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Steelers, other teams strive to protect playbooks
By Scott Brown
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Chris Kemoeatu weighs close to 350 pounds, and doesn't skip many meals. But the desire to order food is not the reason why the Steelers' guard took a hotel room-service menu to a team meeting the night before Super Bowl XL.
Kemoeatu had left his playbook in a dining room earlier that day, and one of the Steelers' coaches had seen it and scooped it up. Bill Cowher, the Steelers' head coach at the time, walked up to Kemoeatu during the meeting and ordered him to hand over the black book he had carried into the room -- the only Steelers playbook, as it turned out, that offered a soup of the day.
"He just kind of sat there," former Steelers offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt recalled, "and didn't want to do it."
Kemoeatu turned over the bogus playbook and Cowher gave him back the actual one, though the exchange cost Kemoeatu a $1,000 fine.
That anecdote provided a few chuckles during a coaches breakfast last week at the NFL owners meetings in Palm Beach, Fla. But with "Spygate" still looming over the NFL and integrity of the game emerging as the unofficial mantra of the meetings, the question of how teams protect the content in their playbooks proved to be a pertinent one.
Especially since playbooks getting into the wrong hands is a real possibility considering how many are distributed, that a significant number of players who get them do not make the team and the reality of how accessible all manner of information is in the Internet age.
"We try to keep them in-house as best you can," Cleveland Browns coach Romeo Crennel said. "But it's hard to keep them in-house when in training camp you want (players) to have the playbook available to them so that they can learn the system as quickly as they can and go back to refer to it as much as they need to.
"You try to make them responsible for it. They sign it out and then they have to turn it in. Then you fine them tremendously if they lose it or they don't turn it in."
Such measures don't prevent playbooks from popping up in rather unlikely places. Last week, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said he has a staff member check a popular Internet shopping site from time to time to see if any of the team's playbooks are for sale.
And with good reason.
A quick search of eBay reveals that for $10, this item can be purchased: 2004 PITTSBURG STEELERS OFFENSE PLAYBOOK-COWHER.
Presumably, there is not a team nicknamed the Steelers in Pittsburg, Ohio, Pittsburg, Utah, or any of the other American cities named Pittsburg.
Jeff Fisher said he does not search the Internet for Tennessee Titans playbooks. But the Tennessee coach probably looks for them -- or at least remnants of them -- when he is leaving work.
That is because he noticed pages from a playbook swirling around like unraked leaves near the Titans' practice facility.
One of the players had apparently left a playbook on his car while getting into it and driven away. Fisher slapped a hefty fine on the offender.
"He's no longer on our roster," Fisher said, "but that was not the reason."
How beneficial information from a playbook that somehow gets out and is accessible by others is a matter of opinion.
Dallas Cowboys coach Wade Phillips recalled during his time as defensive coordinator of the New Orleans Saints that one player never turned in a playbook after the 1981 season.
The reason: Tommy Myers had never gotten one because he had reported to training camp late.
And the safety, Phillips said, had been one of the Saints' best players that season.
"That's when I learned the playbook isn't all that important," Phillips said. "It's important just to give (players) direction, but it's how you implement it."
Whisenhunt, now coach of the Arizona Cardinalals, doesn't exactly guard the contents of his playbook as if they are state secrets.
However, Whisenhunt regards them as being important enough that he has people conduct sweeps of the locker room after Cardinals road games so nothing that may help an opponent in the future is left behind.
"If you actually have a sheet that shows the blocking assignments from the other team, you know what their scheme is so that gives you concrete evidence of how to attack a scheme," Whisenhunt said on what can be gleaned from on opponents' playbook. "A lot of times you set up your (game) plan based on what you see on tape and then it changes. But if you had an idea of what their scheme was and how they do things, it might give you an advantage."
How much of a disadvantage it puts his team at if Steelers playbooks and information from them get out is not something that causes Tomlin to lose a lot of sleep.
But the second-year coach does take steps to minimize the risk of that happening.
"I'm not a big tree-killer, if you will; what I mean by that is a lot of what we do is word of mouth," Tomlin said. "The things we hand out are absolutely necessary to hand out. As long as you proceed with that caution, you are pretty safe."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/steelers/s_560888.html
By Scott Brown
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Chris Kemoeatu weighs close to 350 pounds, and doesn't skip many meals. But the desire to order food is not the reason why the Steelers' guard took a hotel room-service menu to a team meeting the night before Super Bowl XL.
Kemoeatu had left his playbook in a dining room earlier that day, and one of the Steelers' coaches had seen it and scooped it up. Bill Cowher, the Steelers' head coach at the time, walked up to Kemoeatu during the meeting and ordered him to hand over the black book he had carried into the room -- the only Steelers playbook, as it turned out, that offered a soup of the day.
"He just kind of sat there," former Steelers offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt recalled, "and didn't want to do it."
Kemoeatu turned over the bogus playbook and Cowher gave him back the actual one, though the exchange cost Kemoeatu a $1,000 fine.
That anecdote provided a few chuckles during a coaches breakfast last week at the NFL owners meetings in Palm Beach, Fla. But with "Spygate" still looming over the NFL and integrity of the game emerging as the unofficial mantra of the meetings, the question of how teams protect the content in their playbooks proved to be a pertinent one.
Especially since playbooks getting into the wrong hands is a real possibility considering how many are distributed, that a significant number of players who get them do not make the team and the reality of how accessible all manner of information is in the Internet age.
"We try to keep them in-house as best you can," Cleveland Browns coach Romeo Crennel said. "But it's hard to keep them in-house when in training camp you want (players) to have the playbook available to them so that they can learn the system as quickly as they can and go back to refer to it as much as they need to.
"You try to make them responsible for it. They sign it out and then they have to turn it in. Then you fine them tremendously if they lose it or they don't turn it in."
Such measures don't prevent playbooks from popping up in rather unlikely places. Last week, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said he has a staff member check a popular Internet shopping site from time to time to see if any of the team's playbooks are for sale.
And with good reason.
A quick search of eBay reveals that for $10, this item can be purchased: 2004 PITTSBURG STEELERS OFFENSE PLAYBOOK-COWHER.
Presumably, there is not a team nicknamed the Steelers in Pittsburg, Ohio, Pittsburg, Utah, or any of the other American cities named Pittsburg.
Jeff Fisher said he does not search the Internet for Tennessee Titans playbooks. But the Tennessee coach probably looks for them -- or at least remnants of them -- when he is leaving work.
That is because he noticed pages from a playbook swirling around like unraked leaves near the Titans' practice facility.
One of the players had apparently left a playbook on his car while getting into it and driven away. Fisher slapped a hefty fine on the offender.
"He's no longer on our roster," Fisher said, "but that was not the reason."
How beneficial information from a playbook that somehow gets out and is accessible by others is a matter of opinion.
Dallas Cowboys coach Wade Phillips recalled during his time as defensive coordinator of the New Orleans Saints that one player never turned in a playbook after the 1981 season.
The reason: Tommy Myers had never gotten one because he had reported to training camp late.
And the safety, Phillips said, had been one of the Saints' best players that season.
"That's when I learned the playbook isn't all that important," Phillips said. "It's important just to give (players) direction, but it's how you implement it."
Whisenhunt, now coach of the Arizona Cardinalals, doesn't exactly guard the contents of his playbook as if they are state secrets.
However, Whisenhunt regards them as being important enough that he has people conduct sweeps of the locker room after Cardinals road games so nothing that may help an opponent in the future is left behind.
"If you actually have a sheet that shows the blocking assignments from the other team, you know what their scheme is so that gives you concrete evidence of how to attack a scheme," Whisenhunt said on what can be gleaned from on opponents' playbook. "A lot of times you set up your (game) plan based on what you see on tape and then it changes. But if you had an idea of what their scheme was and how they do things, it might give you an advantage."
How much of a disadvantage it puts his team at if Steelers playbooks and information from them get out is not something that causes Tomlin to lose a lot of sleep.
But the second-year coach does take steps to minimize the risk of that happening.
"I'm not a big tree-killer, if you will; what I mean by that is a lot of what we do is word of mouth," Tomlin said. "The things we hand out are absolutely necessary to hand out. As long as you proceed with that caution, you are pretty safe."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/steelers/s_560888.html