never allow selecting one of 300 plays. You can't just do it like in the huddle, because other people will understand your "language" pretty quick. If someone knows how we do this speak up. No details that are secret, but basically, how/what do we do?. Can we actually reach all 300 plays that are installed?

Now I understand why it takes the OL so long to gel...