Inside the Buccaneer playbook ZEBRA DOUBLE WING LEFT F SHORT 373 SMOKE Z CHOICE In the words of the song by Ultravox, "It means nothing to me". But it does mean something to the Bucs, quite a lot actually. It's a quick pass to Ken Dilger in the right flat. The video piece that NFL films produced gave an insight into the play-calling between Jon Gruden and Brad Johnson. Gruden has 25 seconds of the 40-second clock to call a play and talk to his quarterback. Johnson then repeats the play in the huddle and brings the team to the line of scrimmage, But what does each part mean? Putting on my best deerstalker hat to do my Sherlock Holmes impression, and going back to my one season helping the Crawley Raiders with their offensive gameplan back in 1985, I would surmise the following: ZEBRA is the personnel set, such as 2 WR, 2 TE, 1RB or 4 WR, 1 RB etc. DOUBLE WING LEFT is the formation on the line, F SHORT the blocking scheme, 373 are the receivers' routes, SMOKE the backfield assignments and Z CHOICE the hot route in the event of a blitz. Y SHIFT TO STRONG RIGHT OPEN F LEFT 58 Z TIGER S LEFT TIGHT 372 SMOKE X SPACEY Now take into consideration that the Buccaneer gameplan will have around 200 plays in it of which about 100 will be in use for any particular game. And you wonder why rookie QBs take time to pick up playing in the NFL? The Buc terminology is pretty standard around the NFL. Dan Reeves' playbook in Atlanta has long been regarded as the most complicated in the league with Chris Chandler stating that one particular play last season required 16 words in the huddle. This has been reduced to help Michael Vick, but the days of "Red 42" being enough for everyone to understand are long gone. TRIPS LEFT 73 RENO HALFBACK SCREEN - IF BLITZ, 59 TURNER DELTA U STRONG RIGHT BLACK 96 POWER KEY All five of the listed plays turned out to be passes although the last one did fool me as 96 Power Key is an ex-Raider play that involves the running back moving left. It was actually the play that Harvey Williams screwed up that led to Jon Gruden's famous scowl being seen on the sideline for the first time and the "Chucky" reference being born in the commentary booth. Yet this play resulted in a TD pass to Keenan McCardell on a crossing route from the left side. One can only assume that an audible was called at the line based on what Brad saw from the defensive formation.