What are
/r/NFLNoobs'
favorite Products & Services?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
The most popular Products mentioned in /r/NFLNoobs:
The most popular Services mentioned in /r/NFLNoobs:
The most popular Android Apps mentioned in /r/NFLNoobs:
The most popular VPNs mentioned in /r/NFLNoobs:
The most popular reviews in /r/NFLNoobs:
So a playbook changes slightly each year, and is not so much a finished/published product, but instead an ongoing, and ever fluid manual and "archive." While snippets of NFL playbooks aren't hard to find, the odds of finding a "complete" one are extremely rare, because again, even for a team, they aren't really ever "complete," but are always fluid, and teams do not want those books out to the public. They're usually released via leaks.
There are a series of books on amazons where fans/film analysts reconstruct a team's side of the ball just based on what they called in games. For example: https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Down-2018-Rams-Offense/dp/1794188207
It would also help to know who your favorite team is. You're not gonna find a 2020 season playbook, or one for this upcoming year. You usually won't start seeing them leaked until about 1-2 years AFTER a season. You can find some 2018's and 2019's for example, but if the staff of the side of the ball you want to study is no longer there for 2020/2021, the playbook from 2018/2019 will be irrelevant.
I haven't found any channels that do a good job of starting with the basics, but this book does a great job. It's an easy read, starts with the basics and goes into great detail
> Therefore, I really have problems with reading plays in advance when watching a game. Meaning prior to the snap it’s really hard for me to tell, whether the offense is trying to go for a running play or passing play or what the defense is trying to do
Neither can most people including the guys on the other side of the football. Both offenses and defenses try very hard to hide what they are planning to do, because if you can spot something from your couch, the other team will see it too, and they will have an advantage.
Now, there are some obvious situations, for example, if it's 3rd & long (6+ yards), a run play is pretty unlikely. Different teams also have certain tendencies, and may be more or less likely to run/pass in certain situations, but you're now getting into really high-level stuff now, that is beyond even die-hard fans.
Tony Romo spent years as a QB, running offenses, and studying defenses, so it's natural that every once in a while he spots something that normal people don't. Don't worry about that though. You don't need to be able to predict plays to enjoy football.
If you really want to get a little more knowledgable about watching, this book is a great place to start:
/r/footballstrategy
A lot of that recognition takes years of following to pick up, coupled with studying the concepts teams are using. There's tons of free resources out there that you can use.
THE BIGGEST KEY IS TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE BALL AND THE QUARTERBACK.
The offensive and defensive lines tell you about 75% of the story on each play. If you watch them, it's far easier to recognize what is happening. The way I do it is this (I'm a coach though, so I've been doing this for many years...it's taken many years to get where I'm at too)
See the whole field as the huddle breaks: Receiver deployment and what defensive backs I can spot to see the secondary shell or pre-snap look. Once that's done, I "zoom" in and focus on the O/D-line.
Watch the lines, watch the lines, watch the lines. When the ball is snapped, glance at the whole O-line, especially the guards and immediately zoom out slightly to see the whole O-line vs. D-line. If I'm watching the defense more, I'll flip this and watch the D-line first. This all happens in a matter of milliseconds.
Once I've identified what is happening up front (blocking scheme, stunt/blitz, etc), I "zoom" back out at the receivers and backs, hopefully before they and the DB's disappear off the screen. If it's a pass, maybe I can catch some of the route breaks to identify the concept.
Once that's all assessed, I then relax and watch the rest of the play unfold.
Again, this is all happening in less than a second. It takes practice and again, knowing the concepts that exist or that teams may run.
There are some great books out there made (before Gamepass when down the toilet) where authors broke down entire offenses play by play so you can really follow and understand certain teams. Here is a link to one such book. This one linked (2018 Rams offense) is an absolute beauty.
> While VPN to get around geo restricted services, is technically legal in the US, it is against the terms and services.
This is also about where I draw the line on what posts about streaming will get removed here.
Get yinzselves a good VPN service. I'm sure a content creator you like has a sponsorship deal for Surfshark or NordVPN, etc.
Have I got the right books?
Take your eyes off the ball
Footballs Coaching Bible
This series has all of that, in extreme detail, from Walter Camp himself. Play diagrams, coaching manuals, team training and development plans, etc. All set in the pre-1906 era (pre-forward pass). The big thing to understand conceptually: This is American Rugby Union Football, not "American Football." It's based on rugby rules, but with the U.S. adaptations: Banning the scrum, having the forwards line up in a line instead of binding, and legalizing interference (blocking).
Here is what a common pre-1906 formation looked like. Along with the forward pass not being allowed, there was no established rule for how many players had to be on the line of scrimmage either.
---------LT--LG--CC--LG--RT---------
------E-----------QB-----------E------
------------HB---------HB-------------
-------------------FB-------------------
The QB is not using an under-center snap like you see today. It was really like a really short direct snap or lob pass of just a few inches to a yard, or the QB would pull the ball out just like a scrum-half in rugby. The "QB" is used in American Rugby Union, because of its influence from the Scottish brand of rugby, which featured an additional back compared to traditional rugby formations, which they dubbed the Quarterback.
The halfbacks were your hybrid-type backs, and the fullback was your featured, speedy, break-neck speed back. Remember this is also at a time where you played both ways, so safeties, cornerbacks, linebackers, etc, didn't exist. The positions were the same on both sides.
Welcome to the Nation!
One of the things I like about football is there always seems like there is more to learn. The game has been evolving for decades. My first recommendation is to check out Take Your Eye Off the Ball 2.0: How to Watch Football by Knowing Where to Look by Pat Kirwan. Great base of knowledge to learn about the game.
You can also join our team sub at r/raiders where we mostly talk a lot crap about other teams (as well as our own team). ;-)
I KNOW, RIGHT?! The NFL is so awful about this but the product is in such demand that they get away with it anyway.
If you're in your preferred team's broadcast market, you can get a TV antenna and pick it up over the airwaves, which is honestly the easiest thing. You'll miss out on Monday night games since they're on ESPN, but it's a total cost of like $25.
If you're set on using a PC though, things get more complicated. I can't vouch for any particular streaming service and it's best practice not to name drop any illegal streams on Reddit. I can vouch for NordVPN to get around blackout restrictions, because that is somehow apparently legal. I don't use it for football but I've used it for other location-restricted services.
If you're comfortable with using a VPN in conjunction with another service, I personally think it's worth the investment. I just don't know what service itself is right.
Nope. That's up to the YT/article nerds who focus specifically one on or a couple teams and break down their entire offense/defense. There are books out there that do crazy in-depth break downs of a team's offense or defense from certain years. That's the best you'll get: Example
Part of the reason behind this is that there is no universal terminology or formations in football. Every team has their own way of naming formations and every writer/author may have their own way as well. For example, in the book I posted, and others like it, many authors declare they're using terminology that makes sense to them and to make the book as easy to understand as they can. Some teams will call a formation just one word, while others may call it 4-5 words.
Not only that, but there are so...damn...many formations out there. Just to give a primary example, look below:
-X--------O-O-C-O-O---Y---------------
----------------Q--------------F------Z-
----------------H---------------------
Many NFL teams would call this a type of "strong-side" trips formations, because there are three receivers to the Y/TE side. If the trips were to the X side, away from the Y, this would be a type of "weak-side" trips.
Every NFL team not only has strong and weak-side trips, but another trips formation for each combination of how those three receivers can line up (while still looking exactly the same on paper in terms of spacing). So a strong-side trips and weak-side trips look each have at least six different possible combinations of how those receivers can line up in terms of who is outside, middle, and inside. Then, you have more sub formations and calls for all six of those to change up the spacing.
My point: The amount of formations to track and take note of out there are practically infinite.
Can you order online? They have it on Amazon UK so hopefully you can get it in your country for a good price.
This is a good big format book for getting to grips with everything from the simple to the complex:
I'd also recommend picking up Madden 17 on the cheap so you can get a handle on clock management by managing a clock yourself. Sometimes the key to victory is not scoring as quickly as possible.
We're kind of lucky in the UK now in that our national broadcaster has a highlights deal with the NFL and a couple of shows a week where the main presenter acts as the non-expert and the ex-players really go into detail of why big plays turned out the way they did, rather than just showing highlights. There's bound to be plenty of YouTube dissections and that's the kind of thing you want to really appreciate the game.