Filling the Pro Bowl vacuum

I spent the dreaded Pro Bowl week instead catching up with the Senior Bowl practices and the game itself. I must admit that for all my good intentions when each off-season comes around, my attention usually only just about stretches to checking out the draft and the big free agency signings, something I'm trying to rectify this year.

Watching the Senior Bowl practices was strangely relaxing, but I'm not sure how much of it taught me anything. The NFL Network now goes big on selling it signaling the workouts as part of the 'Path to Primetime' (presumably the path to the NFL itself as opposed to the driveway to Deion Sanders' mansion) and it was certainly interesting watching the future pros in more intimate environs with one-on-one teaching.

The basic techniques being evaluated were also fascinating. The O-line and D-line scrimmages were very revealing about players on form and those who were struggling. Equally, the wide receivers against the defensive backs seemed to show a clear difference between the cream of the crop and the lower round choices.

But of course we are only getting a snapshot of what the trainers and scouts have been seeing in these players across the months and years they have been following their progress. Taking the brief practices (and to a lesser extent, the Bowl itself) as your sole evidence for a player's ability is impossibly unfair. Even as someone who watches their fair share of college football across the season, I can't begin to make more than a few generalised observations about a player that could be completely irrelevant come the pros.

And that's where the supposed 'all-access' tag applied to showing so much of the offseason; the Senior Bowl, the combine, the draft itself, could be called somewhat disingenuous to the average fan. It's certainly very interesting, but as to it's overall usefulness to me, I'm perhaps yet to be sold.

Having said that, the input of Mike Mayock and Charles Woodson was excellent. Mayock in particular has thoroughly done his research and watched copious amounts of game film. His comments about players were always incisive and revealing, and he kept viewers on track as to what they should be looking out for during each drill.

• Also this week I've spent time examining various playbooks that can be found for free across the internet. If you have never seen a playbook before they are certainly worth checking out. Half of the content is largely indecipherable, even to someone who has mis-spent their youth on Madden. But there is a fantastic level of detail involved that I had not considered before, such as the strict rules in the Patriots 2004 playbook regarding lining up in the huddle: 'Do not lean on other men in the huddle - place your hands on your hips.' I'd like to imagine that only the fastidious nature of Bill Belichick ensured this detail entered the text, but it sadly appears common place amongst the pro organisations.
  
  The differences between the formal wordings of the NFL playbooks is contrasted sharply in some of the college tomes, such as Air Force's 1998 set, filled with lecture notes, reminders of the players responsibilities, and stirring words to motivate the program to greatness.
  
  
  
  The real value of these playbooks comes with matching them up against archival game footage, but on their own they stand as records of coaching philosophies both still in development or at their peak.