By Brice Cherry

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Those Baylor fans who believe new coach Art Briles to be a straightforward, by-the-book sort of fellow might end up being surprised.

When it comes to his offense, Briles isn’t by-the-book at all. That’s because there isn’t a book on which to refer.

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Baylor football: fall camp

The Bears continue their preparations for the season opener Aug. 28 under new ball coach Art Briles.

When Briles began indoctrinating the Baylor players to his multiple-formation spread offense back in the spring, he didn’t toss a hefty playbook into their laps and say, “Learn this.” Briles doesn’t utilize a playbook in the traditional sense, instead preferring to teach through seeing and doing rather than reading.

“I’m a visual learner, and a lot of players fall along those same lines,” said Briles, who didn’t work from a playbook in his five seasons coaching the University of Houston, either. “Because if you hand them a book and a video game, they’re going to play the video game. We’ve got all our plays on video, and that’s how we teach them.”

Briles’ players, all of whom hail from a generation younger than the World Wide Web, seem to be willing students.

“It’s just immersion, throwing yourself in it,” said senior receiver Thomas White. “It helps you to see it, to be able to see it on tape or walk through it, rather than looking at a piece of paper and seeing a bunch of lines and X’s and O’s.”

“It’s pretty efficient, and it’s going well right now,” agreed quarterback Blake Szymanski. “Coach Briles knows what he’s doing. He’s been doing it this way for a long time.”

Instead of rows of players staring at a dry erase board or thumbing through a thick playbook, Briles’ system considers film study critical. The coach said that the staff will occasionally present the players with DVDs of selected plays, or hand them a “grid sheet” — a thinner mini-playbook — of various formations and schemes as a backup reference.

“The way we learn is a little different today than it was 25 to 30 years ago,” said Briles, who estimated that the last time he used a true playbook was in the 1980s. “So we feel like this fits us better with how we want to teach it today.”

Film study a must

As a result, the players become quite familiar with the film room. They spend hours each day studying the nuances of a particular play on the big screen, pausing or rewinding the video as needed to pose questions to the coaching staff.

Just as would-be pilots train on flight simulators, these film sessions are football simulators.

“It does require a lot of film study, because you’ve got to know what to do in live action in case anything happens,” junior receiver Ernest Smith said. “If there’s a check or an audible, you’ve got to be able to react fast. I’ve watched a lot of U of H film . . . just getting familiar with it all.”

Besides the film room, Briles’ other classroom is the field itself. On the offensive practice field, plays are run in rapid-fire succession, sometimes as many as three in a single minute. Baylor’s players say they just try to soak it all in, knowing they’ll be tested on it later — like, say, Saturdays in the fall.

“Nothing can take the place of being out here (on the field) and just learning the plays,” White said. “Getting those reps, the mental reps, and just seeing how it actually shakes out.”

“Coach Briles’ thing is to get out there and just go, on the field,” Szymanski said. “That’s kind of his method of teaching and learning, kind of learning physically rather than drawing up plays.”

No eraser needed

By all accounts, Briles is a high-energy person. The field is his office, and when he’s out on it, he’s ready to work — fast.

“No patience, probably,” Briles said when asked about his fact-paced practice style. “We don’t stall like a lot of people do. We just hit the road and drive on. We’re going to learn it as we go. It’s just the way we do it.”

Another reason Briles opts to forgo creating a paper playbook is because he doesn’t feel like editing it every week. The coach said the offense is an ever-evolving amalgam, and what’s current today may be outdated tomorrow.

“We tweak (the offense) and we change things as we go along,” said Briles, who will call his own plays at Baylor. “That’s really the main reason we don’t put it in the playbook, because it honestly wouldn’t apply one week to the next, much less one year to the next.”

So as Briles stalks the field at Floyd Casey Stadium this autumn, don’t expect to see a playbook the size of an encyclopedia wadded up and sticking out of the back of his coaching pants. He wants his players to make the right reads on the field, but that doesn’t mean they must read a lot of pigskin prose to get there.

“We’ve done it this way forever,” Briles said. “I would be hard-pressed to find a college athlete, much less some professionals, that really would prefer an actual playbook.”

bcherry@wacotrib.com

757-5714