Austin's spanish playbook

AP sports

After a rookie season that featured a handful of brilliant highs mixed with stretches of low productivity and three weeks of downtime at the end with a high ankle sprain, the St. Louis Rams wide receiver came clean. Especially early on, the playbook had him bamboozled.

”I didn’t really know what was going on,” Austin said. ”Everything looked like Spanish and sounded like Spanish to me.”

Entering Year 2, the eighth overall pick of the 2013 draft realizes there’s more to the job than simply outrunning defenders. He’s comfortable with a system that’s undergone only minor tweaks, and better prepared to bedevil opposing coordinators.

”I understand the plays, the depth, the routes, the splits and everything,” Austin said. ”I just feel good that I can make some plays. Definitely, the game’s slowed down for me.”

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There’s no doubt he didn’t have a full understanding of the scheme right away. Austin did get the ball a lot in the early going of 2013. But the Rams could’ve been hesitant to use him in some different ways because of this.

CoachO

This makes it seem like the ENTIRE playbook is in play for each and every game. That just isn’t the case. These guys are given a specific “game plan” early in the week, they practice it Wed- Fri, both in walk thrus and on the field.

They spend 10 hour days at the facility in meetings, going over each and every scenario to ensure they understand that weekly game plan. Its not that the playbook is too complex, or that they are given too much on any given week, its that they don’t grasp the terminology and have a thorough understanding of all the variables within a given play all based on the looks presented by the defense.

In college a player with Austin’s ability, it really comes down to “just go beat the guy covering you”, here, it’s about about details, and making sure you are where you need to be WHEN you are supposed to be there.