It’s all about perspective. Everybody knew it, but the story goes that it was Wellington Mara who was the first to do something about it. Mara was the longtime owner of the New York Football Giants and the problem plaguing his team - plaguing every team, really - was that the very worst place to watch a football game was from the sideline. His coaches, the very men being paid to see the whole of the field, were doing so blindly. So, back in the early ‘40s, Mara stationed a still photographer atop the press box, on the roof of the Giants’ stadium. He ran a wire from the spot where the photographer stood down to the bench where the coaches sat. It was the shooter’s job to snap overhead Polaroids of the game in progress then tuck these shots inside a weighted, old sock and slide the whole deal down the wire. The coach on the receiving end suddenly had an overhead view, suddenly had perspective. And in that one deft move, football went from being tangled morass of clashing titans to a delicate chess game scripted by eagle-eyed coaches.
While the exact dates are unclear, it was a few years after Mara’s original innovation that coaches transitioned from still photography to moving pictures and suddenly the high art of film study was born. Different coaches are credited with this innovation, but it was Paul Brown, founder of both the Cleveland Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals, who really marched us into the modern era. It was 1946 when Brown created the Browns, and it was also in that year that be became the first coach to hire a full-time staff on a year-long basis. He was the first to design a rigorous college scouting system and the first to utilize intelligence tests to grade potential prospects and, perhaps most importantly, he was also the first to turn film study from a coach’s fiefdom into a player’s tool.
Brown designed film-based statistical studies and later graded his players, not only on field performance, but also on off-field film studies. “During the off-season,” says Mike Brown, the current owner of the Cincinnati Bengals and Paul Brown’s son, “my father and his assistants would spend all their time in the tiny film processing room. They would hand-cut and splice film. Every play, every player. People credit my father with a lot of stuff, but if there’s one thing that he did which most advanced football, it was his organizational skills. He was a teacher, and film study was one of his primary teaching tools.”
As evidence of this tool, Mike Brown points to the last championship his father won, a 1955 victory over the Sid Gilman coached Los Angels Rams. By looking at the films, Brown devised a double wing set - basically two receivers on each side - which meant that no matter how the Rams rotated their players, it would always leave a receiver with single coverage. This was all the edge he needed. “I remember sitting with my dad after the game,” says Brown, “and he walked me through his line-ups. That victory was entirely the result of film study.”
Because of that victory and many others, Brown’s legacy was passed not just from pro coach to pro coach, but to the whole of the football world. From the fifth-string halfback to the first-string tackle, solid film study became the cornerstone of the modern game. All of which raises one simple question: What is it, exactly, that the pros see when they study film? But before we can answer that query, we first need to understand what they don’t see, or hear for that matter. See, the film that players study is silent. It is made up of only two shots per play, a slightly raised sideline shot, say one taken from the bottom rung of the upper deck, and a second - and much more critical view - from the end zone.
“The very best place to watch a football game,” says two-time Super Bowl winning coach of the Oakland Raiders, Tom Flores, “is from the front row of the second tier of the end zone.” The reasons for this are simple - it’s from the end zone that one can actually see the play unfold. Everyone who has ever listened to John Madden broadcast a game knows that a good offense takes what the defense gives them, but to really understand the nature of this gift one needs to be able to see how both safeties line up - a perspective that’s best available from end zone film. “You have to see the safeties,” continues Flores. “They’re the key to coverage. If I know the direction of their first step then I can tell you what’s going to happen with the rest of the play.”
Thus the chess match begins. The first thing film students look for is personnel and deployment. It’s all about down and distance. Teams like certain packages for certain situations and, these days, film is broken down to reflect this. First down, second and 10, second and 5, third and long, third and short, red zone between the 40s, blitzes and on and on. From there, players move into the real technicalities.
“The level of detail required is pretty intense,” says Kansas City Chief offensive lineman Kyle Turley. “I know - because of film study - that when Osi Umenyiora (defensive end for the Giants) puts both hands on the ground, he’s speeding up the field.” And when Umenyiora comes speeding up the field, he’s not dropping back into coverage, which means that when Turley sees both hands on the ground he knows that a small hole will appear where the defensive end used to be. So Turley’s job is not just to stop him on his quarterback bumrush, but to angle that stoppage so that Umenyiora is taken out of the play completely.
For obvious reasons, different players look for different things. In an interview with NFL.com, Denver cornerback Champ Bailey said that the first thing he looks for when studying film is how fast a receiver can run, so he can tell if he needs to be concerned about his assignment leaving him in the dust. Secondly, he looks at route-running skills, to see what happens if he is “off” and not pressing. Thirdly, Bailey wants to know how well that receiver responds to jams. And this is just the beginning.
Pittsburgh cornerback Ike Taylor takes things much further. He studies film to understand body language. Does a receiver break the huddle with his mouthpiece in or out when the next play is a run or a pass? These are what are known as tendencies, and tendencies are the key to film study.
“On each play,” says Turley, “there are about 30 different things I’m looking for. Most aren’t going to come up, but all I need is one tell, one small advantage, and I’ll own that guy all day long.”